Five For Fraturday! Phonics + WBT = Happy Kids!

Happy Saturday to me!  And I say that because I am celebrating the first weekend of summer vacation!!  I am soooo needing a mental break from school, but I still can't help thinking about a few things I want to work on over the summer. :) Teacher problems....

I love my ELA block because we always start with some phonics fun, Whole Brain Teaching style!  I fell in love with WBT last year and now I include many strategies in all subject areas!  I started using the Scoreboard, Mighty Oh Yeahs, and the Super Improver Wall and never looked back. :)

I had a sweet para record me while we had our phonics voices and gestures of the day.  (Please excuse the lounge wear, it was garden planting day!)  I use Kristen Smith's Phonics Mastery and absolutely love her phonics gestures.  This works perfectly with WBT methods!  Now my class and I have tweaked  a few to our own tastes, but most are from her pack.  

I always begin with "hands and eyes" to make sure all eyes are on me and hands are quiet.  Then I give a "mirror check" as a warm up.  Kids love this!  And after we learn a new phonics sound/gesture, I always ask a student to come up and model for the class.  They love to give the mirror check to the others.  Who doesn't like being bossy once in awhile? :)
Here's a quick clip of how we start our daily phonics, WBT style!

Here's another clip of more phonics sounds.

My Mother's Day weekend was spent running these two darlings around :)  Love my girls!!

I don't know about you, but the last two weeks of school are tough.  I mean TOUGH!  Sometimes the classroom rules go right out the door and you have to have a plan, a yummy plan. :)  Our bribe, I mean, incentive to finish the year off right, was an ice cream party where you earn your toppings.  It was totally worth it. 

I used my Superstar Student Awards and Medals last week and it was a total success!  Parents came to see their kids on the first grade 'red carpet' and don their medals for all to see!  You can take a peek at the pack here.

Just a pic of my fav softball player + coach ;)  xoxoxo

Winner Wednesday!!

I'm so excited to share this awesome new linky party with you today!  The sweet Jennifer, from A Dab of Glue Will Do, created Winner Wednesday!  The first Wednesday of every month, a product will be given away at each of our blogs linked at the bottom.  Enter and have a chance to be a WINNER!!

The product I chose today is my newest pack, National Parks: Road Trippin'.  This groovy pack contains passages and review sheets over four national parks: Carlsbad Caverns, Everglades, Redwoods, and Padre Island.  

One of the games is on conjunctions.  I don't know about you, but I always leave this skill until the end of the year with my firsties.  I think it's an easy concept, but I usually just have too much to do besides this!  Pardon my crummy iPhone photos! :)

Here is a pic of my Carlsbad Caverns passage.  This kiddo did a great job numbering the paragraphs and highlighting important info!

These pics include my favorite part of my pack: the map skills!  I put a national park key with the USA map.  Students will solve T/F questions on where the national parks are located on the map, using cardinal directions.  We did this today, and I was pleasantly surprised at how many kiddos knew their directions!  

The next pic is my landforms memory match game.  Although I don't have a pic of this, I think the students are *lovin* the National Park Passport books.  They get to take a 'selfie' of themselves at the national park, write about what they would do there, and then add their 'national park junior ranger stamp' to each section.  

So let's get this giveaway started!!  Enter the rafflecopter below with your name.  The contest ends at midnight tonight, so follow the links for more chances to win on Winner Wednesday!!  

Have a great week!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

We Love Teachers Blog Hop!

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week!  Does anyone else feel like it's Christmas for teachers???  I love this week, not just for the snazzy gifts, but just the sweet comments from students and parents.  We are loved!! :)

A few (18) of my awesome friends and I want to give YOU some appreciation!  How shall we show our love???  With FREEBIES!!!

Each of our blogs will be featuring an original product, and a Freebie for you.  Hop from one blog to the next and your lesson planning will be taken care of. :)


Here's a little info about my product, World Traveler Road Trippin': A close reading unit over U.S. National Parks.

My firsties will be starting this unit next week and I am so excited to take my kiddos on a 'road trip' to visit: Carlsbad Caverns, the Redwoods, Padre Island, and the Everglades.  We will start the week with  my gorgeous anchor chart ;)  I am definitely not an artist, so I am good friends with my projector!

Some of the activities include conjunctions, landforms memory match, and my fav, using a map key! My firsties are pretty new to this, so I hope it goes well!

You can find your freebie about the Carlsbad Caverns here.  

If you are interested in the whole pack, find it on TPT here.

Check out your next freebie here at the wonderful blog Tales of Teaching with Tech!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Five For Funday + End of the Year Student Awards!

It's Five For Friday time and I'm a *little* late!  Whoops....

The most exciting part about this weekend is my oldest daughter did her first presentation at 4H today.  We made dirt cups and it was too cute!  Oreos, pudding, whipped cream all over the place.  She did a great job, I'm so proud of her!

We have 14 days left of school, people!!!  I am trying to squeeze so much in the last few weeks.  We will be covering dogs this week, and I'm so excited to use an awesome pack by Amy Lemons, A Boy and His Dog.  We will be reading three different Henry and Mudge books, hooray!!

Our school is *thinking* about getting a new reading series, and it sounds like we might be getting Journeys!  So pumped for new readers with color pictures, woo hoo!  Does anyone have Journeys now?  Any comments???

I'm stoked about my teacher appreciation gifts I made this week.  I used awesome chalkboard frames from the talented Krista Wallden to create some cute graphics.  Slip them in some $2 document frames from walmart and bingo!   A cute and cheap teacher gift!

Finally, I set up a mock awards ceremony in my classroom today to show you how to celebrate your kiddo's success over the last year.  My Superstar Student Awards and Medals are finished and I'm so happy with how they turned out.  Here's some pics from my room:

Our class mascot, Baby Dolphin, did a fab job modeling the lovely medals. :)  You can also use ribbon for the medals and that would look great too.  I am planning on doing this the day before the last day of school.  IF I have time, I would love to laminate the awards, but we shall see.  

Have a great week!!

Five For Friday! Plus Baseball Week and IKEA finds

It's Five for Friday peeps!!  This week was exhausting with a capital E!  With four weeks left of school, I'm pretty sure everyday is going to be a whopper.

Wow, my first trip to IKEA was C.R.A.Z.Y!  That place is huge and I don't think I was fully prepared for the impact.  I tried to snap some pics of good classroom items for next year.  The turquoise art caddy is a must have in my ocean theme room, just perfect!  I was absolutely exhausted, but it was totally worth it. :)

I put this baby on TPT last week and made it a flash freebie, I love doing that!  I just feel all warm inside when I get to give things away for FREE!  I received some great feedback, so I'm feelin' the love!  Click here if you'd like to take a peek.  I am currently using this with my lowest reading group as their fluency passage of the week.  It's perfect for homework, too!

While I'm super jazzed about my students' academics right now, they are totally blowing me away!  I'm also bummed out from their rude and unfriendly behavior towards each other!  They are acting like brothers and sisters on a week long road trip trapped in an RV!  And tattling like no other, ugh.  So I whipped up a behavior system that focuses on those students who are friendly to everyone and deserve recognition.  Hopefully this will spread through the classroom.  Here's some pics of how I'm using it now.

Oh yeah, and it's FREE!  You can find it here.

We just finished Baseball Week and I have to say my boys in my class were enthralled!  Even when we created a baseball shape poem, they were all ears!

My Baseball Close Reading pack turned out to be a home run, baby!  I was so proud of my firsties when I tracked their fluency today.  They have come a long way!

Enjoy your weekend bloggy friends!!!

Five For Friday

It's' Five For Friday (post-spring break) and I still have my sanity!!  Go Meg go :)
This week was soooo busy!  Once again, I have too many fun activities planned and it ends up with my students having a blast and me stressing out...just a bit.  Here's what we did!

We studied a unit from my World Traveler Pack on the Rocky Mountains.  I whipped up some headlamps for the kids.  They loved them!  Especially those rowdy boys :)  We also made some quick pickaxes and golden nuggets.

I took some pea gravel from my house, spray painted it metallic gold, and TA DA!  Panning for gold was a blast!  They took home a bag apiece to fool their parents on April Fools.  Too funny!

Speaking of April Fools, I tricked my firsties with brownies (brown E's) and it was pretty cute!  They were psyched to get some dessert.  I can't blame them...

We celebrate Easter with Fry Phrase Easter eggs!  This was the first year I've done this, and it went so smoothly.  I cut out the Fry Phrases and gave one to each student.  Then I told them to find the egg that matches the Fry Phrase.  This was a challenge for a couple kiddos, but exciting for the rest.  It was a success!

Finally, my World Traveler pack is on sale through the weekend!  Grab it while it's hot :)  Happy Easter everyone!