Sunday, March 9, 2014

Spring Fever

We are in the home stretch...for spring break that is. Sadly, summer is still 11 weeks away. Today the weather in Tennessee felt like such a tease. It was a beautiful day...sunny and warm. It made me READY for spring.

3rd grade has so much to still cover before our state assessments in April. All these snow days have left my head spinning! Our 3rd grade team is having to plan very strategically to get in all the skills we still need. Can anyone else relate?

One of our skills this week is sequencing. There are a ton of great resources out there for this skill. I just needed a very simple graphic organizer to use in my small groups with our leveled readers. I just made this organizer real quick to share. It is free in my TPT store. If you download it, I hope that you find it to be helpful in your classroom.


You can grab it for FREE here.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Spelling Lists

Over this past summer, I worked hard on creating resources in preparation for a brand new reading series I knew we would be getting in the fall.

One of the things I wanted to have was a weekly spelling sheet. I wanted parents to have a list of the words and the skills that their kids were practicing at school and were responsible for studying at home. I use weekly Spelling Menus to help my kids practice their spelling words. Having these lists made it easy for them to practice their spelling skills. Both of these were very time consuming!



Both of these are available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

You can find the 3rd Grade spelling lists here.

My monthly spelling menus are here.

VCCCV Practice

All these snow days have required a bit of "creativity" in our planning as a 3rd grade team! We are having to combine some skills in order to get everything in before testing. Don't you just love standardized testing?

One of our phonics/spelling skills is the VCCCV syllabication pattern. I do not anticipate my 3rd graders struggling with this skill too much, but I made this center for my kids to practice this pattern. It provides a good assessment of the skills pattern. This goes along with the story Fly, Eagle, Fly! from the Reading Street series.


If you want to use this in your own classroom, you can find it here.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Simplifying Fractions Made Easy (I hope...)

Every year I have 3rd grade friends who really struggle to understand how to simplify fractions. I made this to help my kids understand how to find the greatest common factor.

There is a chart with factors below the fractions where they can mark out and circle the appropriate fractions. I am hoping that it will help them in the beginnings of simplifying so that it becomes routine for them when they are doing it on their own.

I hope that this is helpful to some of your kiddos who are struggling to simplify fractions!

Get it for free in my TPT store.


You can get it here.

More Snow Days

Living in Tennessee, we get very little snow. With all these crazy snowstorms across the Southeast, we have had a very odd winter. So far we have used 7 snow days and we have potential for another one tomorrow. I was shocked how much snow we really got yesterday. Here in Tennessee we are used to being disappointed by our weather reports. They were right on it this time! Sadly, it is melting quickly, but there is potential for refreezing tonight. Teachers and students are loving all these unexpected breaks!!

I have been working all morning on Fact and Opinion. Our 3rd grade team was told NOT to teach the skill because it would not be tested. WRONG. We got the specific skills that will be on our end of year assessment (TCAPs) and surprise, surprise...fact and opinion is tested! Not just that, but several other skills that we were told not to teach. Gotta love it. Needless to say, we are a little stressed about making up time and getting in those skills.

Here is what my morning is looking like on this beautiful snowy day!

(Of course the Olympics are on in the background!)

I have been looking for any resources I can find on fact and opinion.

Here are some good freebies!

Fact and Opinion Freebie by Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher
Fact or Opinion Reading Center Station Activity Game by Workaholic NBCT
Facts and Opinions Sort Freebie by Speechy Musings
Also check this out from ReadWorks

I have a random teacher question...hopefully someone can help me out. Does anyone know how to lock your text and graphics into a flip chart in ActiveInspire? I want to share this with my teammates and TPT, but I am not sure how to save it so it opens with my fonts? I do not want to totally lock the flip chart because there is an interactive part for the kids to sort facts and opinions. Any suggestions? THANKS!

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The Olympic Spirit

If you were in my 3rd grade classroom, you would know just how in the "Olympic Spirit" I really am. My kids are reading all about the Olympics (reading and finding text-based evidence as they go). They have an Olympic Reading challenge they are doing. We are tracking the medals. I am loving it.

One of our skills this week was narrative writing. I, of course, had to pull in the Olympics. I made a quick, easy writing paper. You can grab it for free in my TPT store. I hope that your kids enjoy it!!



Go grab a FREE copy here!

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Winter Blues

I have a serious case of the winter blues. It is pretty pathetic really. Our Christmas break was extended by 3 days because of severe cold weather and damage it caused across our county. I told you...it is pathetic. I have only been back at work for 10 days and I am WORN OUT already. Part of it has to do with observations hanging over my head, part of it has to do with TCAP's being right around the corner, and A LOT of it has to do with getting married in May. I love my kids, I love teaching, and I love getting to inspire little learners, but...I just have wedding/marriage on the brain! I am trying to balance it all and make sure I am my best for my kids everyday.

For all of you with the winter blues, here is a new product that I hope you can find helpful in your classroom.

To motivate my kids to read, I made AR punch cards. When they earn points, they get a punch in their cards. When they fill a card they get to retire their card and get a small prize. They have worked really well in my classroom this year! I have been very pleased. I have a lot of kids working really hard to get their next card.

I hope that this is something that helps get your kids motivate to read!


You can grab these in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here!

Happy [almost] Friday!