Teacher Clothes: Casual Friday

Today was a special day! We got to wear jeans to school. :) 

We don't do a casual Friday at my school {though I don't work in an office with a strict dress code, so I'm not complaining!!}.  Today we were allowed to wear them as a fundraiser for one grade level who needs a few extra funds for a field trip. Best $5 I've spent in a while! 

This is may be my last hurrah {fingers crossed} with cold weather, so I figured I'd get my happy vest out. There's an AWESOME thrift shop right near my house, and I found this gem the first time I visited. {My brother calls vest "core warmers, ha!} The scarf is a gift from my sweet college roommate, all the way from India. It's the best - warm and cozy and colors I love. 

Some Bunny Loves Your Blog: Teaching and Tapas

I'm linking up with Ms. Bainbridge to let Alyssha over at Teaching and Tapas know that I LOVE her blog. She clearly gets her kids up and moving, interacting in meaningful ways AND her work is aligned with the Common Core {there's a joke in there somewhere}.

Plus ... I think I pin every post that comes through my reader.


Thanks for being awesome and inspiring me in my classroom halfway across the world, Alyssha! :)

Study Notebooks: Space!

Every quarter we keep track of our learning in our social studies or science unit, and share them at our Community Night. What I love most about our notebooks is that they accumulate and make a wonderful record of the learning and growth that child has made over the time that they've been at our school.

We start with a blank Bare Book, and slowly add either journal entries, activities or diagrams. When it's complete, we decorate the cover with a fun design that represents that quarter's work. Since I've shared all our moon work {here, here, and here}, it's clear our last unit had to do with space. Soooo .... our cover was the night sky and moon! 

I was excited to try this technique I saw on Pinterest. The author calls it "puffy paint ..." I call it FUN!!

First you take a big dollop of shaving cream, and add some glue: 

You take some construction paper (we used light blue to give it some color), and smear it around! 

It only takes a couple of hours to dry, and then you can cut it into any shape you want! 

For the background of our books we used a dry tempera pat to create a wash, and then we used a tissue to wipe most of it off: 

When it was dry, we added some glitter paint and wrote the names and ... voila! The adorable covers, each one slightly unique. 

Inside ... our learning! We started the unit by visiting NASA's space station site for kids - we learned what a day in the life of an astronaut would be like, then we made our own packing list: 

We started waayyyyy out in space, and made acrostic poems about galaxies:

 

Then we moved in a little and studies constellations, using two AWESOME resources that I HIGHLY recommend - first we activated our schema and learned about constellations with the "Solar System Spectacular" unit by Lesson Plan SOS, and after we'd learned a little about them, we created our own with the ingenius "Graphing the Constellations" packet from Anna Colley.

After constellations, we moved onto stars, learning about their brightness, color, and life cycle using my "Stars" unit.

 

 

We zoomed into our solar system, learning about our own sun and it's characteristics - the layers of the sun and movement through the sky, as well as its effect on shadows and seasons. 

  

Fiinnnaaallly we started our moon work - we debunked ten "moon rumors" with my "Moon Misconceptions" unit - all of which are documented here, here, and here. OH! And we used the totally adorable oreo cookie activity from Yvonne Dixon's "Sun, Moon, Earth ..." unit, and the ADORABLE moon and earth craftivity from Leah Abatiell's "Mr. Moon" unit. I wish I had pictures! 

Have you seen this little poem? So helpful! 

We culminated our unit with our Community Night, packed it all up and started all over again the next week! Onto ENERGY, forces and motion and MATTER. Bring it on, science! :) 

Teacher Clothes: New Girl Dress

The three best shows on TV right now? Tie between:

• Parks and Rec
• New Girl
• Scandal

TRUTH. I could watch all three over and over ... {this is where my husband says, "you do ..." ;)} Does it count when you're sitting on the couch working on lesson plans while you watch? {I've already decided it doesn't.}

Weird intro, but it's because I always think of this dress as my "New Girl" dress - the one that looks like something Jess would wear. It has POCKETS, oh yes it does. :) 

Shoes {Clark's}, Tights {Target}
Dress {Gap}, Belt {Ann Taylor}

Editing Notebooks: An Intervention Strategy

I have a couple of students whose writing just isn't where I want it to be at this point in the year. Different issues with different students, but the end result is that they just aren't creating the AMAZING products that they're capable of.

While working with a couple of teammates the other day, we started thinking about what could prompt our students to see their own mistakes. One of my teammates ran across this reading log self-assessment from the fabulous "Life in 4B," and I had just seen the wonderful Hope King's color-coded editing.

Reading Log Assessment from Life in 4B

We thought that the checklist might be an awesome way to focus our kids on what they need to do, and color-coding could make it fun, but we still needed it to have some collectible data. I'm not always the best at collecting RTI data regularly (I'm great with class assessments, but for some reason tracking other things get moved to the back burner), so I knew I needed something easy to see and use, and if possible - I'd LOVE it to be in one place.

Thus -- the editing journal was born!

It's got a cute cover, a pocket for holding colored highlighters {tied to the notebook with string - losing markers won't keep us from editing, no sir!}, an introduction page ...

... editing checklist, write/edit tabs AND {WOOHOO!} a little tab across every page for me to record all the D-A-T-A. After one week of entries, there's even a little graph for my student to record their progress through the week!

I'm SOOoO excited to get this started next week. Fingers crossed we see some BIG improvements! 

I'm hoping this also might come in handy for some other teachers out there in the Internet Machine-land. Pop over to my TpT store for the freebie!  I included a fully editable set for those of you who'd like to change the goals or customize the letter. Enjoy! 

Teacher Clothes: Cropped Pants and Cardigan

TGIF, y'all. Loved this week, but Friday feels good!

Last week I kind of cheated and took my teacher clothes photos on a Sunday, then wore my TFA shirt instead of the white eyelet underneath the red jacket. That eyelet shirt was eying me from the "to be worn" pile. {Can't waste an ironing job ...} 

Sooooo I wore it with my favorite cropped navy pants and pink cardigan ... and called it "almost spring." {YES!} 

Also ... have y'all experienced the joy that is a Crocs flat? Perfect for school, and even for things like rainy days - they're plastic! {They look like suede.} Editing to add: I just went to the Crocs website and there's nothing that quite matches these. All the current styles are sort of ... frumpy. Maybe Crocs will get their act together soon and bring these back. :)

Cardigan {J. Crew}, Eyelet Top {Gap}
Cropped Pants {Banana Republic - similar}, Flats {Crocs}

Teacher Clothes: Cords and Top

This shirt was $3. Holler! I bought it at Target off the sale rack, after seeing a friend at work in adorable loose-fitting tunics and deciding that I. must. own. one. This isn't a tunic, but ... eh. It works!

Also, have y'all seen the camis at New York and Company? I don't usuallllyyyy love their stuff but the camis are indestructible  I've had mine since I started teaching and they still look like they're brand new {in my humble opinion}. Worth it! {ETA: I just went on the website and can't find them. Say it ain't so, NY&Co.!}

Shirt {Target}, Cami {NY&Co.}
Pants {Gap}, Shoes {Minnetonka}