{FREEBIE} Alert!

Along with being winter, I know my students tend to miss more school. It is overwhelming when 4 kids are absent in one day and you're trying to figure out what they have missed and all organization seems to go out the window! You're always thinking, "Why can't they just all come to school!"

I have created a {FREEBIE} for your viewing on my Teachers Pay Teachers store. The product includes a back/front sheet to send home with students. The front includes all subject areas for an elementary teacher. The back side serves as a check-off list for student/parent organization to make sure nothing was forgotten. There is also a section for teacher notes and parent notes. This makes for great communication between parent/teacher.

The last few documents are just for the teacher. They look very similar to student sheets, except it is used as a check-off sheet and notes to keep organized in case it is "one of those days".

Check out the product by clicking the image or here.

Is it Spring Yet?

A big shout out to a fellow blogger, Mrs. Herring's First Grade News, for her wonderful fonts! Check out her super, cute fonts in my newest product.

I have been overly excited to start thinking about spring...flowers, sunshine, light weight clothing, and flip flops! Ah, I am getting a little stir crazy just thinking about it already. So what better way to start thinking about spring than to create some spring related products.

My students always love to have activities that deal with plants and flowers. When teaching plant related items, it is important that students know the parts of a plant. This activity allows students to be "hands on" to reconstruct a plant, label, and even tell the responsibilities of the parts identified.

 Check out this product and many more at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Another follow up activity I do with my students is grow our own plants! Sometimes I'll do this around Earth Day so I can use reusable baby food jars to show recycling as well! My students love growing their own plants. I incorporate math (graphing) and reading elements into the lessons as well. I have asked students to compare and contrast plants using Venn Diagrams. I have also asked them to write a compare/contrast paragraph to end the unit.

 

 We also like doing a constant seed collection during the entire unit. Students will bring in all kinds, and I mean...all kinds of seeds to share with the class. We post them to a giant piece of paper to keep up so students can look and explore at the differences between them all. 

Multiplication is LOADS of Fun!

I needed some sort of motivation for my students to not only master their addition/subtraction facts (which should have been mastered last year), but to master most of their multiplication facts before they leave me this year! I decided to make a giant bulletin board outside of my classroom in which students will put their name on a sticker once they master that number (i.e. passed all x1's, x2's...). The sticker then goes on the coordinating shirt of the fact family they mastered. It was really exciting and I started to see some REAL growth in the first few weeks I did the tests. Students were excited to get their name on the t-shirt in the hallway. By the time winter break rolled around (so a month into the motivational board), I had students who had passed: 0,1,2,5,10,11. That's great for my group of third graders.

Update as of Nov. 26: To have students keep track of their own math data as well, you can have students create data tracking folders where they graph how many correct math facts depending on which number they are on, i.e. multiplication 6's. Read more about how I use these in my own classroom by clicking the "Data Tracking Folders" link.

To purchase all of the T-Shirts, please visit my TPT Store.

Interesting Inventors

My third graders did an amazing multi-week unit on researching famous inventors. We worked through the long process of researching. Students had to find many different items about the inventor they selected. They did a wonderful job. They moved onto the writing process where I modeled a paragraph a day and they worked through to get 4-5 paragraphs about their inventor. Students edited independently, with a partner, and with me before typing and completing the project.

As a second part to the project, each student had to create a timeline of their inventor's life (including the main invention). They did a great job, and it was definitely student-driven. I love projects that you can tell the students did it all by themselves! They learned not only what a timeline is, but learned how to print pictures and go back to find specific dates in reliable sources. Wow!