Bloggy Love

All week long I wanted to link up with Christina over at Bunting, Books, and Bainbridge.

 I love her adorable button and she is seriously one amazing teacher/blogger. I swear, she is able to create 3 quiality, I want to use them in my own classroom right now, products every day! How does she do that??? I digress. The blog that I can't get enough of is Math Coach's Corner.

Donna is a fellow Texas teacher (in fact she is in a near by district and I am dying to meet her- too stalkersih??) and she has the most amazing math ideas and products. I swear, I get new ideas from her every time she posts on FB. 

Currently, my class has been in love with playing her There's Nothing Alien about Multiplication! 

Anywho, you should click on her blog button above and check her out. Her blog is filled with quality teaching ideas and freebies to help you get started! If you head over there, tell her I sent you :) 

Five For Friday - Spring Break Addition!

Hi there! I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for this weeks Five for Friday. I am on spring break this week but I have to say, this year's break has not been the best. Sigh. maybe next year??

1. My baby boy had his tonsils and adenoids taken out this past Friday and had to have a one night stay in the hospital. He is doing much better during the day time but is still have a lot of pain at night. Needless to say, none of us are well rested this week. I am hopeful he'll be ready to go back to school on Monday so that I can go back to work/

2. We were going a little stir crazy being inside all week so we took a mini trip to Discover Dinosaurs, a traveling dinosaur exhibit. They were very real looking and it was cool to read about them and see how massive they really were!

3. I've had time to read this week and my love bug at school (secret pal near Valentine's Day) gave me this book to read. I am really enjoying it!! It has given me some interesting perspective on high functioning autism. 

4. I have also had time to work on some products I am looking forward to using in my classroom after break. I made these triangle flash-cards to practice multiplication and division. My kids will take timed tests to prove mastery over each factor and I will chart their progress as a classroom display. More on that later...

I am also working on a Smart Board fraction number line game to use with my small group. It is self checking and I am having lots of fun creating smart files!

5. My husband and I are "trying" to follow Dave Ramsey's financial teachings (does that make it sound like a cult?) So this means no more new cars. Along with no new cars, means having to fix older cars as things go wrong. Something I have never had to do before as I have always leased or gotten bored with cars before they broke :) This week though, I took my car to the shop for what I new was a transmission problem. Yup, I needed a whole new transmission. Awesome.

What did you do this week? I'd love to hear or read about it!

Currently March

Hi friends! I can't believe it is March and Spring Break is next week... yikes! Not ready for state testing yet!!

My playlist is ridiculous, country, pop, explicit rap, classical.... I LOVE music!

I had invited all the grandparents to Disney when we go in June but my husband's side wasn't interested and my parents were planning a cruise. I booked our trip and then we got a Valentine card that read, "See you in Disney" my parents surprised us by booking their trip!! Yeah, love that they are coming and I am excited because this means hubs and I can go have some grown-up fun too!!

Our benchmarks were crazy hard. As in, 20% of my class passed hard..... sure hope that is not how the STAAR test is going to go.  The whole districts had scores like that, but still, I have been in tears a lot this week :(

 I have been talking about joining WW for 2 weeks, I need to do it. I started walking after school this week with a teacher friend and I am trying to eat better too!

My shoes hurt my feet and I do not need an excuse to not exercise, KWIM?

I love scategories but the letter H is hard to use!! So, I like that everyone is in good health currently, I love my husband (most of the time) and I hate homework. I hate listening to the excuses parents and kids give and hate all the extra "paperwork" it causes. I also hate the "homework" I have to do like grading stacks of papers and lesson planning.

Head on over to Farley's to link up

Technology Tip: Smart Board hyperlinks for station rotation

Hi friends! It feels like forever since I've posted.. I have lots of ideas but no time. Boo. 

So I have been seeing lots of blog posts (like this one)  about putting transition music into a smart file so you can easily access it throughout the day and I couldn't believe I had never thought of that before. I have been using smart files to hyperlink websites for the last 2 years but it never occurred to me to use it for music. Duh. However, this got me thinking that maybe some of you hadn't thought about this little trick I'm going to show you below!

During our Daily 5 rotation and our math rotation, I often allow students to use the Smart Board for either word work or math games. It was a pain to keep explaining which website to go to and even when I bookmarked them, kids seemed to need my help a lot. To solve that problem I started creating a menu in notebook and just added links. Now the students can easily see which websites or specific games they are allowed to choose from and I know they won't be wasting their time or getting into trouble trying to navigate the internet. They simply click and start playing! An added bonus is that I can save these files so next year I don't have to try and remember which games I like for each skill! I even upload the files to my teacher website so kids can play from home as long as their parents have downloaded the notebook software. 

Here is the one I have been using to review money 

* side note * my sweeties this year are having the hardest time correctly counting a group of coins... this has never been an issue before... scary! So we keep practicing..... sigh.

Click here to get this notebook file from Google Drive

I also differentiate by adding a colored box around the games. Students know which color they should choose. I like to give at least 2 choices so there is buy in. Buy in = on task kids! 

The background paper is from My Cute Graphics and the font is from Hello Literacy!

If you liked this idea or you do something similar, I would love to hear from you! I am linking up with Fern Smith's technology tips. Come see some more tips by clicking on her button below!

My Shopping Spree!

Linking up with Blog Hoppin' to show what I bought yesterday! I have a ton more on my wish list and I bought some other clip art on Etsy!! Here are the goods....

1. Common Core: There's Nothing Alien About Multiplication by Math Coach's Corner

2. Fourth Set of Fry Phrases from Christina Bainbridge

3. Editable Calendar Math for Upper Grades  from Teaching in Room 6

4. Sight Word Uno from Ms. Jessica

5. Comprehension Fans from Runde's Room

6. 100th Day for Big Kids From Ashleigh

7. Colorful Tally Marks from The Hazel Owl

8. Colorful Clothes Pins from Graphics From The Pond

9. Citrus Fraction Circles from Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs

10. Talking the Talk : Showing Point of View from One Extra Degree (not pictured)

I had so much fun shopping and I love to see what ever one else bought (so I can add more stuff to my cart! Head on over to Blog Hoppin' to link up or leave a comment below!!

Currently and a Sale

Linking up with Farley again for this month's Currently (I think I am number 98,365) Ha!

My husband is a high school basketball coach and if there is basketball on, we are watching it, especially this time of year!

I am all ready to go shopping at TpT today! I have a HUGE wish list so we'll see what happens! My store will be an extra 20% off too. Don't forget to get your additional 10% off by using the code SUPER.

My son has had strep 3 times since Christmas Eve and this past week he had strep and flu.. Yesterday, my daughter complained of a sore throat and yep, you guessed it.... STREP!  

I have 6, yes 6, almost finished products I am excited about. But life keeps getting in the way!

I have taken so many pictures and have started so many blog posts but for one reason or another I am not getting them published. I need to stop procrastinating and just do it! 

Pet Peeves. 

1. I cannot stand self loathing. It is ugly in adults and ugly in kids. I am all about helping kids develop a healthy self esteem and I offer a ton of praise but I can't stand the, "I am no good at anything, nobody likes me...." Is that mean?

2. Tapping. Need I say more? Tapping pencils on desks, tapping clipboards while working around the room, tapping anything drives.me.bonkers!

3. I am having a very difficult year and I have a group of kids who insist on correcting each others behaviors even though they were just doing the same thing. Grrrr. This is an area we continue to set goals for and continue to try to fix. Any ideas???

How About Five for Saturday??

I am linking up again with Doodle Bugs for Five for Friday (a day late!) I had all intentions of linking up last night but my little guy had other plans... more on that below!

1. We changed the way we are "doing" spelling this week. We (my team) really want to switch to a a system like the one Beth Newingham talks about here but were feeling too overwhelmed to switch up everything we were doing in the middle of the year. Our compromise? Send home 15 words within a pattern and study the patten all week during word work time. Then, on Friday, give an additional 5 words on the test that fit the pattern to assess if kids are really learning the pattern or just memorizing the words. Next fall we will dive in with the new system! I created a Smart Board file for us to use in class this week and the kids LOVED doing all the activities. More on that below.

2.  We had Keith Graves come visit our school this week. He is an author/illustrator and his books are really funny. He read Chicken Big and Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted To Dance to us and the kids loved them. He spoke a lot about using details in the illustrations to tell the story. Great lesson for beginner writers to encourage more details in their pictures. 

My husband with a former player, Jimmy Buttler (now a Chicago Bulls player)

3. My husband became a head basketball coach this year after being the head assistant for the last 8 years. He was having a rough start to the season, but understood he was getting the team to buy into his system and way of doing things. On Tuesday he had a BIG win against a team that was undefeated in the district at their place. Needless to say, the kids were pumped and the school was excited for them. Lots of fans turned out for the home game last night which they also won, beating their rival, a team they hadn't beat in quite some time! Wish I could have been there to see it, read #5!

4. Extra Recess! My class earned enough compliments to earn extra recess on Friday. I had lots of fun watching them play together as a class without the other 100 third graders being out there at the same time! One of my friends made me giggle. He yelled, "Hey, that was pass inter-furnace!" to another friend who had blocked the pass... um, football vocabulary mini lesson anyone?? (Boo, forgot my camera at school so there is no picture of this one!)

not looking too sick here! 

5. When I went to pick up my little man last night from school, they told me he had not been acting himself and had a yucky looking throat. I called the doctor who said we could come in at 8:10 (kids are normally in bed by 8:15) So, exhausted as I was, we went to the doctor and I am glad we did. He has strep, again. This is his 4th time in 2 months. Planning on calling an ENT on Monday :( 

Here is a preview of some of the activities my kids worked on this week during word work time

This is a smart board file and it was a great to use during daily 5 - I plan to make another one for this week's pattern. We did a think, pair, share together to introduce the pattern and then the word sort as a whole class. All the other activities were completed independently during their rotation. The kids really enjoyed using the smart board for word work! My team loved the poems... a great way to "triple dip" fluency, poetry and word work all in one activity! If you would like a copy, please leave a comment with your email below. I will choose 1 comment randomly and send it your way. If you just can't wait, click here to get in my TpT store!

Head on over to Doodle Bugs to see what everyone else has been up to :) Happy Weekend!!