500 Followers Giveaway Day 1

Oh my goodness! I can't believe I have reached over 500 followers. And even more than that I can't believe that I have so many bloggy friends who are willing to help me out with this giveaway. So many in fact that I have split the giveaway up into 3 days. 

 Here's what you can win:

• Any 2 items from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. You can check it out on the right by clicking the button.
• Any item from Penny at Superlative Science's TPT store

• First Grade Sight Word pack from Danielle at Kroger's Kindergarten. You can check out the pack here.

• First Grade Dolch Word Worksheets from April Wolfe at Wolfilicious. You can check the pack out here.

• Any item from Vickie Plant at Mrs. Plant's Press TPT store

• Sub Tub from Kindergarten Lifestyle

•  Common Core Math Journals for K-1 from Maggie's Kinder Korner

 This giveaway will last until Monday October 8th. Be sure to check back tomorrow for another great giveaway.
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Long Time No See

So I finally finished up jury duty on Friday at about 5:30 pm. I've never been so glad to see a weekend come in my life. I knew I was going to be out on Wednesday and I guess in the back of my head I knew there was a possibility I'd be out on Thursday. But I didn't really believe it. I didn't think I would get picked for this jury for a variety of reasons. One being I just didn't think it would happen. The other reasons having to do with the fact that the incident that the case was about happened in my small town in the county and I personally know one of the police officers that was a witness in the case. Like he's our resource officer at school and I've worked with him for going on 6 years now. I told all these things to the lawyers. I even told the defense attorney I trusted the police officer to take care of me and my students and was still placed on this jury. So I missed Thursday too. This case was so slow. I don't know if all cases are like this because my only experience with legal proceedings is all the crime shows I watch on tv and they are all wrapped up in an hour. So by Thursday afternoon it looked like I was going to miss Friday too. I was so upset. We were going on a hayride on our first field trip of the year and I really didn't want to miss it. But too bad for me, I had to miss it. I've heard through my assistant and other teachers that my kids were really good the three days I was out but they missed me a lot. Well Friday afternoon, I got an email from one of my sweet girls' dad asking if I was ok because she missed me so much. I informed them I missed her too and would be back at school on Monday. I had the possibility of being out 3 more days this coming week with jury duty but the clerk said she would excuse me since I had already served on a jury and my kiddos were getting behind.
Now I'm really behind on school work, blogging and creating. I am sitting at our local library now blogging and trying to figure out what I need to do today. My husband is still working on getting us internet at the house at least he better be. Later today we're suppose to have an avengers movie marathon with some friends. We're watching Captain America, Thor and the Avengers. I think they watched Ironman 1 and 2 last night, but we have date night on Fridays. I plan to take my work with me. I think it might embarrass my husband a little that I'm taking my laptop to work on things and he had to ask our friend if he had wireless. But oh well. He's getting use to it.
Anyway, on to something of some kind of usefulness. I've been wanting to link up with the Halloween Picture book party all week. So today is the day.

I love fall. I'm so excited that the leaves are starting to change and that there is a little chill in the air in the mornings and evenings. I've always loved Halloween as well. Up until last year, my school always had a big celebration for Halloween. The kids would wear their costumes and we'd parade through part of downtown Gatlinburg. I'm not exactly sure what changed as to why we don't do this anymore but we don't. It's pretty sad and a lot of the people who work in our downtown are sad about it too. But we still have some Halloween fun at school. Here are some of my favorite books to read:

This is my all time favorite book to read at Halloween. The kids love it and it teaches a great lesson on being different.

This book has great photographs. My kids love seeing the life cycle of a pumpkin through the real pictures. We're huge fans of nonfiction in my room this year. I think this is going to be a class favorite.

We read this one last year and wrote "reports" on bats. It's good one when you can't really celebrate Halloween but want to get in the spirit.
The last book I want to share I can't find a picture of. It is one of my books from when I was a kid so I guess Amazon doesn't have a picture of it. It's Halloween by Jack Prelutsky has great poems that are funny and spooky. It's one of my favorites.
Be sure to check out what other people are reading for Halloween by going to First Grade Found Me and joining the party.


There's a chance I'm going to post again later today about the First Grade Common Core workbook. I can't really decide yet. But I know I'll be back on Monday with a big giveaway to celebrate 500 followers. I've gotten some great things from some fantastic bloggers.

Jury duty

I'm sitting in a court room waiting to see if my name is called for jury duty. I'm hoping and praying that my name is not called so I can get back to my class. To pass time I'm attempting to blog on my phone. I can't seem to keep up with everything including blogging lately. I really need to get Internet back at my house. My husband is suppose to be working o.n it.
I've been wanting to blog about things that are working in my class and things that aren't. This is a good time as any.
What is working:
1. Read to self and read to someone is going great. I think my kids are getting better at reading everyday as we practice. I'm probably doing more of a reader's workshop than daily 5. I am loving Kim Adsit's packets on TPT for readers workshop and the things I've learned from Growing Readers.
2. Math work stations are slowly starting to come together. Yesterday it gave me a chance to work with a couple of kids that needed some more practice with what we had been working on.
3. Journal writing is going pretty well in my class. We write every morning as their morning work. I love not having to copy work for them everyday and that they are working on skills they need to work on.
Things that are not working:
1. Writing instruction - I feel like this is an area that I'm not very strong in. I just don't feel like I'm ver good at teaching writing. I am thinking of investing in deedee wills and Deanna jump's writing units. Anyone have any suggestions?
2. Incorporating the whole daily 5. Ihad one week where we got to work on words but this past 2 weeks we haven't ha time. Time management is one of the things not working.
3. Blogging. I haven't had time to blog like I would like. I don't know how to find time for everything. I don't know how moms do it all.
I ended up getting picked to serve o. N the jury so I'm finishing this post up while on a break.
What are things that are working and not working in your class?

Fall sale!

This post is going to be short since I'm blogging from my phone. I'm not really crazy about blogging from my phone. There has to be a better app for it then just the blogger app.
Anyway, just wanted to let you know I'm throwing a sale at my Tpt store. You can get 20% off on all my store items through the 25th. I'm super excited about the start of fall today so let's celebrate! Plus i'm hoping to meet my goal for my Tpt sales this quarter. I'm hoping to sell 50 items this quarter. I'm about 14 items away.
My second exciting news is that I just reached 500 followers and I'm working on a great giveaway for you! So be sure to check back next week!

Tell Me Something Good

I saw this linky party over at Rowdy in First Grade last week and wanted to link up. But after my afternoon yesterday, I decided I needed it. My doctor's appointment didn't go so well about my knee. I have a torn ACL and a torn meniscus, no cartilage left in my knee which is causing arthritis. The short term is actually not that bad. They are just wanting to repair my meniscus which is a minimally invasive surgery. But the long term is not so hot. I'm looking at dealing with knee problems for the rest of my life and no more running for me.
On top of not a great diagnosis, the doctor was kind of rude and and he and Chris kind of had a little argument. So I think we'll be getting a second opinion sometime soon. With all that said, I need to focus on the positive.
Something good at school:
My kids are sounding out or stretching out words like crazy. Some of them it is like things are finally clicking. They are doing a great job building stamina with daily 5. Couldn't be happier with how they are doing.
Something good at home:
I have the best husband. I know I know. I've said it every time I have had the chance. But he really is. He was right with me at the doctor yesterday which I needed. We waited for like 2 hours and he was supportive the whole time. Plus he took me to eat dinner last night because I needed some cheering up. He came up with some alternate goals for me since I can longer have the goal of running a half marathon.
Anyway, I needed to focus on the positive today. Check out Rowdy in First Grade for other positive posts.

Manic Monday Freebie

This is going to be a quick post but I had to share a couple of things. First I'm super excited because I got my materials from my donor's choose project today. I had asked for some non fiction books that were on my students' level.

I can't wait to get them organized and put out for my students to use. My kids love non fiction books and with the adoption of the common core there is push for using more nonfiction books. I'm pretty excited to use these books with my kids.
The second thing I wanted to share is a freebie. I'm getting ready to start with some reading groups this week. We've built up our stamina with read to self and we've been working on stamina in the other areas. I read several posts this summer from other bloggers about using a warm up for reading groups. I have some fry phrases to use but I wanted something a little easier for some of kiddos. I made some sheets that have the phonics patterns we've worked on or are coming up in the unit. (If you use treasures reading series this would be perfect.) The last page is all the popcorn words we've worked on for the unit. I'm hoping that if we practice these, they will become more fluent with these words. Anyway, I wanted to share these with you. If you can use them, please leave me some comment love. I'm really trying to get better about blogging more often. I have my knee appointment today and will find out what my treatment options are. I'm thinking surgery is in my future. The x-ray tech at my doctor's office goes to my church. She told me that my x-rays were crazy. Eeek!
Here's the freebie:

I have linked up with classroom freebies manic Mondays.
Be sure to check out other freebies there!

Math Workstations

So I spent some time this afternoon getting my math workstations set up so we're ready to go on Monday. I'm pretty excited to get this started. I've pre taught almost everything I want them to do. There will be a couple of things I need to go over with them and we need to discuss management. But I think this is going to be great. Here's my list of math workstations I have set up:
1. computer
2. Ipod
3. games
4. Graphing
5. Games
6. Ipod
7. Problem Solving
8. Exploration
I don't have a lot of wall space or board space to display a management board so I plan to use my promethean board to keep track of who goes where. Here's a picture of what that looks like:

I only plan to have them go to one workstation a day for right now. I can move the black rectangles with their names on them each day to show what station they go to.

Here are the ipods. They have a couple of different math games. There is Bugs and Buttons which is good, a math bingo and rocket math. They can choose to play one of those games.

This is the graphing center right now. This activity came straight from Debbie Diller's book. It is called grab and graph objects. I have put a variety of halloween erasers in the bag. They take a handful out and graph them. Then they have some math talk cards to answer questions about the graph that they made.

This is how I have my games stored. There is a different game for each drawer. These are all games that we have played in class already. There will be 2 sets of partners at this station so there are mulitple copies of the games in each drawer. This is the center with the most choice right now.

 This is the problem solving. For right now, students are working on finding ways to make 10. I have a sheet for them to record their findings and 10 counters. I also think I might add some unifix cubes to give them something else to work with.

 This is exploration. They  have a geoboard each and in the purple folder there are different designs for them to make on the geoboard.
I didn't take a picture of the computer because I didn't' see the point. But I'm going to have them play math games at abcya.com for right now. Eventually I'll add some activities from our math series and other things.
I have partnered the children up with someone who has similar math abilities. I want to be able to pull kids to work on things with them so I thought that would work best. My long term goals with math work stations is to be able to differentiate more and to be able to give them more choice. But I think this will be a good place to start.
Do you use math workstations in you class? How is it going? How do you have it organized?
I'm pretty excited I blogged two days in a row. Right now I guess my goal is to blog at least twice a week. I will hopefully get back up to 4 times a week soon. But my life is too crazy and I no longer have internet at home. Anyway, hope you had a marvelous Friday. I'm so glad it's the weekend. We had early dismissal today due to a rod run in town and the amount of traffic that causes. So I'm all ready for the next week at 4 pm in the afternoon instead of after 5.