Teach, Craft,.. and be SCARY!

WELCOME to the Halloween Bash Blog Hopper! I am so excited to be a part of it!

I have lots of offer in this blog post as well as a bunch of other bloggers do! Also, check out the giveaways too!!

Need something fun and hands on that fit in with the halloween theme? Well here is a fun creativity for students! They get to create their OWN monster and then write about them. It is so much fun to see these students use their imagination as they create their monster. What a perfect time to create monsters then around halloween!

 

You can find this product in my store HERE! But you can also enter the 2-5 giveaway below for a chance to win this along with many other amazing products! Make sure you enter and enter often!

Have you figured out what you are going to be for halloween yet? Do you dress up at school with your students? I always find it so much fun to do, at least at the primary ages. The kids get so excited to see the teacher in on the fun with them. My second grade team likes to try to do themed costumes! Last year we had to dress up and actually present in front of the school, so we dressed up as the wizard of oz, and of course I was Dorothy! It was a lot of fun!

Our team has changed a lot this year, and we don't have to present, so we decided to do something else! At the beginning of the year the students made super heroes for the hallway for SUPER IN SECOND! So I thought, why not be super heroes?!? The best part is.... super heroes in TUTUS! You have all seen the fun tutus on pinterest right? Well we bought our super hero shirts with the capes, went and bought tulle to match, are in the process of making super cute tutus, all we need is to get the leggings and BAM, second grade super hero teachers!

I am going to be Wonder Woman! I have already made my tutu, nice and fluffy and BIG! I am really excited to see what the kids think of it. I will definitely be back to post pictures once I get it all put together!

Now in honor of this great blog hop! I am offering a fun Halloween FREEBIE!!! Check out my TPT store HERE for this download!

If you like what you see there, make sure you rate it, pin it, and spread the word!

Now to continue the FUN!! Enter this awesome giveaway below!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now go and check out some other amazing bloggers! They have some great things to offer!

An InLinkz Link-up

More giveaways!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Illinois Reading Conference!

So, I have been VERY fortunate and my district sent me to the Illinois Reading Conference (IRC)!

It was a pretty awesome experience! To see so many big names in the world of literacy for teachers.. all in one spot, it was a blast!

I was able to compare Timothy Shanahan and Richard Allington on their views of reading in the classroom with student learning, as well as complex texts! It's interesting to see their points of view, as well as compare it to my setting and what we are doing at our school. Shanahan is completely against teaching children at their instructional level, that all students need to be taught at grade level and must be challenged. Allington things that students should receive instruction at their grade level by a very well trained teacher! Wouldn't I love to see these two in a room together and watch them go at it!

I was also able to see Linda Dorn and her views on Text complexity as well as Vocabulary!
Maria Walthers great such great advice and motivation for transforming literacy instruction for the common core! The examples and ideas she brought to the table were wonderful!

These were just a few among MANY!

However, I would have to say that one of my favorites was watching and meeting the author and illustrator Steven Kellogg! His presentation was AMAZING! To sit and watch him work through his story telling thoughts, plus illustrating it right before our eyes, it was magical and inspirational. The passion you could tell he had was great too! He really enjoys what he does. He even read student letters that were written to him, HILARIOUS! This really wrapped up the whole conference and made my week!

So in honor of him! I am sharing my Jimmy's Boa activity pack too!!!!

Come back soon because I have some wonderful events coming up! (cough cough, BLOG HOP! yay)

Come back and check this event out!!! See you soon!

Love me some Giveaways!

I have just recently started to get involved with giveaways and participating with other TPT stores! Honestly, I love this idea and I think it is so much fun! It is such a great way to spread the word and really network with others.

Today I am celebrating with Countless Smart Cookies for her Birthday celebration!

She has so many wonderful TPT sellers taking part! You should definitely check it our and enter!

I am of course part of the first and second grade bundle. It is winner's choice from my store PLUS a bunch of other TPT author's have contributed items as well!

Here is the Raffle Copter to enter!

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/25e3b6f36/" rel="nofollow">a Rafflecopter giveaway

Looking for other grades as well?! Here are more bundle giveaways!!

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/25e3b6f35/" rel="nofollow">a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/25e3b6f37/" rel="nofollow">a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

So many great offers here and I wish you all the best of luck!!!

Only a couple more days to go, so enter now!

I shall be returning soon with some more posts!! I am preparing to head down to Springfield Illinois for the Illinois Reading Conference! I'm excited to see what all it has to offer, and I will definitely fill you all in on the details!!

Ta ta for now! 

Working on Wednesday!

I am linking up with Middle School Math Moments to share what we are working on, on this Wednesday!

What am I NOT working on is the question! Currently in my personal life, I am trying to get things ready for my sister-in-laws baby shower on Sunday! My new little nephew will be here in early November, so this weekend we are celebrating with the shower. So trying to get the favors all set and finalize what I am doing for appetizers!

I am also procrastinating on writing my 6-8 page paper for my grad class! I just have no motivation to write this paper. I feel that we are currently doing a lot go repeating ourself in our current coursework, and I feel like this action plan I have to write, I have already written a variation of it twice, in my other classes! So hopefully at some point today I can get that started!

Finally, I am working on finishing up my smart board for our new ELA unit! We just started our new ELA unit with a them of WILD, WILD, WEST!

I think this unit is going to be a lot of fun, and is definitely different from anything I have done before.  Being able to incorporate informational articles, poems, and fictional stories, all with one main theme. I'm really excited that my district has started to implement this, and I am even more excited that I am on the committee that gets to write them! It is amazing how with the right timeline and methods and questioning, what you can guide and teach your students to do. I love to watch them light up as they make the connections as we move through the unit. Hopefully I can get the next couple weeks done in the smart board because next week, I am off to the IRC! (Illinois Reading Conference)

Happy middle of the week! Have a wonderful 2 more days of teaching!

Sunday Scoop!

Happy Sunday!

Today I am linking up with The Teaching Trio with this great Sunday Scoop!

Here is my Sunday Scoop! Enjoy:

3 Things I need to do:

1. We just started to implement Jolly Phonics in the second grade. It is completely new to us, and we have been given some professional development on it. However, as any teacher knows, it can be overwhelming sometimes to organize and start to teach something brand new in your classroom! The only bonus is that our students have been receiving this program since kindergarten. So I am just trying to organize my lesson plans that we created as a team, and am trying to create a visual smart board to help when teaching! Happy to say I am half way done, just need to finish up some loose ends!

2. This year, I am teaming up with one of the other second grade teachers and we are creating a second grade news cast!  Our students will be in charge of the filming and creating, and we will work with them to put together a final news cast to share with the rest of the school. The students will have the opportunity to interview other students or teachers in the school and come up with their own news segments within their media teams! We finally voted on the name of our news station! Now I just need to create a couple different logos to have the students vote on so we can keep this moving forward! I can't wait to see how cute these turn out to be!

3. I am currently in a cohort for my masters in Teacher Leadership! (This is the first step toward my type 75.) My current class has been put online, and sometimes it can be overwhelming to keep it organized! Every week we have a couple discussion questions due, as well as responses to other students. But then of course this coming week, I also have a paper due, and I am not really sure on what. So it is probably a good idea to organize what I need to get done this week for my class, to make sure it all gets done!

2 Things I hope to do:

1. GET ON TPT! I like to check out the forums and network with other TPT-ers! These last couple of weeks at school has been so busy with new curriculum, coaching basketball, going on a field trip, and just trying to get things done! So I really hope today I can sit down and see what other TPT-ers are doing and do some networking! It is so much fun and I wish I could do it more.

2. RELAX! Yesterday I was up and going all day running errands and getting things done. I got to spend some much needed time with my nieces too! However, it is always nice to have some down time to relax before starting another busy work week!

1 thing I am happy to do:

Write this Blog post! Like I said earlier, this school year has just been so busy so far this year. I always feel that once I get ahead, I find another way that I am falling behind! I have not been able to update this blog nearly as much as I would like. So I am very happy to make time to get this done and link up with other great bloggers!

I do hope I start to find more time to blog! I have some great activities planned for my classroom that I really want to share with all of you! So fingers crossed I start to get things done so I can share more with you all!

Check out all of the other great bloggers linking up with this! Have a great beginning of a new week!

RedditGift Goodies!

So today I want to share the program I was very fortunate to participate in! RedditGift is a website that holds many many gift exchanges throughout the year. It is really a fun way to share some cheer and get a surprise in return! In the beginning of August, they held a teacher event! Any teacher that wanted to join could share their story and hope to be matched with a donor!

I work for a fantastic district! However, we are not given an "allowance' or spending limit each year. Sometimes, things add up! So I gave it a try and entered the Reddits for the teacher gift exchange! Then, BAM, I was given a match, and then a found a box of goodies on my door step one day!

I really think it is a great event, and urge anyone willing to help teachers out to take a look, or any teachers looking for some help to take a look! Here is a picture of the goodies!

I urge you to check it out! Click here to Check It Out!

I also just want to give a huge thank you shout out to the person who made the donation! They were very generous and I can't express how grateful and appreciative I am! The little and simple things are what count the most!

Here is to another great week! Have fun everyone!

September Already?

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday weekend! So sad that it is considered the last official weekend of summer... even though here in Chicago the 80+ degree weather is telling us otherwise. But now it seems everyone is back in school and back to routine!

With that being said, as every school year begins, come an open house of some sort! So I am sharing with you today the All about me puzzle that I created for Open House! My open house was Thursday August 28th, and let me tell you, it was one heck of a day! I had about 70% of my class show up which isn't too bad! It is always fun to meet the parents and actually get to talk to them face to face rather then through notes or those sometimes stressful conferences. Plus it's a great way to get parents in to see where their children are spending most of the day and meet the person their spending most of the time with!

So of course you always have student work up, an all about me for the students of some sort. I know that in second grade, the students love to do ones where the parents have to guess which one is theres. they always find it so funny when they're parents try to figure it out. There are plenty of these out there, but I wanted something a little different so I am up with this all about me puzzle!

The students write on the puzzle pieces different facts that make them unique! We then take a picture and put it behind the puzzle pieces. The parent then have to "put the pieces together" meaning try to figure out which puzzle pieces add up to their student. The enjoyed it. My whole second grade team actually used this activity and it went really well. Here are some pictures from my teacher example!

You can get this in my store here!

All in all, as the year progresses and I get to know my students more and more, I am really excited for what this year has in store! I am lucky to have such a great group of kids!

Hope this sparks some ideas for your open house!

Enjoy the Short week! Be Back Soon!