Back to School Boost

Well it has been a long time since our last posting. Sydney and I had a YOLO ( You Only Live Once) trip this summer. We spent six consecutive weeks traveling from the Florida Panhandle to Canada and back. We had a fabulous time! We spent a few days visiting family in Atlanta then went to Asheville, North Carolina and loved the area as well as touring the famous Biltmore House. From there we hit the historic triangle of Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown and just ate up the history of the area. Our next stop was several days in Washington DC, did all the normal tourist things in our Nation's Capitol and then off to New York  City, where we had a white knuckle adventure arriving in the city at 5:00 in the afternoon on a Friday, no less! Once the car was parked safely in the hotel garage it did not emerge again until we were ready to leave. Boston was the next stop. My son is going to school in Boston so we had an extended time within that wonderful city, again the history is all around you and it is impossible not to get soaked up in it. From there it was Niagara Falls for a few days. Oh my goodness is all I can say, the amount of water cascading down the falls is unbelievable. If you go be sure and stay on the Canadian side. The view is much better as well as the surrounding area. It was off to Pittsburgh, PA for a few days with some extended family. It was so wonderful to catch up and have Sydney see where I grew up. Gettysburg was our next stop. We stayed in this great hotel that had once been a school. After having been in Yorktown which dealt with more specifically the Revolutionary War and then going to Gettysburg, which of course was the Civil War, how interesting it was for us to see how differently the battles were fought. By this time we were winding down our trip and heading back home. We stopped in Virginia Beach and got a shot of King Neptune on the boardwalk, Wilmington, North Carolina  and walked along the River Walk at night and of course if you are heading south, Charleston, South Carolina is a must. Before heading back to the Panhandle we hit Atlanta again to see my 91 year old mother!

It was a absolutely fabulous trip, to be able to spend so much time with my daughter and to end the trip still enjoying each other, what a blessing!

So now it's back to school time! We are joining in with TPT and adding 10% off our products as well on Wednesday, August 20, so Happy Shopping!


Susanne

Do you really know your Social Studies and Science Standards?

If you are a teacher in Florida then you must ask yourself this question: Do you truly know what the Science and Social Studies Standards are for your grade level? We thought that we did until a grade level planning session sparked a whole new conversation and realization. We discovered that as we worked to combine our Science and Social Studies Standards with the ELA Common Core Standards that there was a great deal of crossing over between grade levels. In other words, as we worked to stretch out our units and meet the needs of our students we ended up not only teaching our standards but those of other grade levels as well. After realizing this blunder we were asked by our school to create a outline of the Social and Science Standards for our state, in a comparison like format for kindergarten through fifth grade, and then present it to our school faculty. This process was very eye opening for everyone involved and we felt that we needed to share this document with all of the Florida Elementary Educators. It is for sure a tool that we wished we had either been given or thought to create sooner. So if you would like a copy then grab ours (its free!) from our TPT Store and see for yourself if you might have been crossing over into other grade level standards too! 

Spring is here?

Well it appears that we've gone from very cold days to allergy filled pollen days. What happened to slowly changing temperatures and welcoming Spring. In the  Florida panhandle as well as some other Southern states, we have an abundance of pine trees, which means there is yellow pine pollen everywhere.  The unfortunate part of Spring for me is that I must be allergic to every other tree that is blooming. With all that being said, we are finishing up our Spring Break and my third graders will be starting a new unit on Insects, Butterflies to be exact.

Before Spring Break I ordered larva from Nature-gifts. com. They have a great assortment of Painted Lady larva as well as Monarch larva. So I hope when I return to school next week my caterpillar larva will arrive as well. I order one caterpillar for each student so they can monitor it's growth and development. Along with this I do a novel study in my small group reading. The one that best goes with insects / non-fiction/fiction text is the Magic School Bus Butterfly Battle. I have used this for a couple of years and have found that the non-fiction portion of the book is great for reinforcing all those non-fiction text features, and the fiction part of the book is an easy enough read even for my struggling readers. I have created a unit that reinforces the comprehension portion of the story as well as going over Science related aspects of insects. Take a look as see what you think.

Butterfly Battle

Snow Days in Florida?

I know most of the country has been facing severe weather situations, but when the Florida Panhandle gets to 28 degrees, everything shuts down. Our district closed for three days last week due to the frigid temperatures. Now I know frigid is all relative, but you have to understand, this is Florida. We do hurricanes, we don't do ice and snow! We don't have the necessary equipment in place to de-ice bridges, so with all that being said, we had three "snow days" and I was able to get a unit completed that I had been working on for some time.

We all know that repetition is the key in getting some of the skills our students learn firmly planted in their brains. I created a pre -FCAT ( Florida's state test)  review for my third graders that is a repetitive worksheet based on the major math concepts. I had already taught multiplication, division, place value, fractions, and touched bases thus far with geometry, measurement and time. What I came up with is just that, a review sheet that I give out weekly to keep all those skills we had already learned and ones that I would be covering more extensively in the next month or so on the forefront of their brains. Check it out!

Weekly Math Review

Let The Olympic Games Begin!

I love the Olympics! To be completely honest it is the only time I watch sports. I have quite a few students this year that are very eager to start reading chapter books, especially the Magic Tree House series. For a first grade student the biggest challenge after word recognition is reading comprehension and stamina. I decided to create a unit to use as an enrichment piece for small group instruction, that would include the current events that are going on in the world. The unit was designed to accompany the Magic Tree House Book #16, Hour of the Olympics. It includes comprehension questions for each of the ten chapters, character maps, a character map writing activity, a map skills activity, four non-fiction close reads that tie in social studies elements, a compare and contrast activity, two comprehension tests with keys, an olympic sports log, a narrative writing prompt and an opinion writing prompt, an olympic craft and a gold medal graphing activity. This unit was also created with both the Summer and Winter games in mind, so that it could be a resource for either one. This is a great way to include current events and non-fiction into a whole group read aloud or small group instruction. This could also be used for literature circles. Check out some of the unit pictures below and let the games begin!

Let's Start the Year with a Freebie!

Happy New Year! As part of my first grade morning work I do what I like to call a word of the day. This is a really great way to introduce and reinforce vocabulary. I like to pick words that correlate with what I am teaching for my Common Core ELA block. These usually have a Science or Social Studies theme since everything is now integrated. At the beginning of the year the students are required to trace the word, write it three times, fill in a sentence using the word, unscramble the letters and paste them in the correct order, and then use the word in their own sentence. After I have taught nouns, verbs and adjectives I have my students start to circle these parts of speech in their sentence using certain colors (red for nouns, blue for verbs and green for adjectives). This has really helped my students with their writing while at the same time reinforcing these grammar components. When we return this January, I have updated the activities to make them more challenging. They will only need to write the word twice, fill in the sentence using the word, and then instead of unscrambling the letters they will need to write two sentences (one asking and one telling) using the word and identify the noun, verb and adjective in each sentence. If you would like to try out a few of these worksheets with your students be sure to check out my New Years Word of the Day Freebie as well as my other Word of the Day Units in our TPT store!