I Hit 50 TPT Sales!

Hello Everyone! It has been a long time since I have blogged, and unfortunately, I don't have time for a full blog post right now. Life has been crazy busy, and I am about to head out to my school's Fall Fair. But I wanted to let all of you know that I finally hit 50 sales in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store, yay! This is an exciting event for me, and because I want to celebrate every event in this process of getting started with TPT, I am throwing a 20% off sale through November 19th. Please come and check out my store.

Thanks to everyone who has made purchases so far, I couldn't do this without you!

Wonka Mania

Hello teachers! I am now writing my second blog post of the day because I would love to share with you a very exciting event that we had on Friday. It was called "Wonka Mania". As a second grade team, we started reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to our students way back in the beginning of October. During the time that we were reading, our students had to earn five golden tickets for good behavior, which would mean that they had earned their "Wonka Mania" party! 

We had a whole day devoted to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! The morning started off very exciting for the students because this is what they saw when they came to school:

Yes, that is the second grade team at my school! I am third from the left, with the darker green wig on. You wouldn't believe how excited the kids got when they saw their teachers dressed like oompa loompas! 

The morning consisted of inventing their own candy, and then writing about it. Some of these pages were freebies from Third Grade Galore's TPT website, which you can find here! I also created a few more pages, including a graphic organizer and a writing pages to go along with the candy inventing. You wouldn't believe how creative my kids were!

For math, did a lot of review with candy. We had just learned how to count out change earlier in the week, so the students made a flip book to review with candy prices. We also voted on our favorite type of candy, and completed a tally chart and bar graph. I had made a chocolate bar fractions page, but we ran out of time, and did not get to it. One of my goals for this week is to turn these activities into a package for my TPT store. I will let you all know once that is up!

When we came back from lunch, we ended the day with our party. I had a few parent volunteers come in and help me set up our chocolate fountain, along with items to dip in it. We watched the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and we stopped it quite a few times throughout to fill out a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the book with the movie. We had a blast!

Events like these are a little extra work, but students will remember them for years to come. Happy teaching!

Writing: How to Carve a Pumpkin

Hey everyone! It has been way too long since my last blog post. For the past two weeks, I have been giving assessments, and then grading those assessments. Now, I actually have this whole week off for Fall Break, so I get time to blog, work on report cards, and create some more Teachers Pay Teachers products. These last few weeks have had a lot of really fun events! For now, I wanted to share the pumpkin carving writing that we did last week. My teammate found the activity, and honestly I am not sure where she got it. I think that it may have been a freebie. If anyone knows, let me know because I would love to give credit to whomever created this.

First, I had the students write their own paper on how to carve a pumpkin. We have been learning about time and order words, so this was a great activity to review. Once they were finished, I picked a few of their papers, and had them read me the directions. I tried to follow their directions, but they quickly realized that they hadn't been specific enough when I tried to carve the eyes with my finger, or to scoop out the insides without cutting off the top. We decided that we needed to try again, one step at a time.

As we discussed the steps needed to carve a pumpkin, I actually carved the pumpkin in front of them. There were a few students who had never seen a pumpkin carved before, so it was a great experience for them.

A word of caution: make sure that you have a good quality pumpkin carving knife that is long enough. Mine broke in front of my students, and then I heard one child say, "Mrs. Berga, are you bleeding?" Yep, I sure was. I definitely sliced my finger. Lessons never go exactly as you planned, but after putting on a band aid, we were able to finish carving the pumpkin with a different knife.

 We started our writing together, but had to finish on another day because we ran out of time. If you plan to do a project like this, I would plan it out over two days. I think that the final product turned out adorable, and the students now have a better grasp on "how to" write a "how to" paper.

 One last random thing: my students found a grasshopper outside of our classroom. Since we study insects at the end of the year, I have a little cage that we use for praying mantises. I took the cage outside and caught the grasshopper. The students quickly named him "Alex" (I don't know why), and they had so much fun taking care of him and studying him over the course of the week. We let him go on Friday. Don't you love the random unplanned parts of teaching?

Happy teaching!

Owl Moon, Fall Leaves, and Pumpkin Writing

Hello teachers and blog followers! Wow, last week flew by so quickly, and I was definitely not planning on posting this so late. This will need to be quick, because I need to get some rest before the week begins tomorrow morning. 

This week, we had a lot of fun with some more fall activities. Every year, I love reading Owl Moon to the kids. I know that it is kind of a winter book, but I love how the owls look in my classroom for fall. Anyway, they have a version on YouTube, which is great because it really engages the students, and you don't even have to have the book. After they "watched" the book, we transitioned into a directed draw activity. First we used pencil, and then we traced with crayons. Students used their watercolors for the brown owl, and then I mixed some blue tempura paint with water for the background. I think they turned out really cute!

I really like my classroom to be decorated for each season, so we made fall leaves this week. I cut up a bunch of tissue paper, and my students stuck it onto a leaf made of brown construction paper. My room feels like a fall forest!

This week, we started learning about the writing process. By Friday, my students were finally working on their rough drafts. Sometimes they got restless and just want to skip all of the steps, but I reminded them how important it is to organize all of their thoughts and ideas beforehand.

Finally, just wanted to post some pics from this weekend. It is nice to have a restful weekend after going so hard during the week. On Saturday, my husband Jarek and I got to go to Julian, a cute little town about an hour east of San Diego. We bought freshly picked apples and ate delicious apple pie. Today, we went to a festival in Little Italy, a section of San Diego. These chalk artists were incredibly talented!

Hope you all have a great start to your week!

Five For Friday- Spiders, Cabbage Soup, and San Diego

Hey everyone, I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. October is here, and assessments are coming up in a few weeks. I am excited to see the progress that my students have made so far this year!

Now, on to my Five for Friday...

                                                 

I am soooo bummed that I don't have a picture for this one, but I completely forgot to take one. We started reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this week. To celebrate beginning this book, we made cabbage soup together as a class. It was really easy. One head of cabbage, four potatoes cut and peeled, one half of an onion chopped, six chicken bouillon cubes, and 10 cups of water in a slow cooker. We made it in the morning, and by the afternoon, it was ready to go. I had maybe two students who didn't like it. Everyone else LOVED it. They were asking for seconds and commenting about how it was the best soup they ever had. I think that they just really like cooking at school.

                                                  

This week we made Spider Poems, which were made by Amy Lemons. They are free, and you can check them out at her store here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spider-Craft-and-Poem-350370. They turned out soooo cute! We began the lesson by brainstorming verbs and adjectives that could be used with spiders.

Then the students created their own little sandwich poems with the adjectives and verbs that we had brainstormed.

                                                   

With the common core standards, there is a greater need to emphasize academic vocabulary. I decided that it was especially necessary for me to display academic vocabulary because over half of my class consists of ELs. I made this math and science vocabulary board. We have been discussing different types of addition and subtraction word problems in math, and we have been learning about balance in science.

                                                  

I spent today in the sun at the beach. I am so blessed to live in San Diego, and I couldn't believe what a beautiful day it was today. I was watching my husband and my friends play beach volleyball. I tried it out for a few minutes, but let's just say that volleyball isn't one of my strengths.

We played "Base Tents" Scoot by Hope King. I love giving students a chance to move around the room while they are practicing a skill that they need to know. This was their first scoot activity of the year, and I think it is safe to say that they loved it.

Well, I hope that all of you are having a restful weekend, you deserve it! Happy teaching!

Welcome Fall!

Wow, it has been a while! September has been a busy month, and now that it is almost over, I feel like I have time to breath! I don't know about you, but I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by! We will be starting first quarter assessments in just a few weeks.

I am sitting on my couch, sipping hot cocoa, and thinking about how excited I am to start baking things with pumpkin in them. I love fall! I enjoy the leaves changing color (which only happens a little bit in San Diego), the delicious food, and the weather cooling down enough for me to wear my boots.

I decided to create this Fall Themed ABC Order Scoot to welcome in this beautiful season! I have been working on ABC order a lot with my students over the last few weeks so that soon we can move into dictionary skills and guide words. Scoot activities are a great way to get students learning and out of their seats. I am really excited about this; it turned out super cute! You could also use it as a literacy center or workstation. Click on the picture to check it out at my TPT store:

I have had to be very flexible with my classroom management this year, and after the first system didn't work, I decided to try out Class Dojo. I HIGHLY recommend it. It is free, and they even have an app for iphones. I can award students positive and negative points for specific behaviors from my phone, and class dojo keeps track of it all. It even gives me graphs of student progress. One of the things that I love most is that when parents sign up for it, it automatically sends them a progress report every Friday. No more filling out paperwork to send home every Friday! Parents can also download the app and have it send them updates throughout the day. I have only used this program for a week, but I already had a parent congratulate her son on having a better afternoon without me even having to tell her. Yay! Click on the picture if you would like to take a look at the website.

Well, that is it for tonight. Hopefully it will not be so long before I am able to blog again. Happy October!

Five For Friday

                  

Today I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching with my "Five for Friday". Here are five random things that I have done this week.

1. My wonderful husband took me out over the weekend to a beautiful restaurant in San Diego called C-Level. We got to watch a seal swim and play in the bay.

2. Back to School Night!

Back to School night was a success. I was met some of the parents for the first time, I was able to get parents to sign up for volunteering, and I presented our classroom procedures and routines. Here is a picture of my PowerPoint presentation:

This next pic is what I had laid out on the desks for the parents. I can't figure out where I got the "Thank you for popping in" signs, but they were a freebie from Teachers Pay Teachers, and I love them!

3. We did an adorable art project. I get to teach an art lesson to my class every other week. This week, we learned about lines. After practicing various types of lines on our whiteboards, we set to making our own line monsters.

This next one is my line monster. I am pretty proud of it :)

4. We practiced naming numbers on our whiteboards. I LOVE our math curriculum. It is called Everyday Mathematics, and it is so amazing that I very seldom need to add to it on my own. Today we came up with other names for numbers. Students could use tally marks, base-10 blocks, money, addition problems, subtraction problems, etc. Here are a few examples

5. I have been doing a TON of work on the smart board. We use the Open Court curriculum for language arts, so my job is to make Smart Board activities to go along with our units. Hopefully once I am done, I will be able to start making more items for Teachers Pay Teachers.

Happy Friday!