Back to School TPT Sale- 20% Off!

Hey guys, its almost time for school to start again! I just wanted you all to know that I am joining up with the TPT Back to School Sale! All of my items are already on sale, and you can enter in the promo code shown above to get an additional 10% off the remaining price. This totals an amazing 28%! I have a few back to school products, some adorable pennant banners for kindergarten through grade five, and some fun literacy activities. Please stop by to check it out: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Engaging-Second-Grade. The sale only goes through Monday, so don't miss out on all of these savings!

This adorable sale banner deserves the following credits:

Kylie Healey Designs
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Kylie-Healey-Designs

Erin Palleschi at Once Upon a Classroom
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Erin-Palleschi

Kevin and Amanda
www.kevinandamanda.com

Five For Friday

                                     

Thanks to my last post, I received a comment from Kelly over at Sliding into Second Grade about this linky party. I still feel like I am just getting the hang of this blogging thing, and I am learning a ton through it. Anyways, I am excited to announce that this is my first linky ever (you gotta start somewhere!) 

This linky is one day late, but better late than never. I will now share five random things from my week:

#1 Celebrated three years with my husband

August 20th technically marks three years since we met and two years since we got engaged. We celebrated with a yummy dinner at Donovan's Steakhouse (my first time going!) Then we took a walk through the lovely little park where we got engaged.

#2 Spent some time with my doggy!

This is Radley. I adopted him from an animal shelter four years ago, and I love him! Isn't he so cute? I don't get to spend as much time with him during the school year, so I have been cuddling with him a lot!

#3 Starting to make a school bag

I have been falling in love with all of the different Vera Bradley bags, and decided to get one for school. When I showed my mom, she decided that we should make one instead. She is much more talented than I am at sewing, so I will mostly be there for support and pinning. This is a picture of the fabric; I will post a picture of the finished product once it is done.

#4 Met with my second grade team

Our second grade team has a few new members this year, and we met as a team for the first time this week. There are so many great ideas going around for how we can better our practice this year. One idea from our new team lead that I loved was a new behavior management system. It involves using a "Look Book" for positive reinforcement and a "Reminder Binder" if they need to get back on track. I will be letting you guys know how it works throughout the year. Click here to get more information.

#5 Baked some honey bran muffins 

I love baking, but I don't do it that often since it isn't that healthy for me. Lately though, I have been on a kick of making these honey bran muffins that do not involve any butter or oil. I use applesauce and bananas to keep them moist. They are so delicious! I just made some on Wednesday, and I am already out.... maybe I need to make more!

That is it for my first linky post ever! I start training on Monday, and I even get to partner with one of my teammates to do a training on using Teachers Pay Teachers and Blogs for great teaching ideas. I will let you know how that goes!

Classroom Tour

Training starts next week and I can't believe how quickly the summer has gone by! As much as I love summer and my time to relax, I always anticipate the start of school again. Last week, I posted some of the recent "remodels" that I did to my room. This week I thought that I would take you on a quick walk through a few other parts of my room.

I must state my disclaimer first by saying that I do not have desks set up yet, and not everything is perfectly where I would like it, but that will be taken care of next week during the afternoons.

This first picture was posted a few weeks ago, but I had to post it again, because it is one of my favorite things about my classroom. I used twine to string the pennants together, and then I hung them above my Smart Board. I am selling these pennants for kindergarten through fifth grade at my Teachers Pay Teachers store, and they are on sale through Saturday. You can buy them here.

This next picture is my reading corner. As you can see, I still have some organizing to do on top of the bookshelf, and there is a clock that needs to be hung on the wall once I replace the battery ;). I love this corner though because it is the perfect size for a couple of comfy beanbags. I also like how well organized my library is. Each basket is labeled with a few guided reading levels. Every book in my classroom is also labeled. Students are tested each quarter to see what level they are, and then I give them three levels that they are allowed to read from. This ensures that they are reading books that are slightly challenging, but not so far above them that they won't comprehend. The light blue bulletin board will be my "Awesome Author's" wall, but I can't hang up the folders until I get my class list.

I am laughing at this next picture; I should have taken the time to straighten out the names, although I will be making new names once I get my class list. This is my whiteboard. I have a Smart Board in my classroom, so I don't use my whiteboard very much. I have turned it into an organization area for my centers. I will have to do a whole other blog post later on how I do centers, because it is a bit complicated. I originally got the idea from Serenade to Second Grade. You can read Tasha's blog post here. I took her idea, and then changed it to fit the way I teach. Look for another post about this soon.

This is my corner. Now, if I am not careful, this corner can easily become messy and cluttered. I did my "summer cleaning", so I am hoping that I will be able to keep it a little neater this year. I love using a pocket chart for my schedule because it is so easy to change it around each morning. On my calendar board, I also keep track of table points with a mini whiteboard.

This last picture shows my classroom jobs. It is a little difficult to see, but I love these because I don't need an entire bulletin board for them. They are hanging with magnets on my metal cabinet. Every student has a job every week, and I can change their jobs easily because their numbers are stuck on with velcro. The students LOVE their jobs, and will remind me Monday morning if I forgot to switch them.

As I get my classroom back in order over the next few weeks, I will be posting more. Since school is starting soon, I thought I would post a few things that I made for my first week.

I love reading the book "Never Spit on Your Shoes" to my students during the first week of school. This is an adorable "craftivity" that goes along with the book in which students get to brainstorm their own silly class rules and illustrate them. Click here to be taken to my store where you may purchase this.

I use this next activity with the book "The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners", but it could be used with any book about manners during the first week of school, or in the middle of the year, when students might need a little reminder. You can purchase this activity here.

Well, that is it for this week. I hope you all have a great first week of school!

A Classroom Makeover

Well, it has been very difficult to find time for blogging with all this relaxing! I taught summer school during the month of July, and now I have had a few weeks of rest before school starts up again. Since I only taught until 11:00 everyday, that meant I had a little extra time in the afternoons to redecorate my classroom. I do think that having a well-organized, bright, and cheerful classroom does lend itself to students who are engaged in learning.

This first picture is my Language Arts bulletin board. We use the Open Court curriculum, so every week I have the story, genre, comprehension strategy, spelling words, and vocabulary words posted on this board. We refer to it a lot, so I thought that it needed a little makeover. Doesn't it look so much brighter and happier now?

I don't know how many of you have bucket slip boards in your classroom, but I love mine! When I first put it up last year, I had thought I would only keep it up for the first half of the year. By the end of the year, it was still there. I couldn't take it down because it was so sweet to see how much the students enjoyed writing encouraging notes to their classmates. Once summer hit, I realized that my board was starting to fall apart, so here it is now, fresh and new, ready to go for the beginning of the year.

I was picky about the color of the pockets, so I took apart an old pocket from last year, traced it, copied it onto construction paper, and then cut out and glued together each pocket myself. I also designed the labels and the Bucket Filler sign. After I got them laminated, I put them up on the board. Hopefully this will bring many more smiles of happiness this year.

Last classroom makeover that I wanted to share for now is my student work bulletin boards. I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of time putting up new artwork. I literally get out a ruler and measure to make sure that I am spacing everything correctly. If I don't do that, it ends up driving me crazy. I decided that it would be adorable to put up some twine and mini clothespins for student work. This will save me a lot of time in measuring, and my hope is that it will look really cute once it has student work on it. Here is one of my boards.

That is it for now. I will probably post more once school is ready to start. I did recently make this new addition to my Teachers Pay Teachers store, and I want to make sure that you see it in time for your first week of school. It is a booklet that you can use to review your classroom guidelines during the first week of school. I have found that the first week is the time to drill those guidelines into their brains. It makes for a much smoother year. You can buy this product here!

Well, that is it for today! I hope that this was helpful, and that you are able to get your classroom all cute and ready for the beginning of the year! Happy decorating!

End of the School Year

Okay, so this summer has definitely flown by way too fast. I know it is already the end of July, but I am just now completing my post about the end of the school year! Sorry this is so late! I hope that all of you teacher readers have had a wonderful summer off so far! I had a week off before I started summer school. I am now on my last week of summer school, and I can't believe that it is already almost over. Then I will have about three weeks off before starting school again.

I wanted to share this end of the year gift idea. I think I got this idea off of Pinterest, but let me tell you, it was such a cheap and easy end of the year gifts for my students. They loved it!!!! I bought the bubbles at the Dollar Tree, so those were super inexpensive, and then I created the cute little tag that went with them.

These next pictures show one of my favorite activities that I do with my students. This activity takes place on the last day of school. My students are filling them out to give to my future students. I put these on their desks on the first day of school. 

I think that you can probably figure out the kinds of things that students wrote on each flap. We brainstormed a little together before each flap to get ideas flowing. On the first flap, for "Something I learned", I had the students show an example of what they had learned. It is really funny to read "Something you should know about Mrs. Berga". I got things from, "She is really funny and pretty," to, "She really likes to drink coffee." On the last flap, students wrote a friendly letter, wishing the future second grader luck with their year. It was a great way to encourage my future students, but also to review our year together in second grade before they move on.

Well, I highly recommend these activities to you next year, if you so choose to do them. I am already excited to put these out on the first day of school, which is coming quickly!

Oh, and really quickly, I made a few new items for my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Here is one of them:

How cute does that look hung up in my classroom? I printed these out on cardstock, and then used some thick twine to string them all together. The directions are included! I would like to also get these made for other grade levels, so be on the lookout! If you are interested in purchasing, you can visit my store: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Engaging-Second-Grade. I will be posting some other new items in the next week or so.

Happy relaxing!

Dinosaurs and Character Traits

Two more days left! My last day is on Thursday, and I am ready for a break! I am very sorry to see this group of students leave; they are all so sweet. But I am excited to see them grow and mature next year in third grade.I have done a lot of fun activities in the past few weeks, but for now, I will just focus on dinosaurs and character traits. I will probably do another post next week with more of my specific end of the year activities.

I have loved learning about dinosaurs with my students. As a teacher, it might be easy to shy away from expository text, because it is can be more difficult to comprehend. But over the past month, I have heard more students say things like, "Wow, I never knew that", and "That's so amazing!" than I have with any other reading unit.

For this first project, I read books that I have collected about four dinosaurs: ankylosaurus, velociraptor, spinosaurus, and iguanodon.  Then the students wrote a page about each dinosaur, and we looked at a map to locate where the fossils were found. At the end, I stapled them together in a little booklet.

We also discussed the different theories for why dinosaurs became extinct. We read Why Did the Dinosaurs Disappear? by Melvin Berger. Then, my students created a pop-up book to explain the two most predominant theories for why the dinosaurs became extinct. My second graders loved this project, and they were so excited with the finished product!

Okay, now I am moving on from dinosaurs to character traits. A lot of schools, including ours, are placing a heavy emphasis on character education. Every month, I teach a lesson for the monthly character trait. After discussion, we fill out a page that includes the definition, which we look up in the dictionary together, and we write about how we can portray that character trait in our everyday lives. On Friday, we finished up with our last character page, and then we stapled all of the traits together into a booklet. Here is our finished product:

It's an oreo cookie! The outside of the booklets are brown, and then the character traits are all on white paper. After reviewing our character traits as a class, I told the students to show their parents. It will be such a great visual for their parents to see how we are learning about character in school, and hopefully they can find some use for it this summer.

If your year is over, enjoy your summer! If you are like me and have a few days left, I wish you the best of luck as you finish your school year strong!

The Virtual Mall

Okay, we are coming up on the end of the school year. I am assuming that a lot of you teachers reading this might already been finished with your school year. If so, happy summer! This summer is going to be a little different than most summers for me because I will be leading a summer school program for the first time. I am so excited to be able to help these kids get prepared for the demands of the next grade level, and it will give me some great material to post for you guys, since I will be required to create a lot of differentiation with all of the needs that will be present in my group.

So... on to the Virtual Mall. In our second grade social studies curriculum, the students learn a lot about needs vs. wants, and how to be a smart shopper. They learn that it is important to not just spend money, but also to save. If we were to just follow the curriculum, it could get a little boring. A few years ago, one of the teachers on our team came up with the idea of creating a "Virtual Mall". This is not "virtual" in the sense that it is on the computer. This is "virtual" because it is simulating a real shopping/selling experience.

Students were given a business proposal sheet. They were required to talk with their parents and come up with an idea for their "store". They had to get creative, because they were not supposed to spend over $3.00 to start up their store. Their parents needed to discuss the feasibility of their store with them, as well as the supplies they would need. I also took a look at their business proposal and made sure that it would work in the classroom setting. Once students were given the okay, we designed signs for their store. We talked about how their sign was the source of marketing for their store, so it needed to be clear in what they were selling, and it needed to draw people in.

Then came the day of the Virtual Mall. (I know the smiley faces are cheesy, but I want to protect my students' privacy :) )

Students were so creative with what they were selling. There were students selling lemonade, friendship bracelets, massages, tattoos, sweets, popcorn, snow cones, cotton candy, gumballs, nail painting, hair spiking, crab racing, wagon rides, etc. This really is my favorite day of the year because it is such a fun event, and the students learn so much! These girls below actually contacted local businesses to have them donate some supplies to their store so they could stay within the $3.00 limit. One girl even handed out the flyers of the companies who had donated candy to her store. She is learning at a young age the importance of networking with local businesses!

We split up the shopping and the selling between the classes. For one hour two of the four classes were shopping while the other two were selling, and then we switched for the second hour. We even invited the classes from other grade levels to come and shop at our stores. We had each student bring two dollars in change with them, so they could shop at the stores of their classmates. This meant that all students had to be competitive in their pricing, since everyone had no more than $2.00 to spend. I observed my students learning the power of differentiating their product from other products, so that they could be successful!

At the end of the activity, students got to keep the money that they had made. Some students made over $20.00 because they were also smart spenders, and others had literally spent everything that they had made. We talked about the difference between spending and saving, and they were actually able to make real life connections with what they had been learning in their social studies lessons. It was a powerful and incredibly fun activity. Students didn't even want to stop their stores to go to recess.

Hope you found some of these ideas useful! Days like this always take a little extra work, but let me assure you that this is completely worth it!!!