Tis' the Season To Shop.....TPT Style!

No better time to teach those Greek roots--and what better way then on sale!!!

All About The Roots!

Wow! Time has just flown by since our last update! I can't believe that it is already I am amazed how much we have learned these past two months!  I am so glad we have finally found time to slow down update you a little about what's been happening this school year! 

First--

It is always Fair Week right in the beginning of the school year! I have a couple top reason to attend the fair- fried food, lemon shake ups, and my favorite Winning a goldfish for my classroom! This year I can say that I successfully completed my mission and even more! Not only did I win a goldfish but also a tadpole and hermit crab! So cool! My students love these pets! 

Next--

This year our entire school is implementing some type of Root Word Work within their day! So amazing hear little kids from kindergarten to second grade tell you the meaning of a root word and that they saw a word with the root in it somewhere! 

We have a short Morning Meeting every morning as a whole school, we do lots of amazing things in a 10 minute time frame! Our kids lead most of it with the Pledge, Mission Statement, Weather, Birthday Wishes, and a song! It's an powerful way to start your morning together and everyone can't help but feel happy and excited when leaving to begin the rest of the day!

One other special part of our morning meeting is that we introduce the Root of the Day! This is where Krista and other teachers or kids act out the root that we are learning for the day! This is awesome and the kids LOVE it! They are so fun and creative and it really helps the kids learn and remember the root! Here is the root BIO--- As you can see our two biologist! :)

We are using the Interactive Root Scrapbook as our guide.  We complete two roots a week with one day to review and the have pictures of the roots and their meaning throughout the hallway of the school! Its pretty awesome to see all that we have learned already! Here is the Root Scrapbook-

How to Start??

Now we did just jump into learning these roots with the scrapbook right off the bat.  We introduced the students to prefixes and suffixes first and explained how they changed a base word. We used our prefix and suffix word building activity to help explain the process.  The kids loved it and immediately caught on! They found (and continue to find) these prefixes and suffixes everywhere!

Here is what it looks like in action! 

If you are interested you can check it out here.... It covers the roots that should be introduced in Kindergarten and First grade but it was a great review for my Second graders! 

Finally--- We have Chocolate Roots Free for a limited time!This is another great way to introduce roots to your class especially if they have some prior knowledge of roots! It's super fun and you even get to have some chocolate!! Your students will creating their new chocolate candy bar wrappers using the roots! 

Enjoy!! We will be adding some more ways to incorporate roots into your class this week! Happy November!

Room 10 2014-2015

Well... It has begun...The early mornings...The late nights...Laminating...Cutting...Decorating...Reorganizing...  BACK TO SCHOOL!


I absolutely LOVE this time of the year when it is more socially acceptable (at least to me!) to stay into the waaaaay late hours of the night working in my classroom! I am totally excited that this year I will be teaching 2nd grade again and that I am staying in the same classroom...It sure makes decorating and planning much easier!

After spending a couple weeks working nonstop here is what I will call my home away from home for the next 9 months!

Our school is a Leader In Me school so we have lots of color paintings that were added by the teachers around the entire building! You can't help but be happy when you enter through our doors.  Outside my classroom our amazing art teacher helped me make the above vision come true! I LOVE reading every morning when walking into my classroom! 

I wanted my classroom to be bright but still have a little bit of superhero action tied into it from my previous classrooms so you will see splashes of different superheroes throughout the room! The kids really love it and they love trying to guess my favorite superhero! 

This year I also added my math workshop board.  After a year of learning second grade I made it a goal to have more guided math and center time this year. 

This is my word wall/strategies/vocabulary wall

I'm trying something new with my word wall this year...instead of sorting by high frequency words we will add words based on phonics patterns and rules.  

Check back in a couple of weeks and I'll let you in on a fun way that helps my students learn and use their weekly vocabulary words! :)

This summer we had an amazing inservice with Tim Rasinski focusing on fluency in the classroom. One of our goals as a building this year is to begin "word harvesting" with our students through the various texts that we read daily.  We will be looking for "Incredible Words" to smash on the wall with the Hulk!

This wall is dedicated to our classroom data as well as one my favorite things...Our Root Wall!!! Like last year I have section the board off into three sections; prefixes, roots, and suffixes.  I learned that this was a much better way to help my second graders learn these affixes a little better than have them all mixed together! I can't wait to get started! 

                                           

                                                    I'm so excited for the new year!!!


Check out our new Phonics Packet! It includes the different phonics rules and patterns along with word wall words and a phonics journal!

3...2....1.....SHOP!!

It's that time of year again!  All of our items will be discounted during the big sale!!!

Shop till you drop and Happy New School Year!!! 

A Tale of Two Summers

OK...so you all read about Julie's summer-and what a great read!  So many fun adventures!  

Let me give you a little background on us.  We started our fantastic friendship when Julie was oh so fortunate to get assigned to my Kindergarten room for student teaching!  We had a blast together and our friendship has only grown stronger!  Fast forward to now and we are still lucky enough to be working together.  Julie is a fantastic Second Grade Teacher and I am the building principal.  EEEKKKS lots changed since our introductions years ago!

So why do I share this info with all of you?  Because as close as we are friend wise---we live quite different lives.  See Julie is in that magical place in life where she gets to travel and live life only controlled by what she feels like doing at any given time.....man I miss my twenties.  Me, on the other hand, I am in that 40 something phase that is totally dictated by my children's schedule, carpooling, and dang I am tired by 9 at night!  Hence the post title: 

Tale of Two Summers. 

 Remember all of the exciting journeys Julie shared--here is my summer:

I have three amazing children!  A set of twin 17 year old girls and a wacky and wild 11 year old boy.  My girls are my athletes, my little man is a theater buff!  

He played the prince in our community theater play Rapunzel.  It was a great show and we were all super proud!

While Julie was jet-setting around the good ole USofA I spent wonderful days, at home, enjoying the simple pleasures of life.  Now don't get me wrong--I LOVE being home but MAN I would have sure loved to tour Salem with Julie!!!  At least I got me a great shirt witch shirt--thanks Julie!

OK--Not gonna lie I impressed myself!  We host my husband's family reunion and I---yes I--made this trifle!  If anyone is interested I'll share this simple and absolutely delicious recipe!  It was all the talk of the reunion!

The latest adventure was had by my son who spent a week at Boy Scout camp.  He had a blast, not counting a few homesick moments.  Don't let the outfit fool ya---he is one ornery boy:)

 

OH WAIT!!!  AND I puppy sat my parent's dog.  Yep almost as exciting as Julie's summer adventures!

All joking aside-I loved my summer.  Though I would not mind a little flashback into my foot loose and fancy free twenties--I adore my boring old family life.  The vastly different lives Julie and I lead just makes our friendship all the more fun!  And now that I am a principal we love to share the highs and lows of our positions.  How lucky are we to have each other!!!!

Summertime Fun!

I know we already stated that we have been epic failures at updating our blog since March so....here's to a second post in less than a week!

While we have abandoned our blog during the end of school frenzy and for the better portion of summer, I thought I'd give you a glimps into my ever busy summertime fun I have been I having the last two months. 

Let's start at the very beginning....June...

After school was out and my classroom was reorganized (kinda) it was time for the fun to begin! First up was a road trip with one my friends from college! We headed to The City on a Hill...The Hub...The Cradle of Liberty...City of Champions...Beantown... That's right Boston, Massachusetts! It was about a 15hr car trip which made it all the more fun with a few added stops along the way!

I had so much fun exploring the city seeing all of the historical sites and walking the Freedom Trail! We also got to catch a baseball game against the Indians!

 Like I said, we added a couple stops to our trip, so where else would we go? SALEM, of course! We channeled our inner Sanderson Sisters for you Hocus Pocus fans and scheduled a tour of the city! We learned so much about the history of the town and we made sure to hit all the movie filming locations as well! If you have never been Salem, I would say it is a must see! Such a cool town!

The last stop around the Boston area before we headed back home was to Harvard. It is a beautiful campus!  Here's a picture of us at the Harvard Library 

 From Harvard we set off towards home planning to make a couple spots along the way. We took a quick little stop in NYC and then stopped at Liberty Park in New Jersey to snap a pic of the skyline!

Our last and final stop was in Hershey, Pennsylvania at Chocolate World.  We did a quick tour and had a little sample of chocolate before we made the last of the trek back home! It was quite the non-stop trip with lots of memories made along the way! 

After getting back home I was exhausted (I always think that's funny when you get back from vacation!) but I was off to the next adventure! This time minimal traveling was required but I had an important task at hand.  My best friend was getting married and I was the maid of honor! It was the perfect day and I even think my speech went pretty well! I wasn't nervous at all...yeah right! It was such a day! 

 Well that wraps up June...now the next chapter, July! Lets just saw I didn't slow down a whole lot in July either!  My next trip was down south... not just the south but to the heart of country music...Nashville, Tennessee!  Two years ago one my friends moved to Nashville so a visit every summer is a must! I always seem to go around the same week in July and every time is just as fun as the last! What an awesome city! We went to all of my favorite stops... Opryland, Franklin, Broadway, Jack's BBQ, and the Pfunky griddle (highly recommend!).  I'm already looking forward to my next trip to visit!

The next day after I got home from Nashville I did the Color Run... The Happiest 5K...with a few friends. It sure was happy and full of color! Finally it seems like things are slowing down just in time to start getting ready for school! I am so excited for the coming school year that I can't wait to get to work in my room.  Luckily they are still cleaning so I'll keep enjoying the summer time :)

I did complete one craft for the first day of school last night thanks to Simply Kinder! Can't wait to get this hung up!

Seriously, stay tuned... We are on a roll! :) 

Summer Update

Well I think it's safe to say that our personal goal of updating our blog more regularly has failed! However, we are ready to get back into the swing of blogging our new ideas and creations we have been working on while on our leave of absence in the blogging world!

First up... Our new Interactive Root Scrap Book....

We are pretty impressed with how this turned out and really excited to put it to use in the classroom this fall! We focused on 50 common prefixes, suffixes, and roots.  Not only did we focus on learning the meanings of these important word parts but we added a TWIST where there is a different interactive activity to complete for each of the roots. These activities range from creating timelines in CHRONological order, storyline perSPECTives, PSYCHic crystal balls, and many more!

Next...MATH Activities...

Even though we are the Reading Olympians, we have decided to start creating some math activities recently.  This year I have attended many Common Core math professional developments that have focused on teaching and understanding mathematical processes and strategies. It sure did make an impact on my instruction throughout the year with my students' problem solving and higher level thinking skills! In these activities we focused on using different addition and subtraction strategies other an the traditional algorithm.  You can check them out here...

                               

           

Coming... An Updated!!

We promise to be back sooner rather than later this time!  We have two new items that we have been working on the last couple of weeks!




Also... Since it is Christmas in July please enjoy 20 % off everything in our store!

                             http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/The-Reading-Olympians