Teaching Blog Addict: August 2011

Differentiated Spelling- A new approach to spelling instruction!

Write your words 5 times each.

Write a sentence with each of your spelling words.

Test on Friday.

The entire class will take the test on the same list, regardless of which developmental spelling stage they fall in.
Sound familiar?

Break the mold!!!

Come check out my latest post on differentiated spelling activities that meet the needs of your diverse learners!

It's all happening over at Teaching Happily Ever After!

Do You Chrysanthemum?

I noticed yesterday on the Facebook Fan Page that people were loving a comment about using Chrysanthemum in the classroom with their students, so I compiled all the ways that they mentioned into one handy little document. If you use this book (or are looking for a new beginning of the year title), head over to The Organized Classroom Blog to see some of the suggestions for yourself!

See you there!

The first ever Teaching Blog Expo!

My room is finished!

Come on over to see my pictures...I'm finally ready for kids!

Munch Munch, Crunch Crunch

Check out our Number Munching Monsters

I needed a visual to get the kids to see greater than and less than before using only the sign.

Sooo....

We created these number crunching monsters and had fun manipulating chips to show numbers that the monster might eat. Then we "read the sentence"....

One is less than four.

Five is greater than two.

I tried to get the kids to create the number dot patterns that we've been talking about during Topic One from Envisions. Easier said than created for some :) But we had fun with our monsters! We'll use the same technique tomorrow, however, we'll replace our chips with large plastic numbers so we can see the numbers taking the place of the dots.

Here's the sheet with the words if you'd like to download.

Enjoy,

Heidi

Homeschool Curriculums - Abeka and Switched on Schoolhouse

Abeka seems to be the most popular homeschool curriculum and Switched on Schoolhouse is not far behind. Find out what this veteran homeschool mom has to say about each of these. My recommendations might surprise you :)

Abeka Review
Switched on Schoolhouse Review

Heidi

A Real Teacher!

So last night was Curriculum Night in my daughter's 4th grade class. She attends the same elementary school where I teach. It is a BIG school with over 900 students. I was nervous this year about her moving to 4th grade because for once I did not really know the teachers. I knew there names but when you work in a place with that many students and that many teachers it is hard to get to know everyone.

Lily, my daughter, has been floating on cloud nine since the first day of school so I new she was loving school and she has had wonderful teachers in the past but this year was different. You see...my Lily Kay is very hard on herself. Her New Year's Eve resolution in 2nd grade was to be perfect. She struggles with disappointing herself. As much as we try to reinforce life is not about being perfect-she still strives to achieve it. (I know it sounds like a good thing but watching your little girl SOB because she missed one on a spelling test or struck out in softball is heart breaking.)

Head over to The Schroeder page to hear why I want to be

Mrs. Newman when I grow up!

Calling all multi-age blogs!

Click on the image below to link up with TBA.

Check out Me and My Gang!

If you haven't stopped by to visit Monica and her gang, please take a minute and hop on over. Monica is a TBA author who is extremely creative and very passionate for education. She has done an outstanding job of bringing primary teachers together. Stop by to take a peek at one of the cutest blogs ever!

Need a little Common Core Help?

Many of us are finding we need to add the Common Core Standards to our lesson plans, if you are unfamiliar with them or have a hard time keeping them all straight, come on into The Teachers' Lounge and see how I keep them at my fingertips! ;-)

One Wall At A Time ...

I went in to work on my classroom today ... for the first time this summer. Come on over to my blog to check out my progress so far - this is the "before" picture.

Jen

Priceless

In one day, via the comfort of your own home you can learn from 7 of the teaching blog community’s best bloggers and find out exactly what you want to know! Their sessions cover everything bloggers and teachers want to learn and there are HUGE goodie bags for registering for the live event!

Get your finger ready to click a new favorite...

Have you tried StudyJams by Schoolastic?

Click Here to read a quick introduction on this fantastic site...

you're sure to love!

Notebook resources now available!

I have finally started to upload all of the pages I have created! You can find them in my Teacher's Notebook store!

There is a time-sensitive freebie available--come to my blog to check it out!

Zip Up Those Desks!

Looking for a way to keep those desks in the same place in your room? Head over to The Organized Classroom Blog to see my latest video! :)

See you there!

FUN Sight Word Activity!!

No more B-O-R-I-N-G sight word/high frequency practice! Upon request, here are my 1st Grade Sight Word Graphing Worksheets. These are an excellent resource for literacy AND math centers. Kids are sure to have F-U-N learning and reinforcing sight words.

Hop on over to The Moffatt Girls blog to learn more. We has have:

Pre-Primer (Pre-K)

Primer (Kindergarten)

A bundle of all three for more savings!

Is This a Purple Elephant?

Purple Elephant problems appear at the beginning of every school year. Don't let them scare you or your students. Journey to Vintage Teacher and learn about these wonderful Math teaching animals and see my new game too!

Another Post-It Poster

I loved using my Story Map Post-It poster with my students last week, that I decided to make another one to teach Making Connections!

Come on over to Create.Teach.Share to check out my latest poster!

Some freebies for you!

Some followers asked me to show all my freebies in one post. Here we go! Enjoy them!

So We Played the Number Circle Game!

I was so excited yesterday to introduce The # Circle Game to my class. It is a basic number sense game and I love to do it at the beginning of the year because it gives me such a good idea of where my students are in understanding how numbers work together.