Celebratory Giveaway - Day 1!

Hey all!

It's time for a CELEBRATORY giveaway!!!

{Button Credit goes to the most kind, caring, and sweet woman I know - Tamara from Mrs. Russell's Room}

What are we celebrating, you ask?? Well, just YESTERDAY, I got married to the man of my dreams and the love of my life, Cody!

{Photo cred to my girl, Megan!}

And on top of that, I turn 24 in a week - next Saturday!!

Busy gal, I tell ya!

So, I asked a bunch of my bloggy friends if they'd be willing to support me in a celebratory giveaway!

As you can tell, a lot of friends said YES (kind of like I did to Cody!), they'd like to help me :)

I do know that without their support & friendship, I would not be where I am today - thank you bloggy friends!

Alright, let's kick it off!

Each day for the next 5 days, I'm going to have 11 friends that will be giving SOMETHING away! There's things ranging from products to shopping sprees to winner's choices from their TPT stores!

The last 2 days, you'll have the chance to win something BIG from me - but, that giveaway only lasts TWO days. So, you'll have to enter quickly!

You have until May 3rd to enter this giveaway!

Here's who's supporting me today! The more entries you complete on the rafflecopter, the better chance you have at winning!

Winner's Choice from her TPT Store!

Main Idea Comprehension Passages: Animals & Habitats

$10 Worth of Math Activities from her TPT Store

Julie doesn't have a blog, but she's giving away a "winner's choice" product from her TPT Store!

Winner's Choice from her TPT Store!

Zoo Design: Area, Perimeter, Map Skills, Project Based Learning, & More!

Winner's Choice from her TPT Store!

Current Event News Assignment

Winner's Choice from her TPT Store!

Winner's Choice from her TPT Store!

Winner's Choice from her TPT Store!

GOOD LUCK!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

{Must Read Science Mentor Text} - Dirt: The Scoop on Soil

Hey all! This is my first time joining Amanda & Stacia over at Collarboation Cuties for their weekly Must-Read Mentor Text Linky!

This week, the subject area that we're linking up with is science. Me being the Science teacher at our school in the 3rd grade, I love Science! I love finding new books to help support the curriculum.

While we're no longer on soil/resources (now we're on space.. woohoo!!), I have a great mentor text to share with you.

It's called Dirt: The Scoop on Soil by Natalie M. Rosinsky. 

This book is a GREAT book for students to help them get a "closer look" at the different types of soils out there, along with what you can use different types of soil for in your every day life.

The Amazon description is as follows:

Discusses the nature, uses, and importance of soil and the many forms of life that it supports.

While the description is very short, it's a simple book that can help supplement the discussion of soils in your classroom. We first looked over the different types of soil in our textbook. This made it difficult for my students because the textbook is written on a higher level than our grade level. While quite a few understood the differences between soil types, the DIRT book above helped drill those into their brains so that my students knew the difference when it came to assessment time.

Here are a few pages of the book:

So that's it! Here's my mentor text memo for Dirt: The Scoop on Soil.

What kinds of mentor texts do YOU use in your classroom for your science instruction?

I can't wait to check out the linky for some more ideas!

Library Organization: A Bright Idea!

It's time! Time for the third round of the Bright Ideas linky! 150 bloggers have teamed up this time to bring you some more bright ideas to help make things in your classroom go 150% easier!

My bright idea has to deal with library organization - your classroom library!

{GRAPHIC CREDITS: Krista Wallden (Creative Clips) & KG Fonts}

My kiddos enjoy reading more than any other children I have ever met - therefore, our classroom library is stocked full of tons of different books across all different genres.

To name a few, we have biographical, science fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, folk-tale, and so on!

So, I needed a way to organize those books. 

{GRAPHIC CREDITS: Krista Wallden (Creative Clips) & KG Fonts}

Meet my classroom library bins. They're no longer this organized… but you can walk in my room and tell my kiddos love reading!!

I got the bins from Big Lots at the beginning of the school year and have LOVED them ever since. Easily stores most chapter books and each bin stores around 20-25 books. Perfect solution.

Then, I arrange my bins based on the series rather than genre - this makes it easier than having 15 bins for fiction and 17 for non-fiction. Instead, we've got bins for Magic Tree House, Who Was/What Was series, Junie B. Jones, and so forth. The kids know which books go where and if they are in search of something, they read the tags and find it really quickly!

{GRAPHIC CREDITS: Krista Wallden (Creative Clips) & KG Fonts}

THEN beyond that, my kiddos and I are all about Accelerated Reader, otherwise known as AR. 

Each time they read a book, they then take a short comprehension quiz on the storybook. This shows whether they understood what they read or not. I, as the teacher, get a detailed report of each students' progress on EACH book's quiz they take. I love it, and they love looking at the data that they receive AFTER they complete the test.

We also rely heavily on our AR levels - otherwise known as our ZPD levels. This level is what helps my students choose their books that they can read AND understand.

To help solve the issue of not knowing which books are at which level, I have begun (never too late!!) to label each book with their AR level and how many points their quizzes are worth.

BACKTRACK: I set a goal for each of my students to reach a certain amount of points by taking AR tests. That's where the point obsession comes into play.

But, I am running out of steam when it comes to writing the words "AR level" and "Points" in each book, so I created these to help save some time and energy:

VERY easy and simple! Now I just have to write two numbers, peel it, and stick it. DONE!

These are just two SIMPLE ways to organize my library to truly keep MY sanity! And, to make it easier for my kiddos to find that JUST right book :)

What are some things you do in YOUR classroom library to make it easier for your kiddos? Sound off in the comments below!

And for MORE great ideas, please look below and browse through the link-up, choosing the topics/grade levels that you'd like to check out! But, I won't lie to you - you may want to check out EVERY idea… they're all SO brilliant!

An InLinkz Link-up

April Reading!

I'm joining Jen from Teacher by the Beach for her Spring Themed Books Linky: April Books.

In our classroom, we love books. When I say love, I mean LOVE - in all caps, bold, italicized, and underlined. 

We have hundreds upon hundreds of books in our classroom library. My kiddos know that I will buy a book like I'm buying my weekly (okay, who's kidding who here… my DAILY) Starbucks coffee! I just can't risk passing up something that interests my students.

We're currently working on a poetry unit in our classroom during our ITBS (Iowa) Testing this week and next week. It's actually going to continue for another extra week because my kiddos are truly enjoying it. On top of that, April is National Poetry Month. Therefore, I HAD to get some poetry books for our classroom. So, I just ordered poetry books to add to our classroom library collection!

Then, in Science class, we're talking about resources (renewable, nonrenewable, and reusable) along with the different types of soil, pollution, and ways to help our environment. It's all about resources, my friends! Therefore, I had to buy a few books for the classroom to get these topic ideas across!

Our two favorites out of all the books are, "Dirt: The Scoop on Soil" and "Where Does the Garbage Go?" The dirt book got the idea that there are several different types of dirt in our environment that make up the ground we walk on. The different layers represent different things.

But, the garbage book made a LARGE impact on them. Inside the story, it talks about recycling for a majority of the book. This opened my students minds on how to help the environment in more than one way using reduce, reuse, and recycle. It lead to a GREAT conversation so I highly recommend it!

Our next topic we'll be starting in Science class that they ALL are so excited about is Space. This covers the planets, the facts about the planets, our moon and it's facts, along with constellations. They will be doing quite a few projects during this topic in Science class, so any kind of book that I can use to help out, believe me, I bought it!

Finally, I have to share one of my favorite springtime books to read - I bought it while I was doing my 2nd grade internship about 2 1/2 years ago and I still love it.

It's called "Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms." If you're from the North, like me, and have moved to the South, like me, this book brings back all those snowy memories. While I am glad I didn't have the Winter that the North had this year, it still makes me miss the snow flurries… but, this is a different kind of snow in the book :) You'll have to read it to find out!



I love books and my kiddos do, too. They read ALL. THE. TIME. Sometimes, it's me making them read. Other times, they ASK to read.

I'll tell ya… I rearranged our room yesterday to where all desks are on the outside of the room and there's a LARGE space in the middle now. At the end of our crazy day yesterday, I had the students read after they were done.

I walked over to help a student that was still working on the assigned classwork before they could read and I looked in front of me. EVERY. SINGLE. CHILD. had a book in their hands and were actually reading it. They were all so intrigued and involved in their books that they looked up for nothing. Until, of course, I told them it was my favorite sight to see in the whole wide world and one asked, "Oh, so you don't like to see our faces?" :) My witty children… but boy, do I love them!

So, have you bought or borrowed any books lately?? Sound off in the comments below about some of YOUR favorite April reads! I'd love to hear them :) Then, go link up with Miss Jen for her linky, Spring Themed Books Linky: April Reads!

Have a good day, y'all!

Hands-On Science Project

Hey there!

Welcome to the 2nd installment of the Bright Ideas Blog Hop! There are roughly 185 bloggers participating this round and I KNOW for a fact that there are some more fantastic ideas. That's what's great about teachers… we're full of ideas!

So, you saw my title says hands-on science project.

Well, in our 3rd grade classroom, we're learning all about landforms and the water cycle. To make the landform concept more concrete for my own students, I had them complete a landform Play-Doh project.

This activities allowed for the abstract concept of a variety of landforms to become hands-on and more visually THERE… especially for those students that haven't seen an archipelago or a volcano besides in a picture. It's almost as though the landforms were in their own backyards!

The only materials needed for this project were some sort of cardboard box for the base (I used post office boxes I had in my spare room from another project) and some Play-Doh. I'll be honest - I spent quite a bit of time trying to find the perfect colors for the project but then found a box of colors that had anything from pink to black to orange to green.

As you can see in some of the pictures, there are pink islands, red and yellow mountains, and a variety of other mismatched landforms to what they are typically colored. My students understood that there really aren't pink islands, orange mountains (well… if you count Arizona soil/dirt, then it would be red/orange!), and so forth.

Regardless, my students had a blast and wanted to do another topic in Play-Doh. I'm constantly trying to find ways to keep my students engaged and involved in their education, and this project… well, it was a home run!

Excuse the glue bottle and the Zoobreak book… the were gluing their labels on to their landforms so that I could tell which landform was what. They loved it!

What kinds of hands-on activities do you do in your classrooms? Even if it's not in Science, I'd love to hear about the projects!

But, now - what about storage?? What teacher doesn't need EXTRA storage for all their junk… er, I mean learning tools… in their classroom? Lydia from Owl Be in Kindergarten has a FANTASTIC post on finding that space in the tiniest of ways (and one of the cutest and easiest DIY ways). Head on over to her blog post by clicking her button below.

And if you'd prefer to just hop from one topic to another instead of from blog to blog, feel free to check out the linky below! There are two separate linkies - one for "K through 2nd" and one for "3rd and up". Each person that has linked up has linked up by their BLOG POST title - not their specific blog! So, it's much easier to find JUST what you need. But, I suggest going from blog to blog because you'll find FANTASTIC ideas! :)

Happy Hopping!

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

Pronoun Flowers - A Pronoun Activity

Hey y'all!

My kiddos were learning ALL about pronouns for the last 3 weeks - regular pronouns and possessive pronouns alike. But, I wanted to make sure they understood pronouns in general.

So, we made "Pronoun Flowers." Kelley from Teacher Idea Factory originally came up with the idea of Pronoun Patch flowers, but I created my own template to go ahead and get copies of each of the parts - the center, the petals, the leaves, and the stems. We called ours Pronoun Flowers and decorated our portion of the hallway with them.

They turned out SO fantastic. The kiddos truly did learn a lot, too, and began to understand pronouns like pros. I had a few that struggled but once we reviewed the ideas behinds pronouns and why we use them, along with HOW we use them, they caught right on. I attribute the success of this mini-project to their success on their grammar test over pronouns! 

Our display in the hallway. 

The pronoun "them" - this kiddo got it! 

They struggled with the pronoun "it," but once we gave examples, they understood it! 

Another "it" example! 

I know we had the pronoun "them" up above, but my kiddos truly did struggle with "them." They wanted to include themselves, but little did they realize that it would make it "WE" or "US." Finally, they got it! Both students using them were able to provide great examples.

Finally, they loved the he/she/him/her pronouns the best. It was easiest for them and they were able to get these down quickly.

Overall, the activity was a success! I truly enjoyed it and I loved how bright and fun our hallway looked - we got lots of compliments on such a cute activity, so I thank Kelley for the FANTASTIC idea!!

Anything specific you use to teach pronouns?