Summer time!!

So I have now been on summer break for a little more than 3 weeks now. I must confess that I have a lot of mixed emotions about this. On one hand I have been thinking so much about my classroom. I am moving to a new classroom that is in great disarray at the moment as I have moved everything (well almost anything) in it, but since I am waiting for the room to get painted I can't actually put the room together. I want to organize and decorate it so badly!!!! I have been pinning things on Pinterest and downloading new word wall letters etc for a new look for my new room. All this work and I can't actually put anything together yet. It kind of makes me want to scream, but then I remember that the summer is when teachers are not supposed to be in their rooms so that they can be cleaned and painted. 

I will say that even though I want to be in my room I am very happy to have some time to rest, relax and do fun things. My last two summers were filled with things that left little time to enjoy the summer so I am feeling good about enjoying every second that I can this summer. 

Last year at this time I was at the National I teach K conference and I learned so much, so kind of wishing that I was there right now as well. What is nice is that I follow the blogs of several people who are there right now so I am still seeing some of what great learning is going on. Take care and have a great summer!
~Erica

Haven't posted in awhile. What are we doing and survey

It seems like forever since I have blogged. My classroom has finished up dinosaurs and has started our explorations of space. We created our space schema chart which I was pretty impressed with. 

I have been thinking a lot lately about the role and expectations of a teacher. I have created a survey to gather some information about why we do the job, what stresses us, and what would make us happier. Please take a minute to fill out this survey if you are a teacher, have been a teacher, or work in some other capacity within the school. Click the link below to take the survey. It's only 9 questions! Thanks. 

Click here to take survey

What's inside the egg?

Can you tell what’s inside the egg?

On Thursday, we started our unit on dinosaurs. We used Deanna Jump’s dinosaur unit to get started. One of my colleagues (and her son) made the eggs. I loved listening to all the things my students guessed. The first guesses were not so close (some guesses were wood, bouncy balls, penguin, bird) The guesses got a lot better as the clues were given. 

Did you guess a dinosaur?? My kids were excited and then skeptical. They said, “it’s not real,” “you did it.” They were excited to learn that we would be studying about dinosaurs. This activity was VERY fun!!

Because sometimes we all need a little reminder of why we do what we do.

So here are two youtube videos that I like a lot. They both remind me of why I teach. I love the Taylor Mali one and I watch it when I am having a stressful day or need a pick me up. 

 The second video is one I just saw tonight. I don't teach teenagers, but I think it applies to all teachers and grades. I hope you all enjoy and are reminded about the great work that teachers do everyday.

Take Care -Erica

How fun it is to create stuff.

So when I started this blog I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up with all the other great blogs out there today. I had resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't be creating things to share with the blogging world. I figured that I would share things from my classroom and my ideas, but that was it. Then yesterday I was reading a post from DeeDee Wills Blog Mrs.Wills Kindergarten about starting a blog and how she did it. By the way, if you do not follow her blog you should. She is amazing! So after reading that I decided to create something of my own. 

I had mentioned to a colleague earlier in the day that I have a few students who struggle with letter formation. Many of the things that we do during literacy centers require the students to look at models and the write, sight words or sentences. I have several versions of roll a word where the student rolls a dice and then writes down the sight word that goes with that number. My students who struggle have a hard time with this and often their papers look very messy as result of not being able to form letters in the empty boxes provided. So I decided to try and create a roll a word that would be modified for students to struggle with letter formation. 

I have used the most recent sight words that we have been practicing. I included one form with the sight words but blank boxes, like I have generally been using, one dotted form, one dotted in yellow (this doesn't seem to print out well, but is another option),and one yellow letter (like a highlighter) form. Click the following words to go to the pdf file.  Roll A Word (no, and, can, we, my, up)  Rollaword version2 (no,and,can,we,my,up) 

Please give me your feedback about my roll a word and also about how easy or difficult it was to get the pdf as I just had to learn how to embed it here. 
Hope you are having a great day.