Later Gator!

Oh my goodness! Talk about exhaustion.

We are back at school and moving right along.

I'm (mostly) teaching from my chair right now.

I can't walk my class to lunch or specials because of the stairs.

 I have to teach my math lesson with an ice pack on my knee.

After 8 hours of school, I get to go suffer 1 hour of physical therapy (NO FUN).

I'm pretty much a mess, not to mention completely wiped out and it's only the 2nd day back to school.

Ok whining is over...now on to the good stuff :)

A fabulous gal that student taught at the same time I did was at a conference I went to and let me tell ya...I need to get this girl a blog. She is incredible. I think it's safe to say I'm very jealous of her ideas. I could probably write 100 blog posts specifically for her ideas.

One of her stellar ideas is to have one of these babies.

A Later Gator board.

You all know how little time we really have to teach skills at a mastery level.

This is one way to help at least get those kiddos heading in that direction.

After I'm done teaching a lesson, I always have little ones saying I'm confused or can you show me a little more please. SO here is the solution to that problem, since we also know that it's impossible to stop everyone else who understood the lesson to work with the one struggling (at least not for an extended period of time)

When this happens, I simply say "tell me later gator."

Then they go over to this board, write their name & question on a post-it, & pop it right up on the board.

During DEAR time & at the end of the day during snack, I will pull any student who posted something on the later gator board and work with them on the skill they are struggling with.

It's worked great so far---I only started it yesterday, so I guess I can't really offer up a huge opinion about it yet. But my super teacher friend swears by it. I'll keep you posted on how it's working in my classroom.

(By the way: how awesome is my hubby? He draws everything for me-it's amazing!! AND he is game when I bring home different projects and ask him ever so kindly to get to work :) Yea..he's great!)

Description stickers for new behavior plan

Silly me didn't really think this whole post sequence thing out. I should have waited until I had everything finished and posted it all together. But I didn't. So here is the (hopefully) final piece of the puzzle.

These are the stickers that I will place on the pockets of the shoe organizer. Since I have 19 students and only 24 pockets, some pockets will have to have 2 stickers (which means 2 different color cards). No big deal though.

For some reason, the words all seem to have a gray glow. Google docs is doing something funky with the colors obviously, but I promise when you download the original, you will get the true colors.

I printed these off on Avery White Shipping Labels (48264). The template number is 5164. (If you aren't sure how to set up this label template in Mircrosoft Word, email me & I'll help ya out)

1st Label sheet

2nd Label Sheet





WOW cards

Here are the WOW cards that I'll be using with my new behavior plan.

Hope they can help some of you out who might be in the same "behavior" rut that I was in :)

Download here

Scribd Version



What do ya think?

I spent all last night & today playing around and this is what I came up with.

How did I do?

Hopefully good, otherwise I'll have to explain more computer time to the hubby (and we all know that's difficult when it's 80 degrees outside & spring break)

After spring break, I am starting a new behavior plan in my classroom. I plan on using my own rendition of what Jennifer over at Rowdy in First uses with her class. It's a color card system. Before I was using something called Behavior Snapshots and it worked great-for the 1st half of the year. Then my little firsties started to care less about losing part of their free time. When I started having kiddos go home on red more times than green, I knew it was time for a change.

Instead of having my firsties take the color card home each night (think lots of paper) I'm going to laminate about 15 of each color to use throughout the day.

I made these OOPS Cards that they will have to fill out at the end of the day and take home to get signed by their parents.

Download here

Help!

Ok so I just become a member of Teaching Blog Addict and I'm in love with the whole concept. It is a fantastic idea to get all of you amazing teachers together in one place. I'm so amazed that I can be part of this, sharing ideas along side some very talented ladies.

However... 

I have a huge favor to ask...by huge I mean GIANT!

I am in need of my own blog design! I have searched high and low for free ones that I would fall in love with..and that hasn't happened yet. I have searched awesome sites that create blogs for you, but I'm ashamed to admit that I really can't afford to buy one right now.

Wow this is humbling having to admit this to all my fellow bloggers.

Awhile ago I mentioned that I received some God-timing news. Well my husband and I just made the decision that he is going to give an honest attempt at his golf career, which means that money is beyond tight for us. We will be going from 2 rather nice incomes to 1 (teacher) income. We all know a teacher's pay is nothing to brag about. As a young couple, we really don't have a huge savings and those college loans are still knocking at our door.

I'm aware that this is a huge favor to ask but...if anybody out there would like to use me as a guinea pig to practice their blog design efforts, I would be FOREVER grateful.

I don't know how I would ever show my gratitude. As a member of Teaching Blog Addict, I need a button--no clue how to do that and it seems a bit silly to make a button that goes with my blog design now since it's not one I want to have forever.

I understand what I'm asking and believe me I wish I could open up my wallet and throw out money to each and everyone of you who inspire me to be the best teacher I can be. Maybe someday that will happen, but that day is not now.

Thank you to anyone who offers help or even kind words to this new journey we are on.

We are going to learn just what it's like to live strictly on faith.

Buzzz Sight Words

I know everybody probably has a different lists of sight words that they are required to teach their firsties, but here is a quick game I came up with for the list that we use. It's the Dolche list. I put all of the words in a black paper bag then go around in a circle and each child pulls out a bumble bee. They are only able to keep the bee if they can say their word and use it in a sentence. If they pull out a bee that says BUZZ, they get to run around the room making a bzzzzz sound. Yes, I know how corny that sounds but honestly the kiddos LOVE this. They get so excited when they pull out a BUZZ card! If you are interested in putting your own sight words on the bumble bees, let me know and I can email the word document to you.

I cut these out and laminated them for durability, then just put them in a black paper bag. (I have hopes for a better container, but haven't found one I love yet)

You can download the game here.

Now I'm off to take my "cocktail" (as my husband calls it), put some ice on my knee, and take a Sunday snooze.

Hope you're all enjoying your weekend :)

I WON!

I WON SOMETHING!!!

Can you tell how excited I am!! I love winning things:)

Thank you Lindsey for your amazing and extremely useful ideas.

They are absolutely fabulous.

Please, please, pretty please head over to The Teacher Wife and buy her awesome Superhero unit!

You won't regret it!

In other news, I have been very busy on my spring break.

 I rearranged my bedroom, living room, and dining room.

I organized my linen closet (major deal for me, since I usually am running so late in the morning everything just gets tossed in there).

Did a million loads of laundry.

  Finished my command center (thank you a bowl full of lemons for the great idea)

Went to school & worked for one whole hour.

Spent tons of quality time w/ the Mr.

And even though I won't be at school for another week & a half, my break is pretty much over.

 In 2 hours, I have to start my no eating or drinking until my knee surgery tomorrow.

EEEEK...have to be at the hospital at 10.

Surgery is scheduled for 12.

The Mr. is going w/ me & is hoping the waiting room tv will be stationed on the Masters.

I'm feeling very nervous and anxious.

Definitely ready to be free of the chronic pain.

Definitely not ready to have the pain that comes along with surgery.

I probably won't be posting anything new for awhile, but have no fear.

I'm chock full of ideas.

And with all of the time I'll be spending on the couch, I plan on getting things done.

Thanks for all of your sweet comments :)

And don't forget to visit the teacher wife for some a-mazing ideas!