Five for Friday and Big Birthday SALE!

Happy Friday, everyone!  We hope you had a great week!  I LOVE this time of year!  Settling into the school routine, still feeling that back to school energy and starting to notice the bright colored leaves make this girl very happy!  Plus, it's my "birthday weekend" so I am planning to celebrate and have some fun with my family!  Being the only girl in the house has its positives!
I'm excited to be joining Doodle Bugs Teaching again for her weekly Five for Friday linky party.  I love reading these linked up posts every week because they highlight school ideas as well as everyday life!

I had a great start to the week.  On Sunday my family had a chance to go apple picking.  The apples are AMAZING this year!!  Logan couldn't wait  to take a bite right away!  Delicious!  I'm going to try to squeeze-in time to make one of my favorite fall desserts, Apple Dumplings!  I love Trisha Yearwood's recipe from the Food Network.  It's super easy to make and delicious with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!  I'm drooling just thinking about it! 















I was able to find some colorful baskets at the Dollar Store (SCORE) to finish organizing my books in the Reading Room.  I am very fortunate to have an eclectic assortment of titles to meet my student's needs and interests.  When I started the position four years ago, I decided to organize the books by guided reading level.  This makes it easy for me and my colleagues to quickly find appropriately leveled books for students.  Since every minute is precious during the school day, I think it's critical that I always provide my struggling readers with books they are able to read with success.  However, I also try to promote motivation by giving them choice in what they read.  Now that the books are arranged by level, I can offer them several baskets to choose from and still ensure their success.  How do you arrange your classroom library?  Leveled?  Genres?  Authors?

 

A second project that I was able to finish was a Story Retell poster based on a blog post from The First Grade Parade.   Cara explains how she uses sticky notes to record her student's thoughts while they retell a book.  This makes it nice to be able to reuse the poster again and again.  I made a mini-version of her anchor charts and put on a ring for my Reading Tutors to use during small groups.  These would also work great for students to use after "Read to Self" activities.  If you visit Cara's blog, all the resources are available as a free download.

 

In time for the start of football season, our new produce "Punted, Tackled, and Blocked" reinforces the three sounds of suffix-ed.  The bundle includes 3 different games and a week of reinforcing student activities.  I can't wait to put this together for my kiddos!  GO PATS!!





Finally, to celebrate my birthday, everything in our TpT store is 20% off this Friday and Saturday!  LET'S PARTY!

We hope you have a fun-filled weekend, friends!!  Talk again soon!

 

FLASH FREEBIE & Stacy's Five for Friday Fun!

Happy Friday Everyone!  I don't know about you, but I am EXHAUSTED after this busy week.  After easing into the new school year, this was our first full week back.  Wow!  I'm pooped!  It didn't help that we had Curriculum Night on Tuesday and a few days of unseasonably 90 degree days up here in New England.  Unfortunately, schools are not air conditioned so the poor students and teachers at my school were rag dolls by the end of the day.  However, things are looking good for the weekend with cooler temps to enjoy some fun family time (i.e. running my boys to football games and soccer practice).

Today we are linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her weekly Five for Friday linky party.  I'm so excited to show you some projects that I've been working on in the Reading Room this week!

 I was thrilled to add this adorable welcome sign from JD's Rockin' Readers to my door.  It perfectly coordinates with my jungle themed room and it's a FREEBIE on TpT!  I love the way it complements the bunting banner that Colleen made for me last year.



The Reading Tutors and I have been knee-deep in DIBELS testing this week.  As a school, I am responsible for administering this assessment to all students Grades K-2 and select students in Grades 3-5 three times per year.  In addition to the DIBELS, all students are given the Fountas and Pinnell in the fall so my school is in a beginning of the year assessment frenzy!  At our monthly grade-level data meetings that begin in a couple of weeks, we take into account all of this data as well as MCAS results (state testing) to determine which students will continue or start working with me.  It's a big responsibility but I enjoy being the school's "Data Keeper". 

Despite being busy, I was able to find some time to clean, purge, and reorganize my room.  One of my projects was setting up a new bulletin board using our Which Tools Will You Use fix-up strategies bundle.  One thing that I struggle with in my room is the small amount of wall space we have for displaying instructional materials.  This bulletin board is thankfully next to my guided reading table but I have two other tables that the Reading Tutors use for groups that do not have space nearby.  To solve that problem, I also put the decoding strategies on small task cards so my tutors can refer to them during small group instruction.   

Last weekend was Massachusetts Resident Day at one of my all-time favorite places to visit this time of year...the Southwick Zoo!  It is a privately run zoo that has the most amazing variety of animals I've ever seen.  If you ever are visiting in Massachusetts, I'd definitely recommend a trip to see their animals!  Here are a few pictures of our trip!!





A very important tip when visiting any zoo!



Mom! What is that awful smell??



 My little buddy feeding the deer at the Deer Forest. So cool!!

 

 Colleen and I were jumping with excitement when we reached over 100 followers on our Facebook page this week!!  To commemorate this milestone and thank everyone on the TpT forum who helped us reach our goal, we will be having a FLASH FREEBIE until midnight EST tonight!  Sweet Tooth Crush has been our top seller since we started our TpT store two months ago.  Grab it while you can for FREE!

Have an awesome weekend, friends!!  TGIF!!

First Week of School and Fall Favorites

Hi, friends!

Today I'm here to share with you about my first 3 days of school and also to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for their Five for Friday linky party!  Let's get right to it!

HOLY GUACAMOLE!

The last three days flew by and I am wiped!  Wednesday was the first day of school. Not only was it the first day of school, it was my first day teaching! Honestly, by the end I couldn't even believe it happened. I had one of those moments when I was dropping my class off at gym where I suddenly realized that this was in fact real life and that I really was experiencing my day as Miss McBride on my own! 

Whew! Like a lot of first year teachers, I went home on Wednesday completely unsure of just about everything! Did I do a good job? Did my kids enjoy it? Just tons of questions floating through my head. I think that's good though- it caused me to be self reflective and I thought about a lot and changed some things even before the kids walked in the door on Thursday.

And let me tell you... yesterday and today were amazing. I just loved it. I felt like my class was really getting it and the routines and procedures we were working through were coming together. And ya know what was really amazing? I could literally see my class coming together as a team and community before my very eyes. I saw new friendships bloom, pairs work cooperatively, leaders step up... everything- it was wonderful!

AND.... at the end of the day yesterday I ran into a parent in the hall who told me that her son came home on the first day raving about how awesome his class was and how much he loved the first day of school. Oh my heavens my heart just about flipped upside down (and over and over again) in my chest. For someone who felt like a whirlwind on day 1, that was the best thing I could have heard.

Bottom line? :: I just adore my kiddos- and it's only day three!! :)

Also, My parents sent me flowers to school yesterday! How stinkin' precious is that?!?!  Pretty dang precious if you ask me!

Thanks, Mom and Dad!

 And now for the linky! 

I'm absolutely loving that it's starting to feel like fall. It does officially mean that summer is coming to a close but it is also the season for some of my very favorite things.

Here are my top Five for Friday fall favorites....

1. Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

I have one word to describe these.... magical

Source: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pumpkin-spice-latte

2. Scarf Season. 

I have a scarf obsession. I just love them. My very favorites (which I will be able to start wearing really soon) are from Njabini Apparel. Njabini is the name of the place in Kenya that I lived while I was there. Their mission is "to enable poor families living in Kenya to increase their income and achieve their dreams." How beautiful is that?!!!? 

Photo Credit: Brandon Jones // Sweet Hannah modeling some beautiful Njabini scarves :)

This is my sister and I last year at the JDRF walk in Boston- obv wearing my Njabini scarf

3. The foliage. 

I just love love love when the leaves change. I also love hiking up mountains in the Adirondacks to see views like this one! Stunning!

4. Apple Picking

What a fun activity apple picking is! I just love it! Then I have fresh apples for so long that I can bring along with me whenever or bake scrumptious treats with! Mmmm- apple crisp is one of my favs! 

My sweet friend, Lizzie and I apple picking!

5. Giving thanks

A friend and I have made it a daily occurrence to look for 5 things every day that are blessings that we are thankful for. It's been such a cool and rich experience to intentionally think of the things each day that are blessings that we all too often brush past and don't acknowledge. I've loved making this a daily practice but with the season of fall comes Thanksgiving which makes us all think about what we're thankful for... and that's something I just love every single year. 

Souce: http://blog.mountunion.edu/blog/remember-to-always-give-thanks/

AND... it's Friday, everyone!!

....which I think will always always always make this teacher's heart smile! 

The Slant Box...Sending Love Across The Nation to Teachers

Today we wandered over to Teaching Maddeness, a second grade teacher from South Carolina.  When you have a chance, check out her primary TpT store, Teacher's Clubhouse or her intermediate TpT store Lightbulb Minds for intermediate resources.  She has great units of study for all subject areas.

While looking through her blog, we were so excited to learn about a really fun idea called The Slant Box from Lessons With Coffee.  Would you like to get a box of goodies in the mail EVERY MONTH??  We sure did!  And you get to connect with teachers all across the world... how exciting! All you need to do is click the Slant Box tab at the top of her page, sign up, and follow the directions.  Every month it's your birthday!  First month's theme is "A Few of My Favorite Things"!  How ironic because Colleen and I JUST shared some of our favorites here.

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

For our first post, we wanted to give our readers a little introduction to who we are, why we're doing what we're doing, show off a little freebie and of course, let you in on a few of our favorite things...

 

We can't wait to show you what we've been creating so be sure to check back! Our new posts will be up every Monday! In the meantime, check out our first FREEBIE "Mirror Mirror on the Wall" with Melonheadz graphics.  It's a fun card game with reinforcing activities that will address the following Grade 2 Common Core State Standards:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.3c Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long vowels
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.3d Decode words with common prefixes and suffixes

Finally, a big shout out and THANK YOU to Misty and Erika at Honey Bunch Blog Designs for taking our wild ideas and turning them into a blog that captured everything we envisioned and more!

'Till next time!