19 Days and Counting!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday and can't wait until I'm linking up with Summer preparations for next year!

 So there are 19 days left of school, and we're hanging in there... thank goodness it's not too hot in New England right now because we'd be barely hanging on if it was hot!!!

 Last Friday my grade level partners' butterflies were ready to release and none of our chrysalises had opened yet... I was so nervous we wouldn't have any butterflies in our room, but thankfully we came into school Monday and ALL our butterflies were ready! Butterfly release day is always an exciting day, and we got to have 2 this year!

This year instead of the 2D/3D shape snack sort we normally do, we built shapes with marshmallows and toothpicks. The kiddos had a ton of fun and had to think about the number of sides and vertices/edges, vertices and faces while building. Grab the recording sheets here.

One of my girls came in with this and it made my heart smile! There are NEVER 'name things' with my name spelled correctly who would think there'd be a bottle of coke with it spelled correctly!!! Proof that it is the little things in life :)

Loving our end of the year door! I have families sign up at the beginning of the year to decorate the door each month. Families that work schedules that don't allow them to volunteer love to help out by coming after school and decorating the door! I also love to see how proud the kiddos are when they helped their parents.

Until next week... (or hopefully sooner!)...

Five for Friday, 1 week until summer!

I haven't linked up to Five for Friday in a few weeks which is pretty rare for me this school year! If you want to see what I've been up to (my end of year checklist) go check out my post earlier this week here.

I'm also linking up with Teaching Blog Addict for Freebie Friday. Scroll down to #5 for a classroom volunteer freebie!

[one] Tie Dye!
Remember a few weeks ago when we tie dyed? Well last week at Challenge Day (field day) we rocked our shirts! We also rocked them (if we remembered) on our field trip yesterday (see #5). Challenge Day was such a fun day and hands down the most organized field day I've ever attended (comparing to 2 other districts)

The shirts came out pretty awesome and all 3 second grade classes looked just a little different which was neat to see!

[two] Author's Purpose
I LOVE teaching author's purpose mostly because this craft is just too cute! Although I 'indirectly' teach author's purpose all year, making sure the kiddos can say why they think the author wrote it or why the author made certain choices, the last 2 years towards the end of the year I've done a set of very explicit lessons where we make these on the first day. I found this craft here last year.

Author's purpose is also one of the only anchor charts I have laminated to use year after year. I love anchor charts when kiddos help make them either by giving ideas or literally writing on them, but no matter how hard I would try, I'm almost positive my kiddos would not come up with P.I.E. for author's purpose so I use it as a kick off to the craft instead.

[three] Father's Day!
I always feel bad for the dads because many times they get left out of the "cute crafts made by their kids" game because Father's Day is usually after school gets out. I still try to do a craft when we won't be in school for Father's Day (we made tickets for dad last year) but this year it was a must because we are in school the week before and after Father's Day.

I found this ADORABLE craft for dads on Emily's facebook freebie page. Go check out her blog, I Love My Classroom and follow her on facebook to grab this cute freebie (maybe for next year!). My kiddos were SO into this, making it look great for dad :)

[four] Field Trip!
We went on our end of year field trip yesterday to the CT Science Center... had SO much fun with my grade level partners. They're the best!

On our way home we checked out a cool butterfly exhibit!

[five] Volunteer Gifts!
Since I will be gone at the WBT National Conference most of next week, I had to catch my volunteers this week. Thanks to the brilliance of the 3rd grade teacher across the hall, these ended up looking WAY better than originally (she suggested wrapping them in tissue paper).

If you'd like a copy of the tag without volunteer names, find it here or on the picture link below. If you'd like me to add names leave your email address in the comments and I'll be happy to get in touch and get those tags to you ASAP :)

When you hear from my again I'll either be at the WBT National Conference or just home from it!!! So beyond excited :)

A Little Update

Wow I just realized that I have disappeared from the blogging world for a good 2 plus weeks now! I usually am pretty good about at least linking up with Five for Friday or another linky party during the week, but the past few weeks, not so much!

All the craziness that has prevented me from posting is some of what I'm sharing in today's post.

We have 2 weeks of school (including this week) left and oh man there's a lot to do! What's on your end of year count down checklist?

[one] Report cards! I don't know about you, but our district uses powerschool for report cards. As much as I like powerschool, I really wish our report cards defaulted to proficient (on our scale of NI - not instructed (at this time), T - time needed, P - proficient and M - mastery) because clicking on every single field is a pain! Even after my grade level partners taught me how to put everything to P via the summary mode I still find it a pain as I have to click [tab] [down arrow] [down arrow] wayyyy too many times! Oh AND the comments... our district does personalized comments for every child, none of those numbers I remember as a kid. I always put my comments into a word document as a safety but then all the copying and pasting, oy vey! What does your district use for report cards?

[two] Literacy folders. I will admit that I spend very little time [if any time at all] looking at my kiddos scores from the previous year. I like to be able to gauge where they are and not over or underestimate my kiddos. However, in order to keep our kiddos' files up to date, all their literacy info (DRA assessments and writing samples) travel with them to third grade. I learned that my filing system was anything but efficient this year and next year DRAs will go straight into the literacy file so I don't have to dig through their file full of other assessments to pull out DRAs... live and learn!

[three] Alert slips. In my district we have alert sheets for kiddos who next year's teachers should be aware of. Whether it be an academic problem, behavior problem or anything else, they go on these sheets. I'm interested to know how people feel about these. We had something similar in my previous district as well. While I do read them, I like to give myself a week or two to make my own opinions of my kiddos because I hate to think of approaching them with anything but an open mind.

[four] Sub plans. This is a biggie. I leave on Friday for the Whole Brain Teaching National Conference. I am SO excited but because we aren't out of school until next Friday (the 20th) I had 4 days of lesson plans to write. Luckily I already know I have an awesome sub AND wrote the plans about 2 weeks ago so I could start all the copying that is needed for all the fun "crafty" activities they'll get to do during the days I'm gone.

[five] End of Year Conferences. This is another area I'd love to hear about how your district is similar or different. Our non-tenured teachers are on a new evaluation plan. I'm not sure how it works in other states but in CT, districts have a choice of going with the state-made model of evaluation or creating their own (which I believe then has to be approved by the state). We are guinea pigs this year and using bloomboard for all our observation paperwork, year's goals, etc. Does anyone else use bloomboard? I feel like I haven't spent enough time getting to "know" the system and was not able to use it to its full potential. Anyone have any advice?

[six] End of year gifts for kiddos & parent volunteers. I have all the goodies for my kiddos, I'm going to do the "have a kool summer" with kool-aid, cup and straw that has been popular on pinterest for the kiddos. I found a tag I liked from Just Another Day in Paradise. Click the picture to go to her post. For parent volunteers I'm going to buy them a small potted plant with a sign that says "thanks for helping us grow." I guess I'm into corny sayings. I'm also going to put the year in pictures on discs for each family to enjoy.

[seven] PACK! Self explanatory... I have less than 4 days to get my act together (and do some laundry) so I have clothes to wear in Louisiana!

I'm pretty sure I have about ten million other things I need to do in the next 2 weeks, but I won't bore you! I'd LOVE to hear what the end of the year looks like for you as well as how you approach kiddo's files, alert-type papers, etc. Also, any bloomboarders? I would LOVE to hear about how you use bloomboard!

Have a wonderful week! Hoping to be back with Five for Friday to share what the kiddos have been up to over the past couple weeks.