Teaching Heart Blog

A few weeks ago I blogged here about how I used a Super Improver Wall  all year in second grade last year.   Click here to read how I use the wall! This year I am teaching third and I changed my theme to frogs.  Frogs and the colors blue and green!  My Super Improver Walls and my WBT Frog Themed Rules are up in third grade and I wanted to share how they look in my classroom.  You can get both the rules and the wall here!  They are in PDF and Power Point (so you can change them to your liking). It’s hopping – right?  It’s no work for me all year.  The cards are up. ... 

Another item done on the check list…  Just printed out all the covers to my parent communication folders (take-home folders).  I am going with the FROG acronym!   Thought I would share a copy of the folder for you to use if you would like! Click here to download the free cover. I have lots of free back to school printables at this link!  Click and see!  

It has been a bit since I posted a free resource…  Actually, it has be a bit since I posted.  It has been a wild few weeks.  I am teaching third grade this year.  I wanted to send a get-to-know you type of activity home in my letters to the students.  Yes, homework before school starts… but fun homework.  I have asked them to fill in the T-shirt and either illustrate or glue a picture in the bottom section.  I also asked them to only color their illustration and not the shirt.  I also asked them not to cut the shirt.  It will be interesting to see who follows the directions. ... 

I fell in love with a classroom management system this year…  you may have heard of the Super Improver Wall?  LOVE IT and will never teach without it or Whole Brain Teaching Rules!!! Whole Brain Teaching in all is awesome and if you are looking for something to learn about this summer that will energize your classroom, Whole Brain Teaching is where it is at! I used many parts of the Whole Brain Teaching system in my classroom and the Super Improver Board is just one part of the system. I suggest you read the Whole Brain Teaching Books below. You can click on the books and go to Amazon to... 

  What a school year this was…  After this year, I think I can do anything…  I got a second grade position for the year, a day before school started. In to an elementary  classroom I went (after being out of my own second grade classroom for 12 years)…  A totally bare classroom with nothing except the district programs to use.   After about seven hours of non-stop work (luckily I have years of teacher goodies created and purchased – plus teaching second grade all those years ago came in handy as well…  my millions of boxes came out of storage) and I... 

We are enjoying the last few days of second grade with a fun ABC countdown.  A small portion of our day is devoted to our letter countdown.  My kiddos are well behaved but this keeps them in check the last few days.  They know they have to so well during the day to get to the countdown fun.   My class is journaling about each activity on each day and the journals are turning out so cute…  I just love them.  They have a rubric they follow and the journal will be their final writing grade.  Have to share what we have so far. The write ups below explain what we did for each day! ... 

One of our most popular downloads is our summer buckets and in 2015 I added a few more printables to go with the glyph and writing activity!  You can view them by clicking here! The extra printables can be found here!  

There is lots to see in this post – scroll through for goodies galore… Hopefully you are driving successfully into your end of the year!  I just listed a new product that I completed with my second grade class (well actually three things – see below for the others).  The district I work in this year uses the Benchmark Literacy Series…  BTW, I have grown to love it!  Unit 8 of the series teaches about comparing and contrasting as a comprehension skill.  To sum up our learning, I created this craftivity for my students to complete! It is on TPT.  You can click here... 

I just finished two days of bubble lessons for a STEAM project my school is doing.  I uploaded my resources to TPT… Click here to learn more… This set contains lessons I used with my second grade class to complete a STEAM bubbles project on our bubbles countdown day. The lessons were done in two days (but could be extended to three if you choose to). You will receive two days of lessons plans with objectives, videos and pictures highlighting the lessons, links to other resources, printables for an anchor chart that goes with the lesson, and three activity sheets to use with the lesson. Some... 

  Here’s a perfect writing craftivity to go along with the Mystery Genre. I used this activity with my second graders in guided reading groups. Each group read a Cam Jansen mystery together. To summarize their story, they each created a top secret case file. That included clues they found while they read, a summary of the mystery, a magnifying glass showing a visualization of the story, and a detective card with their picture and thumb print. This file set includes all the materials you will need to create a top secret case file with each of your students. We added pictures to the files. ...