Im here!

 Hey ya'll hey!!

Oh my goodness.  Where has the time gone?  

Oh!, that's right.  We had a pandemic.  I pray everyone is safe and well.

Now that we are all full force, back into the swing of things I wanted to reset, recharge.  That's our school theme this year, and how appropriate it is.

I am ready to start a fresh and hope you are too.  Check out my tweets at the bottom right.  I came in over the summer with the mindset to reset and painted the media center.  I purchased some things, too many things, but it looks great and ready for a fresh new year.

I am working on some bulletin boards and signs for the media center and will post them soon.  Check out my TpT store to see new stuff as well.

THANKS

Thanksgiving

Is it November already?? Where is this year going?  I can't believe I am already planning for November lessons.
I am excited to share my new creation The Murky Turkey.
It's an original story that is great for reading to whole class.  I included some retell strips and pictures as well as a bundle of other activities including SCOOT.  The new classroom craze.

How cute is this writing and craft activity for your November bulletin board?

You can find it at my TpT store, just click on the pic!

Hope you enjoy!

Elementary Library Centers

Today is the day!  Ready to begin some collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication among my students.

As you may know I teach a fixed schedule (second year teaching a fully fixed schedule).

Today I started my library centers with 3rd-5th grade.  Usually I like to keep them around a theme like fall, or October.  I started out centers this year with things that are surrounded with the 4C's as stated above.

I am fortunate to have 28 iPads and 11 computers so most of my centers involve those tech tools.
I whipped up some center signs with "I Can" statements.

I am jumping on the #flipgridfever train and including it as a center as well. If you haven't checked out flipgrid, you must.  I think it is going to be a great tool!
I posted two flipgrid boards, one is a book review board and one is "If I had to choose a button" board where students choose a button based on what power they would like and why. "Critical Thinking!!"  I found the button pic on Pinterest when searching for flipgrid.
Here are two friends working together on their flipgrid.

So what's going on in your library this year?

New Year New Look

Here we are, another school year and with it my blog has a great new look!

Anybody do something awesome with International Dot Day?

Since I am on a fixed schedule for the second year, the specialist and I combined all our classes for the day and did some activities. 

Check out the pics on twitter.
We watched the video of Peter Reynolds reading The Dot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CHBrRyPb2I

Our wonderful music teacher handed out some dots "drums" and the kids clapped and played to the "dots" music notes as she pointed to them.

Then we played musical dots where students walked around in a circle and when the music stopped, they stood on a dot!

Fun Fun!

What do you do?

Celebrating Black History Month with African American Authors

It's been a while....
This year I am working on renewing my National Boards and although the process is not as difficult or as time consuming as the first time, there is still a lot of writing, videoing, and reflecting.
Which explains my absents!

But I am back!
So I have been working with my kiddos on authors and what perfect time to introduce Coretta Scott King and African American Authors.

This week we have been reading Do Like Kyla by Angela Johnson with Kindergarten and First grade.

We do a picture walk and talk about what motivated the author to write a story about two sisters (pssst, we don't know so we just brainstorm).

Then students fill out a Beginning, Middle, End graphic organizer after we read the story.  I do this to help them with our Benchmark assessments that require them to tell what happened at the beginning, middle and end.

My second graders are learning about Coretta Scott King and the award named after her.  They use ipads to look up facts about her and then find the title of a book that has received her award. 

I have a "I mustache what you are reading" bulletin board outside the library so I posted the Coretta Scott King research with pictures of my second graders and their mustache!

If you want to see my Black History Month packet and all the authors we will be learning about you can check it out, just click on the picture.

Library Signage FREEBIE

O those library signs...
I am always looking for ways to help my students become self served patrons in my media center.  I want them to be able to locate what they want easier and quicker.

This year I created more signage for my library!  I hope this will help my kiddos or atleast allow me to point to the sign from across the room to help them locate what they are looking for.

Here is the sign I have for poems.

My sign for pets and in the background animals.

Feel free to use these signs in your library, HOPE YOU ENJOY!
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THEM HERE

Thanks

Five For Friday with the Teacher Librarian

 Five for Friday is a weekly teacher linky party where you post five random things from today or this past week and on your blog. Then, you come back and link your blog post up at the bottom of this post in the linky tool.Grab the button above and link back to this post on your blog.

My sister posted this on my facebook yesterday because like everywhere it is COLD outside.  Plus as a little girl I loved watching wrestling and Ric Flair was one of my favs, don't ask, it is hard to believe I watched it but I did and loved it so much my sweet daddy took me to see them on a couple of occasions.

Baby it's Cold!!!! Wooooooooooo

Baby it's COLD outside is also the title of my centers for January.  How fitting is that.  If you have bought my centers before, these are just as good and are themed for January.

Be sure to pick up this months library center here.

A New year and I am reading to change it up a little.  I am working with my 1st and 2nd graders doing research.  Scroll to the next post and you will get some FREE stuff to help you out.  My district uses the research model eWISE which has helped me explain to the kids the process of research.  Be sure to scroll to the post after this one to READ ALL ABOUT IT>

During the break I worked on some close reading for President's Day.  The passages are written on three different levels to meet the needs of all the students and differentiate. 

hahahahahahahahaha

And lastly, who doesn't wait till after all the festivities to get back on track with health.  So I overindulged this break and now I am paying for it!!!  Time to get back to my low carb and 5k. 

Don't know how I cooked low carb before without Pinterest!!! Great recipes, had the spaghetti squash carbonara last night...look it up, it's delicious!

Check out Doodle Bugs Teaching blog for more Five for FRIDAYS! and be sure to follow my blog for more FUN!