Summer Vacation and New TPT Products!

Happy Thursday everyone! I hope you are all having a wonderful day and are able to enjoy this beautiful weather. It's a perfect day here in Georgia with the temperature in the mid 80's and not a single cloud in the sky. Today is also my first official first day of Summer Break!!!!!

It's hard to believe that I have finished up my first year of teaching. There were days that I thought it would never end and then there were days that I wished it would never end. It was a long, exciting, exhausting, experience. I feel like I've grown so much as a teacher and I truly believe that I can face anything (educationally) now. I am excited that I will be able to keep my position as the Title I Reading and Math teacher for the 2013-2014 school year. To make sure that I'm well prepared I've already started updating my TPT store and creating new products that I will be able to use next year in my own classroom.

I spent the day downloading and looking through the Moore Relief Bundle that I downloaded from Teachers Notebook and creating 5 new sight word games ranging from pre-primer to 3rd grade. I've decided to call them Sight Word SPLAT! These will be perfect for my low lever readers but they would also be perfect to use as extension activities for your higher level readers. If you would like to check them out they are posted at my TPT store: Shanon's School Supplies

Click on the image to go to my Store. 

It's very simple to play this game. After deciding who goes first, the players take turns picking a sight word card and reading the word that's on it. If the player reads the word correctly they get to roll a die and move ahead. If they read it incorrectly their turn ends and the next player has a chance to go. If a player lands of the dreaded "SPLAT!" space they must move their game piece back to "Start." To make it a little more challenging fun, if a player rolls a 3, on the die, they must pick up the top three cards and read all three words. If they can read all the words correctly they get to roll the die again and advance their game piece accordingly. But watch out! You could still land on SPLAT! and be right back at the beginning! 

As always, I hope you can find this product useful! If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions please feel free to ask. 

Now it's time to relax, watch a movie, and do a little wedding planning! Have a great night!

Moore Relief Effort Bundle- Teachers Notebook

It's still hard to believe that what happened on Monday wasn't a horrible nightmare. The tornado that destroyed so many homes, a school, and took the lives of so many has me just heartbroken. No matter how much we practice the safety drills with our students, you never truly believe that something like this could happen to you, your school, and your students.

Although I cannot personally go to help these families, as much as I wish I could, during the recovery process I can make a difference, and so can you! Teachers Notebook has started taking donations of teacher created products that will be bundled together and sold until May 28 to raise money to help the Moore, OK victims. 100% of the proceeds will be donated to help the cause.

I am honored to be a part of this effort! You will find my donated product, as well as many other products by clicking on the picture below!

Vocabulary Idea- K.I.M.S Strategy

Happy Friday everyone! I can't believe that the school year is almost over. The kiddos will be out for summer in 3.5 school day! I know they are getting excited to be done with school spending time with their families this summer. Today our 3rd-5th graders had their field day; boy was it a blast! The 5th graders put on a surprise dance off at the end of the day. Since I'm suffering from bronchitis I offered to stay in and monitor the students who had to retake their CRCTs. The day ended with my 3rd graders doing a presentation of the shoe-box Georgia Habitats. They were so cute and creative!

I'm very fortunate to be in a school system where professional development is huge! We receive a lot of new training on many different aspects of curriculum. One of the training sessions we were required to attend was Literacy Across the Curriculum. During this training we focused on ways to improve vocabulary in classrooms ranging from K-12. I thought it was very cool that you could use this strategy for all ages of students and it would still have the desired outcome. This strategy is called K.I.M.S. it stands for Key Word, Information (definitions), Memory Clue (a picture), and Statement (using the vocabulary word in a sentence).

Since learning about this strategy I've used it a lot in my Title I classes. Since I work with struggling readers this is a great way to get them to recognize and learn unfamiliar words in a fun way! Before I explain exactly how we use it, let me show you an example of one that we created, whole group, during a since lesson on pollution.

When you first begin using this strategy I suggest doing it on chart paper with 2 K.I.M. boxes drawn. I always put the blank template on top, so the students can remember what goes into each box, and then complete an example on the bottom as a whole group. 

To begin, you introduce the vocabulary word and add it to the Key Word section. I then do the Information box; while completing this box I always have the students put the definition into their own words and use what they say as the text. Next we move on to the Memory Clue box. In this area you draw a picture that will help you remember  the definition of the vocabulary word. I then like to complete the Statement box buy creating a sentence that goes along with our memory clue. 

After doing a few examples I allow the students to complete them on their own. Sometimes I have them work in groups and sometimes I have them work independently. Buy this point in the year my students can do a K.I.M with no help at all. They actually LOVE doing this assignment because they think it's not really working since they get to draw and they can be creative with their statements. Seems that I left my other memory card at school; I will get the student examples posted on Monday =( 

To help you all get started using this strategy I created a document that you can print for your students to start learning how to complete the K.I.M. charts. Just click on the picture below to download the document! 

I hope you find this as useful in your own classrooms and I have in mine! If you have any questions about how to use this please contact me.

May Currently and a Freebie

Happy Tuesday Everyone! I hope you have all had a great week so far. My week has already been busy, busy, busy. One of the tasks of being the Title I Teacher is being a member of our school's Administrative Leadership Team. It's a great privilege to be a member but it is also a lot of work and a lot of time away from my kiddos.

I love being able to have a say in how the school operates, help plan events, come up with ideas for teachers and students, and voice the concerns of my colleagues face to face with my principal and assistant principal.

With us only having 11 10.5 school days left we were busy this morning making sure that all of the end of the year activities are ready to go! I can't wait to be a part of my very end of the year celebrations, field days, graduations, etc.!

This past week I've also been very busy trying to reteach standards to the students, in 3rd-5th grade, that we have targeted as most likely to have to retake the CRCT (Georgia's state test) based on their benchmark scores. The students will begin retesting on Monday so we don't have much time to help them master these standards.

Ok, let's get away from school for a minute. How about my May currently? May is an exciting month! I can't believe that my first year of teaching is almost over. It's been a very busy, stressful exciting, sleep deprived year.

I'm sure many of these are very self-explanatory but I'll give you a little more anyways =D 

Listening to the rain! It's been raining cats and dogs here in Georgia for what seems like forever! I will not complaining though, unless it's during my morning commute, because I love just listening to the rain. It's so relaxing and beautiful. 

Loving life! As stressful and tiring as life has been these past few weeks I love life right now. I have so much to be thankful for: good friends, great family, a very supportive fiance, completing my first year of teaching, knowing that I have a teaching position next year, purchasing my first home (very soon), and so much more. 

Thinking that the end is almost here!!!! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We only have 10.5 school days left. 

Wanting to finish the paperwork for my new home. I don't think I could be anymore excited about purchasing my first home! It's going to take a lot of work, but I am in love with my soon to be new home. We are just waiting HUD to get our paperwork/contract back to us so that we can begin the inspections and get our loan in order. I can't wait. 

Needing a personal day. I've been working 13+ hours for over 3 months now without a break. I don't even take a break on the weekends. I'm sure you all remember your first year of teaching (if you're not there yet, be warned) as being non-stop work. I would love to take a day to just relax and get to feeling a little better; I hurt my back last week and it's getting a little worse each day. I think a day off would really make me feel a lot better. 

Summer Bucket List. There are so many things I want to do this summer, but these are the top 3 on my bucket list: 

1. Marry the love of my life! I'm getting married on July 21, 2013. I can't believe I only have about 9.5 weeks until my big day. I've been working very hard on every last detail of the wedding. I'm planning the whole thing on my own and making almost everything. So it will be nice to have some time to get wedding planning done after school ends. 
2. Move into my new home! If everything goes as planned we will close on our home no later than mid June. I can't wait to start working on my house and get moved in. 
3. Last but not least, I want to take a much needed vacation to the beach. I just love the beach! I use to think that Florida had some of my favorite beaches (have you even been to Mexico Beach, FL? It's beautiful) until I traveled outside of the US to the Bahamas a few years back. I took a graduation trip their last May and I would love to go back again this summer. Even if I can't make it outside of the US, I'll take a day any beach. 

Don't forget to go check out Farley's Currently and link up, if you haven't already. Just click the image below and have a look around. 

Now, if you stuck with this post for this long you more than deserve a freebie! This one's not very cute or fancied up with graphics/colors but my 3rd graders have LOVED it! 

Two weeks ago I introduced a Count Down To Summer activity/reward chain. Each day I randomly pick a student to come to the board and remove the bottom chain link and tell the class what their activity/reward for the day will be. I did 24 days so that all of the students would have a chance to come up and remove a link. I came up with things that would work well with my class and typed them into a simple document then printed each page on a different color of card stalk. The rewards/activities include things such as:

• Math with Chalk
• Lunch in the classroom
• Random Dancing (This has been the kid's favorite so far) 
• Nature walk 
• New pencil (what kid doesn't need a new pencil at this point in the year?)
• Piece of Candy
• and much much more!

This is a Word document and I have left it fully editable so that you can adjust it to better fit your students! 

If you think you can use this in your classroom you can download it by going to my TPT store, Shanon's School Supplies, or by clicking on the image above. 

Well, that's it for tonight! I hope you all have a wonderful week and just remember, school's almost out for summer! 

Teacher Appreciation Sale

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week teachers!! As an educator, I believe we should be appreciated everyday of the year; however, since we only get 1 week to celebrate all of the amazing U.S. teacher I wanted to say thank you by having a sale over at my TPT store. I will be offering 15% off all of my products from Tuesday, May 7 - Friday, May 10. Be sure to go take advantage of this sale while it last. Just click on the image below to be directed to my TPT store.

Yet again, thank you for all that you do! Teachers are truly amazing and you all deserve so much more thanks than what you get. I hope you have a wonderful week.