March Madness

A good day for me is when I only feel about three steps behind where I'd like to be.  It is the nature of special education and I love the constant activity.  I wouldn't change it for the world.  Every day is different and I always have new things jumping on my to do list.  In my opinion, this is truly the best time to be a teacher because of the unlimited resources we have available to us at our fingertips.  

I have recently taken on three different math intervention groups (first, second, and third grade).  What this means is that I need to very quickly whip up programs materials that my instructional aides and I can follow.  Lucky for me, Teachers Pay Teachers has a million wonderful games and units to choose from.  I did some browsing and found some winners that have gone over well with my groups and I thought I would pass them along.  

To start, Second Story Window, has these spectacular homework add-on packs.  These are common core aligned, which is always a plus for me.  I ended up printing these out and making them into packets for my aide to work on in a small group.  There is just enough content in each page to cover my 30 minutes with them and there are a lot of learning opportunities embedded in the content.  

For my third grade group, I went over to In The Math Lab and I found this seasonal packet of math activities for the month of March.  They have several different packets for each month of the year so take your pick!  These are meant to be daily activities, but with my group meeting only once a week I can stretch them out a little longer.  

With conferences, report cards, progress reports, and evaluations looming it feels great to have these tasks checked off my to-do list!

Hooray For Sales!!!

I finished loading my CCSS math posters to my TPT store tonight. To celebrate I am throwing a sale!  From now until Thursday all my Common Core math posters will be 20% off.  Enjoy!!!

Reflections on Teachers and Third Grade "I can..." Math Posters

My elementary school growing up was relatively small.  At the time it did not seem like it but, now, after working in several different schools I see how quaint it truly was.  We had three teachers in each grade level and they were pretty much the exact same teachers throughout my elementary career.  My sisters and I often had the same teachers as we moved down the line.  Each time I would get a teacher that one of my sisters had I always felt like I had a little bit of an in.  Being the youngest, I always got the inside scoop before the first day.  I knew my third grade teacher had an obsession with Pee-Wee Herman, my fourth grade teacher played the guitar, and I knew that my fifth grade teacher loved the color brown.  I was, for some reason, very bothered by this.  

I love bright fun colors so I just couldn't imagine why someone would want to wear brown every day.  I mean it, it was every day.  Some days it was mixed in with shades of taupe, but there was always some element of brown. She even had brown chalk.  Sometimes I think back on my teachers and I wish I had the opportunity to go back in time to see them now as my 30+ year-old self.  I wonder if they really were that strange or if it was just my perception.  I think back on this particular teacher and I remember she had very long finger nails and she would clack them together constantly.  She always wore kaftans or knee-high boots...brown of course.  I wonder how much of it was her and how much of it was just her teaching persona.  

I had a student a few years back who would obsessively ask people what color things were.  

"Do you have a car?  What color is it?"

"Do you have a boom box?  What color is it?"

Do you have a phone?  what color is it?"

This would go on and on indefinitely.  Until one day, I told him "My favorite color is hot pink and everything I own is hot pink. Now you don't have to ask me what color anything is anymore, because everything I own is hot pink."

He sat there and thought about it for a minute and I thought this was it, I had solved the problem.  Until he said, "Do you have an exhaust on your car?  What color is it?  Hot pink?"

And that's how every question about anything I owned went for the rest of the year.

"Do you have a couch?  What color is it?  Hot pink?"

"Do you have a microwave?  What color is it?  Hot pink?"

"Do you have an x-box?  What color is it?  Hot pink?"

There is some truth to hot pink being my favorite color, I definitely gravitate towards it, however, everything I own is not hot pink.  But in his mind, he believed it, and my defining trait for him is that "everything she owns is hot pink".  I didn't stay at that school long enough for it to become part of my official persona, but whenever I choose a hot pink item for my classroom I smile and think back wondering where that kid is now.

I have found as I've gotten older that I have transitioned to liking more neutrals with pops of color.  Which brings me to my latest set of Common Core "I Can..." math posters.  I set up the design and fell in love with it and then I thought...Is it too brown?  Am I turning into my fifth grade teacher?  Have I already turned into my fifth grade teacher?  After much deliberation, I decided the answer is no.  

These colors are great and I like the soft mellow vibe.  While I love a hot color, I know that it can be a distraction for my students.  I find that minimizing bright colors and mellowing out the room helps them to focus better.  I hope others like it too!

      

Lookin' Good

I am sure that every special educator can relate to this. You're going about your business at work and then out of nowhere you have a handful of administrators doing a campus tour and they decide to pop into your room to check it out. In my experience they have never come in at a good time. It doesn't help that no two days are alike for me. This is the nature of a special education classroom. You could have a beautiful schedule printed out in front of you and magnifecent lessons planned but it all could change on a dime when; A) your student won't come down from the top of the play structure, B) your students' gen-ed class has a last minute rehearsal you didn't know about, C) your student has fallen asleep, D) your student is having a melt-down in the media center, D) one of your instructional aides has callen in sick at the last minute without a sub. These are just a few of the fun things that change courses of our days. It's these things happening that make us constantly feel like we are barely keeping our heads above water. These are the reasons why I dread the walk-throughs. I would love for them to come in and see all my students engaged and working together, able to answer questions and tell anyone who asks what CCSS we are working on today. It just never happens that way. Half the time they come into my room I'm by myself working on paperwork. I'm always so frustrated when this happens because I wish that they could see those moments when the lightbulbs are actively engaged and the lightbulbs are going off.  My solution to this is to pack my room with multiple displays from every subject area.  I want someone to be able to walk into my room and say to themselves, "I think they are in fact doing some work in here!"

The other benefit of doing this is that my students take great pride in their work.  They love seeing their work and projects beautifully displayed for all to see.  Anything that I can do to build their pride and self-esteem is a no-brainer in my book!

Another fun thing about my job is that I teach 4 grade levels on any given day...yes that's right, 4!  It's tough for me to keep accurate postings of what standards are being worked on at each moment because one moment I could be working on letter recognition with one student and the next I'm working on fractions with another.  

I'm all about working smarter not harder and I am quick to find a solution to most of my problems.  With that said...I give you my Common Core State Standards posters.  I find that having a set of these on handy for each grade level helps for a swift and sophisticated display of student work.  These days administrators really REALLY want to see that you're working in the Common Core so I am always quick to slap one of these babies up alongside my student work.  

That being said, I should mention that I am a young, dare I say "hip" gal.  Yes, I am a teacher, and yes, that means I fulfill many teacher stereotypes.  But one way I break free of the stereotypes is that I try to stay away from the cutesy cutesy stuff as much as possible.  Perhaps it's because my mother is a teacher and anytime I see something with apples or rulers in my room I feel as though I'm turning into my mother...not that that's a bad thing.  I love her more than anything.  BUT, I am an individual and if I'm going to spend 40+ hours a week in a tiny room I want it to reflect my taste.  I typically lean towards a tribal/bohemian feel so perhaps that doesn't float everyone's boat.  For those that are into it, I'm working on uploading my collections of K-4th Common Core State Standards "I can..." posters to my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  As a side note; since I am in California my collections include the additional California caveats. I'll be starting with math and working my way towards the other standards.  

Here's a little preview of a fourth grade and a kindergarten poster.  Enjoy!