Miss Giraffe's Class Love

It has been forever since I last blogged. I have been so busy.  My class that I am working with is a challenging class. But I wanted to get on here and tell you how much I love Miss Giraffe's no prep packets lately. If you are new to my blog I am an at risk teachers aid, so I push into classrooms and teach small groups to students that are below grade level. It is a great job. Due to the fact that I teach the lowest of the low in first and second grade, I start every year teaching short vowels.



When I am looking for things for my small groups to do, I like to look for things that have lots of different ways to practice the same skill. I also look for things that after some guided practice my students can do independently. I also try to find things that will be fun and engaging. This year I fell in love with Miss Giraffe's short vowel no prep pack. This pack is great! It has many different activities, and it is easy to get ready. There is coloring, writing, and cut and paste. One of my students favorite, is called I love to read. The students have to read the sentence, and then match a picture to the sentence. The pictures they have to cut out and paste which the students think is really fun.

Here is one that one of my students finished. 

Here are two pictures of my students working on these. The first time we worked on them it took them a little while after they got the idea, they now try to speed through them.  

I love this particular part of the no prep packets because the students have to read the sentence, and can practice using decoding skills with quick sentence and then a fun cut and paste part. There is so many other things I could talk about with these no prep packets I could probably go on forever. However I will stop. Please go check out Miss Giraffe's Class blog, she is amazing and I am so glad I found her great packets this year. 

October Currently

Hello Everyone!!! It has been way too long! I have been crazy busy month I don't know where it went. But it is the beginning on the month so I'm linking up with Farley for Currently!!

Listening - I'm sitting in my super comfy chair watching Last Man Standing one of my favorite stores.

Loving - I'm loving my decision to take a night off! It's the little things that matter right?

Thinking - I can't believe it's October already. Where on earth did September go?

Wanting - I think now that I have started school and have found out what I'm teaching this year I want like everything on TPT. Its a problem......

Needing - More time always! 

Boo-tiful- the classroom I work with does bucket fillers and every week on Friday they take some time to write bucket fillers to someone and today they wrote them to me. :) They where so cute and super fun to read. 

Five for Friday

Hi!!! I haven't posted in a while, because I have been busy enjoying summer. But before I go on my end of the summer trip I wanted to quick link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for a five for Friday blog post.

This box came this week and I was very excited. :) Can you guess what it was? 

Its my very first Erin Condren teaching planner. I ordered it in the end of July but it just came this week. Before I ordered it, I heard it could take up to a month to come, but mine came in just 3 weeks which isn't too bad. We don't start school until September so I have a few weeks left yet to make it even prettier. 

Last week I picked up my folders for the year at Office Max and Staples. They had them on sale for a penny around here, it was great. So this week I laminated them. I use these folders for all my small groups. Each group has a color and then each kid in each group gets a folder. Once I figure out who is in my groups for the beginning of the year I will write their names with Sharpie on the folders. Then when it is time to change groups, I can use a dry erase marker to erase the names and write the new ones on. I must say I tried this last year REAL time saver. 

                          

 

I have a new product that I'm super excited about. I made this for my reading small groups. I wanted a way that I could learn about my students as readers in a quick way that I could keep and refer back to as needed. This is what I came up with 20 task cards and a recording sheet. I can't wait to use these. If you would like to pick them up to use them in your own class room click the pictures above and it will take you to my TPT store. 

I caved and got nice chap-stick. I love. 

My husband and I are leaving to go camping today. So this is what my kitchen counter looks like but I can't wait. I'm very excited to go camping and just leave for a week before the start of school and craziness starts again. 

Our Teaching Tribe - August Challenge

Hello! Welcome to my blog! If you are a new person welcome I hope you will enjoy and if you have seen my blog before thank you for coming back. I LOVE Facebook groups. They are super helpful. If you ever have a question there is always someone around to try to answer it. One of the great Facebook groups I'm in is called Our Teaching Tribe. This month we are doing a challenge. During July we voted on what we all wanted to do and the decision was a Product Swap. SO I switched off with another new Teacher Pay Teachers author. Her name is Kristen and she is super sweet. I got to review two of her products that go together. Her blogging name is Miss Fancy Pants, and I highly recommend find her blog and TPT store. Here is a picture  of her button which I LOVE.

The two products that she gave me to review are Quick Fact Checks Addition Facts  and Quick Fact Checks Subtraction Facts.

  

These are great products. They are quick checks to see if students know their addition and subtraction facts. They have the same format, which I like because then you can teach how to do these once at the beginning of the year and then you can use them all year. On each page there are two quick checks. Each quick check has 10 problems and Kristen suggest that you give your students 30 seconds to complete. This is another thing that is great about these is that they take 30 seconds so you can do them really quickly at the beginning of a lesson.  

Each one is broken up into 3 parts. Facts up to 10, 15, and 20 for addition and then facts within 10,15, and 20 for subtraction. There is 9 pages for each section and then 2 per page so you end up with 18 quick checks. I think this will be great for my first graders although it could work really well with Kindergarten too. I use mad minutes with my second graders which is 30 problems in a minute. 

I teach small groups which you all know if you have read my blog before. So I always try to think how can I use these quickly in my small groups, or how I can use them for a whole small group. I also try to think about ways I can copy less being a paraprofessional I don't have the lovely help of parents or really anyone else so anything I can do to make my life easier with less coping I love. So instead of just using these wonderful quick checks as a paper pencil activity. I decided to try to laminate them, and it came out really well.

I printed them first. Cut them in half and then laminated the two quick checks in one lamination pocket. Then cut it in half again, which does mean that you cut twice but then you have lamination edge on all edges which does keep better. This will be great for my small groups. 

Make sure you check out Miss Fancy Pants's Teachers Pay Teachers store for other great amazing products! To keep hoping click the picture below!

Assess the Teacher This or That

I saw this link up last week and I thought it was really fun! So I thought I would join this week. This linky party is brought to you by The Tattooed Teacher. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you join in for this week or next!

1. I am a jeans girl all the way. I'm the one at school that LOVES jeans day on Fridays and any other day. 2. I'm not a big jewelry person, my husband got me a necklace for Christmas when we were dating as kind of a promise that we were going to get married so I wear that all the time. 3. I don't know what these are. 4. silver or white gold all the way. 5. city, I was born in the city, I moved to a small city when I was older, then when I got married I moved to a even small city but I love them just the same. 9. I'm such a homebody my husband complains about it. 10. I'm not a morning person so breakfast really isn't my thing. 11. I don't like coffee. I follow after my mother we are big tea drinkers. 14. I'm 5 feet 9 inches flat foot, if I put on heels I tower over everyone. 12, I guess I really don't care as long as I'm not driving. 

I hope you have enjoyed getting to know me a little bit better!

Ellen

  

August Currently

Hello!!!
August is here. (insert sad face) :( I love school, and I love teaching, and I can't wait to go back......but I also love taking a nap at 1 in the afternoon, and I love being able to work on things because I want to and not because I'm teaching it next week and it has to get done by then and I love being able to relax and go at a somewhat slower pace of life. However I still do have the entire month of August yet, I love Michigan and our late school start date. Anyways that was a long side track from why I started this blog post I'm linking up with Farley for August's currently!!

Listening - Mike and Molly I love listening to TV shows while I work. It drives my husband up the wall because he can't concentrate with the TV on, but I can't live without something on.

Loving - I am loving that the Teachers Pay Teachers sale is coming up on Monday and Tuesday!!!! I have so much work to do. I have to go through my whole wish list and see what things I need now and which things will have to stay.

Thinking - I'm trying to write a to-do list for the week and then each day do one or two things off of it. We'll see if this works. I have been trying different to-do list this summer to see what one I really like so that when school comes I will have one that works really well for me. 

Wanting - WAY too many things from Teachers Pay Teachers. My wish list must be pages long.

Needing - To start getting stuff done. I had very ambitious goals at the beginning of the summer and so many things have come up that not very many things have actually gotten done.  So I really want to start getting things done. 

B2S RAK - I'm not really sure. But I love this idea, so I'm going to think about it. Being a teacher's aid I don't like to get the students gifts if the teacher I work with isn't, just because I don't want her to feel bad. But I think I would like to do something nice for her. Let me know if you have a good idea in the comments. 

I hope you have enjoyed learning about what I'm doing currently. If you would like join this linkly go to Farley's blog and join us. This is my second one, and I have enjoyed it both times!

                                                 

Five for Friday

I am bringing you my first Five for Friday post. I'm really excited to be blogging again because I have kind of taken a week off. So I thought I would link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and tell me about my life.

I'm taking a cake decorating class. So I made my first two layer cake, frosted, and decorated it. I forgot to take a picture of it last night but this is what it looked like after my husband brought it to work today. Most of its gone must be a good sign. :)

I worked. I know, nothing fabulous about that but I'm working a part time job from my computer. Although I might prefer working on TPT selling stuff, unfortunately its doesn't pay that well. So I'm working from home this summer, and doing TPT selling. 

I went to the beach. I didn't take any pictures because I wanted to spend time with my hubby and his family so I left my phone in the car. If I don't leave it there it's too much of a temptation. I love the beach last week I was there Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, different beaches but still. :) 

I started school supply shopping. As much as I love school and I want to get back....I love summer. I love having the time to do fun things, like go to the beach, making TPT items, reading fun books, vacation. The start of school supply shopping means its coming to an end. But I found some awesome bins, and glue sponge materials from Dollar Tree and highlighters from Office Depot. 

I started reading Guided Reading:Making it work.  I have just read like the introduction but so far I like it. I'm thinking of doing a blog post linky about what I'm reading right now. So this would be part of that. Look for it this coming week. If you would like to link up with me comment below and I'll let you know when it goes up. 

                                       

I hope you enjoyed my first Five for Friday! Have a great weekend!