School's Out!

Oh my goodness! This year is OVER?!?!

Wasn't it just the first day...like...yesterday?

This year came with A LOT of change and new responsibilities. I moved from NYC to Philly and started teaching in a new school with a different structure (mixed aged classes). I rejoined the world of car owners after a 5 year lapse (ugh--car payments...although I did the math and it turns out my monthly car payments are only slightly higher than the monthly subway passes I had to buy in NYC). Oh yeah--I have also been planning my wedding that is going to happen in JUST TWO AND A HALF WEEKS!?! WHAAAAT??!?

But back to the whole teaching thing-- I feel really good about this year. I made great friends at work and wonderful connections with my students and other students in the school. By the end of the year, I was bombarded with lovely cards and wonderful colorful pictures to take home with me. I also got a few "extra" goodies from families:

I am SO EXCITED about this beach bag!!! I can't wait to tote it on my honeymoon in Turks and Caicos!

I received this cute card from a student's family (along with some delicious chocolates). I love funky greeting cards! 

 I always like my students to reflect after any unit/project/trip. I had my students complete this end of the year survey on the last morning of school:

It was great hearing about some of the things they most enjoyed about this year, and I felt pretty good about myself as a teacher, too:

Can I add "superior awsomeness" to my resume? I'm gonna miss this group!

Of course, nothing screams end of the year like lots and lots of treats!!! I made brownies for the class, and a student brought in these super colorful sprinkley cupcakes! YUM!

Obviously, by the time dismissal rolled around, we all kind of looked like this after all that sugary goodness:

Am I the worst person ever for sugaring up kids and then sending them home to their parents? I mean, they were already super hyper! Last day of school, ya'll! 

So, the room got packed up today. It looks sad and empty...

 

...but I know I'll have a whole lotta fun reorganizing it in late August. Especially because I am teaching a new mixed age (2nd/3rd grade) and am getting all new furniture! WOOT WOOT!

Lastly, I just want to thank everyone who kept reading my blog this year! I wasn't sure if I could keep it up, and sometimes there were longer breaks between posts, but I appreciate all of you who visited again and again! I might have a few fun Summer posts, so don't disappear! 

XO, and HAPPY SUMMER!!!!

Lady Who Lunches

Ahh....lunch time. That blessed half hour to sit in silence and eat. 

Oh wait, I'm a teacher, so that never happens!

 Typically during my lunch break, I am making copies or meeting with other teachers. More frequently I am spending my lunch break putting out fires regarding the recess arguments of children. That means that I usually end up eating lunch with my class (who eat in the classroom--although now with the weather getting nicer, more and more kids are opting to eat outside on the picnic tables).  I really can't complain too much about sitting down and eating with my class. I get to chat with them about their lives and get a better sense of who they are in non-academic settings. You learn a lot about kids while they are eating, lemme tell ya!

So, as many of your know, my wedding is coming up in a little over a month's time. I am trying really hard to stick to my diet, and bringing my own lunch really helps. When I taught in NYC, my school provided a delicious lunch every day for the kids and teachers. Yes, it was overall very healthy/organic food, but since it was buffet style, I really over did it! I couldn't help it!


I had to get used to buying groceries for my lunch, which I hadn't done for a few years. I forgot how expensive some of my favorite items are! Do Fiber One bars really need to cost so much? Since my fiance and I inhale these pretty regularly, I couldn't justify not making my own for a fraction of the cost with ingredients that we always have in our kitchen! And the recipe makes double the amount found in a box of the ones from the store and has the same amount of fat and calories. Plus, these homemade ones don't have all the icky artificial and processed junk!

Here's what you will need:

2 Cups Old-Fashioned Oats
1 Cup Rice Krispies
2 Tbsp. Flax Seed
1/4 Cup Honey
1/4 Cup Butter or Coconut Oil (tried both--and both taste great!)
1/3 Cup Brown Sugar
Chocolate Chips (I also tried dried cranberries--equally delicious!)

Step 1: Mix the oats, Rice Krispies, flax seed and chocolate chips or other mix-in together in a large bowl.

Step 2: Melt the honey, brown sugar, and coconut oil or butter over medium heat until boiling

Step 3: Take mixture off the heat and pour over cereal and oat mixture. Mix well.

Step 4: Mold into a greased 8x8 baking pan. Let set for 2 hours.

Step 5: Cut into 12 pieces. Wrap with plastic and store.

 Step 6: When you need a snack, enjoy!

My fiance was skeptical at first, but once he tried them, he couldn't stop raving about how good they are! Seriously, they are SO EASY to make, so give it a try!

Another item that I have found myself spending a lot on are sandwich bags for toting items like grapes and almonds, and tin foil to wrap my whole grain bread and turkey sandwiches. I decided that not only are these baggies sucking money out of my wallet, but they aren't very friendly for the environment!
I
 found these great reusable baggies at a fun little store when my fiance and I were walking around this past weekend. For $16, I got three brightly colored bags to stash all my sustenance! I love that I can just throw it in the top rack of the dishwasher.

 When I was in middle school, it was so uncool to use a lunch box. Paper bags were the thing. But again, not great for our planet! Fortunately, I received this lunch bag when my sister and I tried out a juice cleanse a couple of summers ago, and I bring my lunch in it every day. This thing can also just get tossed in the dishwasher, so it's all good!

 

 You know what else is all good? The fact that there are 17 days of school left! I can't believe how quickly this year has flown by. I still have 8 reports left to write before June 6th-- not as "all good". Encouragement appreciated, folks! :)

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

When I think of Cinco de Mayo, I rarely think about what the holiday actually means. It is pretty sad that I honestly have to re-research every year why we celebrate this holiday.

Since we are studying Mexico (ancient Aztecs, but still), I had to include some activities around Mexico's defeat over Napoleon's French army.

I decided to begin the day with a small packet at each child's desk that I downloaded off of Teachers Pay Teachers (click the link to see the maze that will explain what happened in Puebla!) Along with the maze, I also included a small synopsis of what the holiday celebrates with some follow up questions that I found on the same website. (Honestly, fellow teachers, please don't reinvent the wheel! There are so many great activities for free on TPT that save me time every day and they add so much to my own lessons!)

Pregunta: How can I add Cinco de Mayo fun in my math lessons?

Cinco de Mayo fun brings me back to some of my college days, where Cinco de Mayo was the last big hurrah before finals and packing up our dorms for the summer. I went to many tacky theme parties, and even though these games are not traditional to Mexico, they are a tradition at college parties everywhere: BEER PONG  and FLIP CUP.

No, I did not give my 3rd and 4th graders alcohol, people! But I did kinda-sorta teach them drinking games to practice multiplication!

In MULTIPLICATION PONG, the cups are set up:

Instead of beer in each cup (seriously, if you think I did that, I'm worried about you!), I wrote down a multiplication equation that we are practicing.

The kids had three chances to throw a ping-pong ball into the cup. If they land inside a cup, they have to answer the multiplication equation. If they don't answer it correctly, they have to do as many jumping jacks as the product :)

Now, for multiplication flip cup:

I wrote down a multiplication equation on the inside of a cup.

Then, I flipped the 3 cups upside down and placed them at the edge of the table. There were 3 cups on each end. Teams had to compete against each other to flip over all 3 cups and answer the equations underneath. Whoever flipped over all of their cups and answered the problem correctly won that round! Each team had 5 tries for each cup. Again, if they flipped over a cup but did not know the answer, they had to do as many jumping jacks as the product.

It was a raucous, good time had by all! I'm almost sad I won't get to witness what might happen seven years from now at their first college parties when one of my former students says "I think we played this game in math in third grade..."

We have been studying skip counting patterns to help us understand multiplication. I wanted to do some reinforcement of skip counting and number patterns with my class, so I gave the kids a fun Mexican food themed worksheet to find patterns.

Of course, we couldn't do a worksheet about chips and salsa without enjoying some ourselves. Luckily for snack, we could have our very own fiesta with chips and guac at snack! Muy delicioso!

I am going to continue the Cinco de Mayo celebration at home tonight.  I am going to be doing some Latin dancing in my weekly Zumba class, and will be making tacos for dinner! How are you celebrating?

Adios, mis amigos! 

Book Clubs

Guess what! This week officially kicks off the 8 WEEK count-down until Summer vacation! End of the year activities are starting to pile up...class picnics, the talent show, photos for the yearbook, etc. Not gonna lie, sometimes it gets very overwhelming and I can't help but count down the days! Especially since my wedding is only 17 days after our last day of school :) Let's hope I can get my reports done on time!  Still, there is still a lot of learning fun to be had, so I wanted to update you on our newest reading adventures! This year, I spent a lot of time with my class practicing strategies to enhance the understanding of what we read. (Making connections, inferring, summarizing, finding the main idea, etc.) I have seen the kids use these strategies in whole-group lessons and in their independent reading responses, but now, it is time to really put their knowledge into action by participating in literature circles! Each group has 3-4 members. Since my class is a mixed age class, I decided to separate them by grade level, and further split them into groups based on reading level. When I taught second grade, our book groups were leveled, and every day I would have a special lesson or activity in mind for the group that I would facilitate--fortunately, there were two teachers in the room so we could alternate working with the three reading groups. The learning specialist also took a group, so everyone was always taken care of. Since I now teach third and fourth graders, I wanted the literature circles to be more independent. I think it is important for children at this stage to practice facilitating group discussions on their own. I also want them to be more independent in their application of the reading strategies. And of course, I want them to enjoy meeting to talk about a book together! My assistant teacher and I will continue to circulate around to the groups and observe their discussions, but it really is a time for the kids to show their stuff! I decided to have roles for each member of the book group, so in each meeting, every child knows what he or she is supposed to be doing so they can contribute to the discussion. Discussion Director- This person is responsible for writing down a few questions to pose to the group about the section(s) that were read that day. When it is time for the discussion, the director jots down the group's responses to their questions. The DD is also there to help monitor the discussion and make sure everyone stays on topic!  Literary Luminary- This person is in charge of "illuminating" important or interesting parts of the story. They must choose 3-4 quotes from the assigned reading sections and explain why they thought this quote was worth highlighting.  Word Wizard- This role involves looking up unfamiliar or interesting words. The student who is the WW needs to look up and record the definition of the word in the dictionary. Then, they need to use the new/unfamiliar word in a sentence.  Stellar Summarizer- This person is in charge of writing a summary of the section(s) assigned. Using the strategy of ordering the events of "first, next, then, after that, finally", the SS shares a written sequencing of the reading for that day.  Before groups met, we practiced these jobs using a chapter from our latest read aloud, The Mystery at Kill Devil Hills. I selected a mystery for our read aloud because each book group is reading a mystery book! I also picked this book because it takes place on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, one of my favorite vacation spots. My family and I have been going there every summer since 1989!  A beautiful OBX view from last Summer! Can't wait to be back! Anyway, I xeroxed a copy of the first chapter for each child. We spent the first day practicing the job of Literary Luminary and Word Wizard. The next day, we used the same chapter to practice being Stellar Summarizers. After everyone had completed the pages with those jobs in their packets (each child receives a packet with a recording sheet for each job, that they keep for the week), we met as a whole class, where I modeled the job of Discussion Director to show children how the book discussions should go. Various children shared their comments and notes from the jobs they worked on. The practice discussion went quite well, and I think the kids are ready!

Here is the list of the mystery books that the children will be reading in our first round of Literature Circles:

The Shadow Nose by Elizabeth Levy (high 3rd grade)
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg (high 4th grade)
The Clue in the Castle: A Woodlands Mystery by Irene Schultz (low-mid 3rd grade)
The Mystery of the Plumed Serpent by Barbara Brenner (mid 4th grade)
Encyclopedia Brown Shows by Way by Donald J. Sobol (mid 3rd grade)

Woohoo! Wahpah!

 It's SPRING BREAK!!!!

No, I'm not headed to Daytona (a la Joey in '81), but I am heading to Austin for my BACHELORETTE PARTY later this week! I cannot wait for some good food, awesome music, and fun with all my girls!

This past week was parent/teacher conference week. I felt much better about these Spring conferences, having had the experience of Fall conferences under my belt. I kept expecting the proverbial "other shoe" to drop, as each conference continued to go smoothly throughout the week. Fortunately, I finished my conferences on Thursday (and into Spring vacation) on a VERY positive note.

With eleven weeks of school left (yes, ELEVEN!), it is not surprising that our classroom supplies are dwindling. We've officially run out of blue paint and only have a couple of boxes of pencils left!!!  I organized our supplies at the beginning of the year so that at each table, there is a pencil box with 4-5 pencils (depending on how many kids sit at the table), a couple of pencil sharpeners, and two large erasers. Recently, children have been complaining that kids are taking pencils from other tables and putting them into their own tables' pencil boxes. This doesn't surprise me, as our class seems to constantly misplace pencils.

Color coding to the rescue!

 I put a strip of colored tape on the pencils. The colored tape corresponds with a table. If children find a pencil on the floor or somewhere else in the classroom, the colored tape will tell them what table's pencil box to return it to. Now, getting the kids to actually clean up is a whole other story....but hopefully this strategy will at least keep them from fighting over pencils!

NEWS ALERT: We have had a string of lunch thefts in my classroom!

At my school, children leave their lunches in their backpacks and get them out when it is time to eat. Recently, we have had THREE incidents where children are finding the lunches in their backpacks opened, with food stolen or even bitten into and put back! GROSS! Unfortunately, since the cubby room is out of teacher/student sight-lines (in a breakout room right before the entrance to the classroom), it is not really monitored for thieves!

I decided to buy a large plastic bin to place within plain sight (next to my desk), where kids now put their lunches every morning. It has been over a month since I instituted "The Lunch Box Box", and so far, no lunch tampering! YAY!

I am SO TIRED of asking "Who's is this?" when students return work with no names! I instituted a "No Name Work" folder that lives at the white board:

 When kids cannot find a worksheet that should have been returned to them, they now know where to check for it! Efficiency!

Finally, Spring colds are popping up everywhere it seems. A couple of weeks ago, I had my first sick day (spent sleeping, drinking tea, and sleeping...) I am very lucky, because since I have an assistant teacher, I never really have to worry about sub plans :) Still, it was so nice to get this lovely gift from my students when I came back to the classroom:

What teacher wouldn't love a "get well" apple?

Anyway, I am over my cold, and I am ready to enjoy my vacation! I hope that when we return from break April 1st, it will actually be Spring :) 

Strega Nona

My class is in the thick of our study of one of my favorite authors, Tomie Depaola! Although Tomie has written so many great books, in my opinion he is most well known for his Strega Nona stories.

For those of you who don't know the story (shame on you!), it is based upon another folktale called The Magic Porridge Pot. Tomie was inspired by this folktale, and reworked it with an Italian twist! The first thing we did as a class was read both stories. Then we created venn diagrams to compare the two stories.

In Strega Nona, we are introduced to the goofy, clumsy Big Anthony, who comes to help Strega Nona take care of her house. When Big Anthony sees Strega Nona cast a spell over the pasta pot, he cannot wait for her to leave so he can try to use it himself! In the story Strega Nona's Magic Lessons, Big Anthony gets himself into even MORE trouble because of his actions. I thought that this story would be a perfect way to reintroduce understanding cause and effect. I had the students complete a graphic organizer to highlight what the effects of Big Anthony's decisions are in the story.

 

The third Strega Nona story I read to the class was Strega Nona: Her Story. This story is the prequel to Strega Nona. The kids loved seeing Strega Nona as a little girl and learning how she grew up to be the Strega Nona that they know from the original story. In this particular story, Tomie uses a lot of Italian words and phrases. I decided this would be the perfect opportunity for a foreign language lesson! 

We first created a list of the words we heard in the story:

Then, the kids got a mini-dictionary that they had to fill out. The students had a lot of fun combining the different words to create fun Italian phrases!

Since there is molto pasta in Strega Nona, I wanted to incorporate that somehow into a fun activity. I decided to try "pasta punctuation". I wrote out sentences from the story without any punctuation. With pieces of pasta (penne, macaroni, and shells), students had to place the pasta where there should be punctuation:

When they finished adding the pasta, they had to write down the sentence with punctuation on a sheet of paper:

 

This was a great way for students to think about quotations, apostrophes, and commas. Many students struggled with where to put the punctuation at the end of a quote. We talked about how if the character is saying STOP with excitement, the excitement is contained in the quote, so the end quotation marks should be after the exclamation point! 

To celebrate the end of this portion of the author study, our class put on a wonderful reader's theater of the original Strega Nona for our school's Friday assembly.  We worked hard creating fabulous sets and props for the show!

And of course, we needed the magic pasta pot:

The audience loved it, and the kids were so proud of themselves!

We will next be traveling from Italy (Tomie's father's side) to Ireland (Tomie's mother's side). Tomie has written some hilarious Irish folktales that I cannot wait to share! Slainte!

Cupcake Course

Okay, enough with this darn snow!

We now have to add on THREE days because we have gone over our snow day limit :(

We were supposed have Monday and Tuesday of President's Weekend off, but now we have to come in on Tuesday. I know I am going to be exhausted, because I am coming back late Monday night from what should be a GREAT hiking/spa trip to Utah with my mom and sister for their February birthdays.

We also lost a day at the end of our Spring break. Since I am coming back again late from another awesome trip to Austin for my BACHELORETTE PARTY (Yee-haw!!!) the night before we need to be back at school, I decided I needed to take a personal day the next day :)

We are off again today, no thanks to this stinky nor'easter, so they are taking away a professional development day in April that the kids originally had off.

The wind outside my window is CRAZY SCARY! But at least I get to watch Olympic figure skating live! I even made myself a delicious pancake breakfast!





 Speaking of cake, I have had the best time teaching my "Cupcake Mini Course"! At my school, students can sign up for mini-courses. Mini-courses are teacher-led classes that meet every Friday for an 8 week session. We have three mini-courses a year. It is a great way for kids from different grade levels to mix together and learn something they find interesting (some other mini-courses that teachers are leading include card games, cartooning, soccer, Italian, and sewing). I decided to introduce my love for baking/cake decorating in my mini-course!

The first thing I did was teach the kids how to use frosting bags/tips:

 

 I bake the cupcakes beforehand, so the kids have plenty of time to decorate! We also practiced rolling out fondant and making shapes.

Since I am from the DC area originally, I had to pay homage to Georgetown Cupcakes in my mini-course. When I first graduated from college in 2008, I worked in a small bakery during the start of the "Cupcake Craze". That was the same summer that the ladies from Georgetown Cupcake opened their first small shop on a side street in Georgetown. I remember stopping by the shop one stifling summer day after a coworker and I made a cake delivery in the neighborhood. We wanted to be so sneaky "checking out the competition", but we kind of blew our cover because we forgot to take off our chef's coats that had our bakery logo on it! Still, everyone in the store was super nice to us. Obviously, these ladies of GC really knew their stuff, with shops all over the country and lines lines lines galore! And of course, a reality show on TLC. I played an episode for the kids in my mini course to get inspired to create a cupcake scene. The "decorators" sketched out a few ideas and voted on their favorite.

Not surprising, a character from a popular cartoon movie was the winner:

Can you guess who this is? If you are not familiar, this is a minion, from the hilarious movie Dispicable Me, starring Steve Carell, who plays Gru, a super-villian turned loving dad :)

The kids learned how to mix colors and plan out which cupcake needed what color in order to make the minion.

We only have a few sessions left, so we are going to vote on an "original flavor" to bake together, and then decorate it on the last session! I am sad to end this mini-course, but excited for the next session, where I will be teaching TAP DANCING!!!

With that, I am going to get packing for my trip out west! I am ready to leave this cold, snowy east coast for a warmer, drier climate!