Motivational Monday!

This is so true on so many levels! As a future teacher, I want to grow and be the best educator that I possibly can be for my students. I will be around those teachers who lift me up and encourage me to be the best. I want to be a lifting and encouraging teacher to someone else. Do not surround yourself with negative nancy's. It will bring you and everyone involved down. When you find yourself in a bad situation... 

Be uplifting. Be amazing. Be awesome. But, most of all, be you. 

Sometimes it is just best to walk away and ask yourself, why do you do what you do? 

Adjectives and Popcorn!!

This poem is absolutely amazing on so many levels!! A fellow 2nd grade teacher shared this poem with me and I want to share it with you. We will be talking about about adjectives the week after spring break and I could not be anymore excited. I have so many great things planned for the kiddos. On Friday, we are going to make popcorn using an air popper (healthy!!) and record as many adjectives as we can about what we are witnessing. I am also going to share with my friends this lovely poem that describes and compares popcorn and reading. There are so many things you can teach your students using this poem. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I know we are going to :)

I will be sure to post pictures of our popcorn adjective experience. It is going to be wonderful!

I Love the Look of Words

By Maya Angelou

Popcorn leaps, popping from the floor

of a hot black skillet

and into my mouth.

Black words leap,

snapping from the white

page.  Rushing into my eyes.  Sliding

into my brain which gobbles them

the way my tongue and teeth

chomp the buttered popcorn.

When I have stopped reading,

ideas from the words stay stuck

in my mind, like the sweet

smell of butter perfuming my

fingers long after the popcorn

is finished.

I love the book and the look of words

the weight of ideas that popped into my mind.

I love the tracks

of new thinking in my mind.

Cause and Effect Bubbles

Cause and Effect

I got this super cute idea from Teachers Pay Teachers and decided to tweak it a little bit and give it a whirl. So, here is the final outcome and I must say I was super proud of our kiddos for doing such a wonderful job!! Here is the link and I would highly recommend checking out her stuff!! 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Cause-Effect-Craftivity-Bubblegum-includes-posters-846021

I also started out this lesson by chewing a piece of bubble gum and popping with a pen.(I have no shame. ha) It really got the children's attention and that started our discussion about cause and effect. We wrote the cause and effect on the board and then watched a BrainPopJr. video. 

Graduation Invitations

I have been anticipating this arrival for the last week or so and it has finally arrived! Graduation Invitations are ready to be addressed and mailed out! I will probably address them over the lovely Spring Break we have quickly approaching! 

This packaging is absolutely adorable and the seller was kind enough to send an extra invitation for me to keep! Kathy also attached a sweet thank you card. She was extremely easy to work with and kept you up to date on how my product was coming along. I would definitely recommend these invitations and other products she sells through Etsy.

Here is a link to her sight: 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BostonKissedCrafts

Part of the proceeds from my purchase will go to American Boston Terrier Rescue!

Haikudeck.com

Haikudeck.com is a great tool to introduce vocabulary to your kiddos. The program allows you to either choose a picture from their gallery or upload a picture from your personal stash and add text to them. I am going to use this next week for the first time. I provided a link to my first deck below, check it out and let me know what you think!

https://www.haikudeck.com/p/ZFQyRpEV8E/vocabulary-55

Formative Assessment or Just for Fun!

This awesome Dollar Tree find will make for a great formative assessment in the classroom! Sticky notes are amazing! :) If you are a little skeptical, I tried them out and they stick pretty well! Eeeek!!  The possibilities are endless and for $1 dollar, I bought several! I think I will try them out tomorrow... I will let you all know how it goes!

Paint Swatch Synonyms!

Well, as a student teacher, I learn all sorts of new things daily. My mentor is absolutely amazing and she is really hands on with the students. I am eager to share with you what we did this week for synonyms. My mentor, Mrs. Winstead, put this lovely Pinterest idea to life. It was definitely NOT a Pinterest Fail. *haha* So, all week we talked about synonyms and then on Fabulous Friday we made a hallway display with paint swatches. 

(paint swatches = teacher's best friend)

The kiddos were introduced to a thesaurus today and they really used what they learned and ran with it.

Paint swatches really are great! There are many crafts and activities that you can do and/or make with these little nifty things. (not to mention--- they are FREE) and what teacher complains about free?

So, below you can find pictures of what our class put together and as my first blog post, I really hope you enjoy it!!

 This is all the teacher preparation that goes into this activity, other than displaying it in the hallway.

*Pictured here we have a collection of all the work the students did*

*A close up of some super star examples*

As you can see they put in a lot of hard work and they came out magnificently. So, you are probably wandering what we did with all of these synonym paint swatches?

Here is what we displayed in the hallway in honor of our students hard work!! It turned out very Spring like and that is exactly what we were aiming for since all of the snow has officially moved out of East Tennessee!

Each student also completed one of these to be displayed with the big flower, they all received a different word to complete and they had to color the synonyms one color and the antonyms a different color!