Welcome!

Today is the day, I am on my way... Or at least am ready to share my blog. First, I want to say thank you for coming by or a visit! The blog world is new, but I have thought about starting one for a long time. My goal in writing this bloge has several components.1. I want to keep track of awesome ideas other people share and that I use in my own classroom in a way that I can come back to find it later with my own reflections.2. I wanted a venue to reflect upon best practices and collabrate with others in that process.3. I want to share ideas and strategies that I find to be very successful. I have used Daily 5 for the last couple of years in an upper grade class, and I know that there are many other people who want to start it but have concerns. This year, as I launch into our reading work, I plan to share the things that work.... or don't work. :)4. I am totally reworking my math block this year, and am sure that it should be an interesting ride. I hope that you will join me for the excitement, and possibly the tears! I have high hopes for my improved math journals, and common core task cards. 5. I have been teaching for 5 years, and I think that I have a lot of ideas to help new teachers, or teachers who need a change when it comes to classroom management. I am continually adjusting my management systems, but this has always been a strength for me. I will share templates, ideas, and resources in this blog. I hope that you will continue to come back and share your thoughts with me! A little about me:My name is Sara, and I teach 4th grade in North Carolina. I am starting at a new school this year, and am very excited about it! My new school is less than 5 minutes from my house. I see this as being both awesome, and terrifying! I have a wonderful relationship with my bed, and therefore, never want to leave it in the morning. ;) Thus, 5 minutes away will be fantastic! But, I will now be shopping in the same area as my students... could be dangerous! Any advice here would be greatly appreciated.I have worked with students of all levels, and backgrounds. My previous school was a Title 1 school. I am 29 years old. For stress relief, I run or swim. I am working towards the goal of running the Disney Princess Half Marathon next February. I am very ADHD, and can sometimes be very unfocused, but super fun! I like pretty, colorful things. I talk a lot.. But then, I kind of think that everyone who blogs must talk a lot because isnt this just another form of talking??? :PThanks for listening, I look forward to talking with you more! Sara

The first set is ready!!

Wow, I can't beleive how addicted I have become to making things on my iPad!! I have completed the first set of task cards for fourth grade common core math. I am looking for some feedback before putting them out there to share with the world. I completed sets of task cards for all of fourth grade Operations and Algebraic Thinking A couple of things I am considering: 1. Making duplicates of them that are in black in white, without for people who can't print in color 2. Breaking the skills down further to building block skills, or focused remedial skills for students who need more support Thoughts? The first 3 people who respond and are willing to look over the cards for me will get the whole set for fourth grade Operations and Algebraic Thinking for free!

Task Cards Sampling

I am so excited abouot these task cards I've made so far!! My friends all think I am nuts because it is summer, and aren't we supposed to be doing anything at all BUT school stuff? I think that this is fun (call me crazy) and if I am going to be sitting around watching TV I might as well do something productive. I think I mentioned in the last post about task cards, that I started this project because I was unhappy with the task cards I had used last year. It was awesome that someone else had made them, but the description of the set was not as detailed as I would like, and sometimes there were answer keys while other times there were not. My goal in creating these is to have clear learning targets, bright colorful cards, and answer keys wherever possible. I am uploading pictures of the task cards I have made so far. Please comment and let me know what you think!When I get through the set for 4.OA I will put it out to share with others. Have a great day!

Math Task Cards

Last year, a friend turned me onto task cards in math. They were great, and there were a lot out there to be found. (Especially on proteacher.com) however, I had a hard time knowing if they were exactly what I wanted to correlate with the standards that I wanted to use them for. This year, our state is rolling out common core standards k-12. With that change, I decided to take some time this summer and make my own task cards. I am going to include the standard that they are created from in the set so that if other people want to use them, you will also know what the questions reflect. Due to common core asking students to do more application and deeper thinking, these will not be multiple choice questions but open-ended, matching activities, and sorts. I am going to figure out how to put them on teacherspayteachers when I get a few done.

Breaking all the rules..

My friend Denise just yelled at me because it is summer and I am NOT... absolutely NOT... supposed to be doing anything related to school! However, I am not always the rule follower so here I sit thinking of all kinds of things I could be making and playing with! I've been so inspired by Pinterest (aka "The Time Suck") and all of the blogs on Pinterest that I wanted to find a way to keep track of all of those cool things I do all year long! So.. a little about me. I am a fourth grade teacher, and I am just changing to a new school. It is super exciting and a little scary at the same time! I am not sure yet if I will need to do all the same things I normally do at the start of school. I love to run, read, and relax. Bright colors and sparkly things are very exciting. I started two projects tonight (besides this one):1. Paint Chip-palooza!! I have always loved the paint chip aisle at any place that sells paint. It is so bright and cheerful! So when I saw an idea on Pinterest to make a calendar using paint chip samples I thought how awesomely colorful will that be?!! I started today by choosing my colors and cutting off the end that has the words on it. Tomorrow or Monday, I will get a poster frame so I can put it together. I will post a picture of it when it is finished. I chose all shades of blue and some greens because my classroom theme is underwater/Fish (particularly Finding Nemo!) I was having so much fun with the paint chips that I had to find something else to make too! I found the links to word family activities with the paint chips, and I made 3 sets. I used a Sharpie to write on the cards. They are certainly colorful! I am still looking for other ideas to use these fabulous things for! I am thinking of making the Synonmym Flowers to find better and "brighter" words. I also had the idea of making place value charts. I want to use interactive math notebooks this year, and I am sure we can find tons of uses for them in there!2. Figuring out how to use Pages on my iPad to create fun documents! I finally discovered how to save a file as a pdf so that I can actually use the things I make on my iPad the other day. That opened up a whole new world for me! I love pages because it is a combination of Word and Publisher. Tonight I figured out how to make the document have a background of things that do not move as you move the objects around on the main page. I made a first attempt at a newsletter format, and was able to include cute little Nemo pictures. It looks great so far, although a little plain in some areas so I will have to keep working on that one. I will upload some pictures as I start to get things together. I am excited for this year, and hopefully will have some cool things to share of my own!

I also started making my new place value chart. I used to have one that was a giant caterpillar. Each body segment was a large brightly colored oval. In each segment was the name of the place, and an example of it. I decided that the caterpillar did not really fit my underwater/finding Nemo/Fish theme. I made it with fish.. See the picture below for an example. :) I will laminate it and cut them out with places from one millions down to hundredths. They are sized proportionally so that the places which have the smallest value have the smallest shapes.