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I don’t know about you (or okay maybe I have an idea) but I am exhausted by the end of the school year!  So, last year I decided to let the kiddos have a turn!  I sent home a short letter explaining to the kiddos that it was their turn.  If they would like to teach a short lesson, fill out the short slip (they just had to let let me know what they wanted to teach) and return it to school. This year I had 18 kiddos who wanted to teach.  I sorted the kiddos so that 5-6 were

Welcome back!  I am so excited to be linking up with other amazing teacher bloggers to bring you so more “Bright Ideas!” We are a PBIS school (Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports).  I am always looking for ways to point out Positive Behavior in my classroom. One way that I do this is in my weekly newsletter.  I have a “boasting box”.  Each week a few students are recognized for something positive.  I call it my “Shout Out” box.  The kiddos love seeing their name on our newsletter!  It assures me that at least that part of my newsletter is

I am so excited to be linking up with such a great group of bloggers to share ideas!  Isn’t this fun?I am a huge buyer of books.  I do a monthly Scholastic Reading Club order.  My husband gets me children’s books for gifts, I shop at the book sale room at the library.  Consequently I have a lot of new books every month.  The new books always seem to be the most popular ones, plus I want the kiddos to get familiar with them before I put them out into the classroom library.  So, the New Book Box was born!

Most of my posts are about the things that I am doing in my classroom.  I post about products I make and products I use.  I post about ideas that I want to share with other teachers.I LOVE being a teacher.  I LOVE working with kiddos everyday.  That being said, I am greatly disturbed by the things that I see happening to public education today.  I am lucky enough to teach in a grade that doesn’t have to do much “standardized” testing.  The testing that I do is mainly for me.  As testing should be.  Assessments are supposed to be

Are you required to wear your identification badge while you are at school?  We are.  Our card also lets us access the copy machine, so it is handy to have it all the time.  Another neat safety feature that our school has implemented is that our classroom keys (we can only unlock our own classrooms) can LOCK any room in our school building.  So if I am in someone else’s room and there is an emergency, I can lock their door using my key!  That being said (an me being super paranoid), I keep my keys on my lanyard as

Making Mental Images or Visualizing is one of my favorite things to teach the kiddos about reading.  I always say that is what makes reading so magical!  You get to make the pictures yourself.  I started this year with this picture that I found on Pinterest:   We had a great discussion of what this poster meant.  I also have a picture of a guy reading a book at the top.  It says “What I look like I am doing…” and then at the bottom is a picture of a muscular fellow wrestling with a shark and it says “What

Hello all!  I am blogging today over at Who’s Who and Who’s New!  I am writing about Writer’s Workshop, comic strips,  and trying to figure out what that fox says! There is also a freebie!  Come on by… you know you want to!  🙂

Tomorrow is the first day of a New Blog called Who’s Who and Who’s New!  Join us everyday in 2014 for a new educational blog post.  Meet some new bloggers and some rising stars!  Hope to see you there!  🙂

Hello all!  I am sharing an idea that I have been using in my classroom this year that I love!   Shout Outs! A few years ago our school implemented a school wide Positive Behavior Plan.  We are trying to catch the kiddos doing good stuff.  When I read about this product on Teacher to the Core, I knew it would be perfect in my classroom!  (You can find her original post here). This has become part of our classroom routine.  The very last thing that we do at the end of our school day is gather together as a class

Hello!  I wanted to share how I celebrate birthdays in my classroom.   This year in our building we have made a “No edible treats” policy because of all the kiddos with food allergies.  So, not a whole lot of the kiddos are bringing in class treats anymore.  But, I still want to make their day as special as I can! The birthday kiddo gets a birthday pencil and a birthday sticker,  but they also get to keep a paper copy of the morning message written on their birthday!  They LOVE this!  I have the rest of the class sign

When I saw that Teaching with Grace was doing a linky about what our classrooms look like when they are not perfect I HAD to join the fun. I LOVE blog hopping and looking at all of you all’s classrooms, but sometimes I get a bit discouraged because “my room doesn’t look like that!”  Of course, when I post about my classroom I always try to post “perfect” pictures, but most of them time my classroom is much less than perfect!  So, here is some pics of what my classroom typically looks like at the end of the day. This is

This is one of those, “Duh, why didn’t I think of that moments!”   Thank goodness I work with brilliant people! I have my kiddos work with “Thinking Partners” in class.  A LOT!   I used to have them just “Turn and talk to someone sitting close to you”.  Of course then Johnny, Susie, and Tommy don’t have partners  and they have to cross the whole room to talk to each other!   So, my wonderful colleague and friend Kelley came up with a simple yet amazing idea!   Every morning as part of our “Morning Business” the kiddos choose a partner for