Happy New Year!!

So we've made it to 2018. And it's been a fabulous, carb filled holiday break. 

I've made some resolutions: 
I think I can do all of those things. Starting with the bacon. Lots of eggs and bacon in my future. 
I may have eaten the bacon while cooking the eggs.....oops.....

Disney is on the calendar for Carly's 18th birthday in October. I'm working on Shelly Ree's TpT Focused Success course!! I'm going to attempt to include more stuff in my blog posts and post more often (though that one may take a while!). And the pants thing - I'm going to try to not be as tired and lazy as I have been. We shall see.....


We are launching our SRL this week, and beginning to learn all about professional Journalism. Remember when we were chosen for PBS and our producer visited??

We had a full house!! 




Download plans HERE.
Since I don't have a sneak peek Sunday for you, I just wanted to take a quick jot to let you know how Robotics went!












Though we didn't win, we had a great first experience at State. We learned a lot and came back with some great ideas for next year. 


Oh my goodness guys it's finally here!!! This is our week to go to State! The robotics team has been working so hard and I can't wait to see how we do. 

Saturday we will trek down to Nola for the FIRST LEGO League State Championship. 




Well this is it! We've made it to the week before Thanksgiving Break!! Whew, it has been a busy month so far.

For starters, my whole schedule got switched up. Our Spanish teacher got another job, and we hired a second French teacher, so the Spanish class time is now my Study Skills class, and the original Study Skills class is now French for all of seventh grade. So yay.


Whoa. I never agreed to having Halloween during the school week. Who do I talk to about changing this?!?!?

This is the week of our school wide Festival of Fantasy. We plan out a day of fun activities for the kiddos such as Breakout EDU, Figurative Language Quiz Show, and Build Your Own Story Slideshow. I think it's going to make for a good day! (even if it is Halloween on a Tuesday!)

With the remainder of the week, I will be reading over and editing news reports before production starts. I'm hoping to have them all edited by Thursday, but that may not work out......Halloween usually takes a lot out of me! Still, it's good to have a plan!

Grab my plans HERE.




This is the fun week! We get to finish up Media Mania and get started learning all about video editing. The sixth graders are going to have so much fun this semester! 

I like to use WeVideo to best. It's free, even though there's a giant watermark on the video, but it still makes a good quality video. But I do introduce multiple editors so the kiddos can decide. 

Check out my plans here.
Happy Sunday! How is everyone doing? I'm hoping that your August is going smoothly as many of you are preparing to return to school or have already been back in the classroom!

My plans for the week! Grab a PDF here. 

This week I've got plans for beginning digital citizenship with my sixth graders. I use Common Sense Media because not only are they a wealth of reliable information they are also FREE. We like free! Free is good. 

I am a Common Sense Certified Digital Educator! What this means is that I've taught their curriculum to my kiddos and I've done so effectively. 

I love how simple and direct the lessons are for Common Sense. They are written with the student in mind so that he or she can understand and see the effect of digital citizenship on their lives. 

Check out the Course Scope and Sequence HERE. They've got lessons for K-12. 

I'm starting the 6th grade off with Digital Life 101. We talk about the effect of using the Internet in our everyday lives and how important it is to maintain perspective. 

I use an assignment where the kids must answer "My Digital Life is Like..." and create a simile ending. Then they must follow digital instructions to create a shared slide deck of similes. 


All of these templates can be found in the linked doc at the end of this post. 

This week I've also got a slideshow for helping students learn how to search the Internet effectively. We learn about Google shortcuts, we talk about how to use the omnibox, we decide the best ways to determine which search results are viable, and we keep up with using copyright appropriately. 


We also get to dive into our Keyboarding lessons which the kids HATE but it is so important to learn how to type correctly and the sooner the better - classrooms are getting Chromebooks in Kindergarten! If they learn incorrectly to begin with, its SUPER hard to teach them the right way later on. 

We use EduTyping. Our school has purchased a subscription, but there are so many free typing programs out there. Do a search and play around. See what works for you and your students. 

For seventh grade Study Skills, I'm still slowly working my way through the Executive Functioning Bundle I purchased from Pathways to Success last week. I say slowly because I only have about 75 minutes with the kids and they need time to do homework and studying. It is Study Hall after all. 

So we do a mini lesson, followed by some short activity, and then they have the remainder of the time to do what they need to do. I've been using the bundle lessons and creating Nearpods for my 7th graders. Since it isn't my original work, I'm not sharing the lessons with anyone. We use Nearpod because it is completely paperless and the kids can follow along on their screens and answer questions and complete activities. 

That's it! Click HERE to access the linked doc for all of the resources I've got for this week. 

Happy teaching!
Hi guys! I can't believe how fast summer went by. I had so many plans and alas, only accomplished a few. But I did rest up and I'm ready for this year!

Ready to also launch my Sneak Peek Sunday again! I know I've been slacking for quite some time, but new year new me, right??

 Let's get started!

So I won't talk much fluff, especially since the pictures pretty much speak for themselves, but this classroom is my happy place! So excited to share it with you this year!

So scroll through the pics, check it out, grab some freebies, and thanks for stopping by!

Hi Guys!! Today I'm going to share a quick post about my math centers. I created this system as I was writing our math curriculum. This past year we decided to write our own math because we felt that using the hodgepodge of materials we were using the previous year was too disjointed and not effective with our kiddos. You can check out my math curriculum HERE.


The centers rotation I designed so the kids would get practice with new skills, practice with old skills, practice with fluency skills, and practice with critical thinking skills. I also included an "I'm Through" rotation so the early finishers would have some ideas about what to do when the center game is done. 

Each letter in MATH IT stands for something:
M: Model It
A: Add It
T: Think It
H: Hone It
IT: I'm Through



I made labels (that you can grab for free!) and attached to some bins. Each center with its materials goes into the bin each week. Placed in my math area and all is ready to go. 

The kids know where to go because I have a rotation schedule hanging on my cabinets. 

Close Up: 
I placed the group/table labels on circles and used taped paper clips to hold them. Every day I would move it one to the right. That's it. Easy peasy. 

I had five tables so I had four do the center activities and the fifth table would practice on the computer. So every day some type of skill was being reviewed and reinforced.

I would call individual students in groups based on their needs to my small group table during center time. I could reinforce, reteach, or challenge the kids depending on what they needed. 

All of my monthly themed math centers can be found in my store. 

Thanks for visiting!
Powered by Blogger.
Back to Top