Cool Giveaway

 is hosting a GREAT 

 

 The winner will receive Abby's ever famous Clipboard Classroom Activities, 

Deanna's Writing Templates and my Reader's Workshop Graphic Organizers.  

You'll have Reader's/Writer's Workshop, centers or Daily 5 covered for quite some time! 

 

Head on over there to sign up to win. I've got my fingers crossed because this giveaway would be AWESOME in my classroom next year!!

SmartBoard Lessons are my FAVORITE!

In the middle of my first year of teaching my schools tech person walked in and said "In the morning you will have a SMARTBOARD right here!" She was pointed right in the MIDDLE of the ONE white board I had in my classroom. Talk about disappointment, I was already ALWAYS asking for more board space and they wanted to cover up the little I had. The only word I can think of to describe how I felt isn't appropriate for this blog so I'll borrow a saying from Babbling Abby I was 12 kinds of mad!!! It also didn't help the I had NEVER heard of a SmartBoard! Sad but true that was my first year teaching and I had never taken a technology class so this was all new to me.

I got to work the next morning and there it was a SmartBoard covering up my ONLY white board. The tech lady knew I wasn't very happy about this so she paid my class a special visit. She showed us the many WONDERFUL things we could do with the board and I fell in LOVE with my board every since that day.

I use my board for many things throughout the day. I'm going to link some of my favorite Smart Board lessons below. Please note I didn't make many of these lesson but I do make changes to the lessons once I download them. You can do the same thing also. 

Smart Exchange Link

Click on the link above for a wide variety of Smart Board lessons!

Word of the Day

Something I love doing with my students is implementing the Word of the Day in our classroom. I brought the book at the top from a Scholastic Book Warehouse Sale. My book is for K-3 just couldn't find a picture of that book. The book includes lots of different sheets to go along with the words, even a test for the week at the end. I don't use any of those sheets though, I only use the words. I made my own sheet for my students.

 

Word of the Day

At the beginning of the year I give every student a folder with three rings in it. I get these folders from Staples when they are one cent!!! I then allow the students the opportunity to decorate their folders.  Here is an example of the folder 

This picture is BAD, but I left my camera at home :-(

After the students decorate their folders, I explain to them the purpose of the word of the day. I inform them that as first graders it is our job to expand our vocabulary. Of course at the beginning of the year first graders don't know what the word expand means. That's the reason expand is always the first word we use. On the SmartBoard I pull up my word of the day template and we do the first word together. 

This is the Smart Board Template <----click to download

At the end of the week I pick one or two of the words as bonus words on the spelling test. The students love it! 

Here are some examples of their work.

TGIF, have a great weekend!

Clean Hands

The CDC estimates that each year more than 164 million school days are lost due to illness, and that number could be greatly reduced with proper handwashing. As a result, NSF International—a nonprofit public health and safety organization—is challenging school teachers and classroom’s nationwide to stop the spread of germs by lathering-up and showing their cleanest hands through the Scrub Club Clean Hands Game.

Now through April 1, 2011, school teachers, grades K-5, can enter their classroom into a drawing for a chance to win one of five $100.00 gift cards for classroom. Anyone can participate by completing these two simple steps:

Snap a picture of your classroom’s clean hands
Submit your photo and contact information online <---click the link

Once you’ve done that you’ll receive a Scrub Club® Clean Hands Game Certificate and be automatically entered into a drawing for a chance to win one of five $100.00 gift cards for classroom supplies.

Feel free to also visit the Scrub Club website, which offers free lessons to school children on the importance of handwashing.


I'll be entering my class tomorrow!!!

Winner, Winner

Don't fret, I know I'm a day late announcing the winner of the Let's Get Poppin' giveaway. I know that makes me a bad blogger, but my weekend was filled with lots of fun and unexpected sickness. This weekend I had the change to take part in an awesome couples retreat. I'm talking five great couples spending the whole week in a cabin. Talk about GREAT, well that was until yesterday when it was time to come home, I got car sick on the way back. We had to stop SIX times on the way back. That meant our 3 hour drive home was more like a 6 hour drive!!! The good news is after the first four hours I felt much better and slept the rest of the way. Anyway none of that was teacher related but I had to let you all know why I'm late announcing the winner. 

THE WINNER OF THE "LETS GET POPPIN'" GIVEAWAY IS.......

CONGRATS GIRLIE!!!!!

Send me an email Amy with your mailing address at thirstforfirst1@gmail.com so I can send you the popper!!!

Thanks everyone for participating, be on the look out because there will be more giveaways to come!!!!

Let's Get Poppin'

As you all know I teamed up with Abby from The Inspired Apple for a great giveaway! The giveaway includes a copy of "Let's Get Poppin'" adjective activity and a brand new air popper!!! Well you know I HAD to give the activity a go before I could give it away. So today my class had a refresher course on adjectives. Talk about FUN, I'm talking *12 kinds of fun*!

First we did a SMARTboard lesson 
click above to go to the lesson

Then we started the activity 

Of course we used this stuff 

Completed the activity as a class and came up with this 

My door looks a little bad :( 

The students made their own popcorn chart and the best ones went on our JEAN-IUS WORK board

All in all we had a GREAT time doing this activity and now I'm SUPER EXCITED to give another teacher the chance to do this activity also.

What the teacher Wants Giveaway!

While I'm SUPER excited about hosting my first giveaway, I'm also excited that Rachelle over at http://www.whattheteacherwants.blogspot.com/ is hosting a great giveaway too. I would LOVE to win. It's a $100.00 gift card to The Container Store. I'm telling you this store is almost as addivitve as Target! If I win I would buy this wonderful file cabinet.

My goal this summer is to orginize all of my lessons by months. This would so help that process. Hope I win!!!