The Third Wheel

Today's blogger is Mrs. D at The Third Wheel.  She is a special ed teacher turned 3rd grade teacher turned instructional coach.  This morning I was reading her class management tips.  As an experienced 20 year teacher, it is still good to sit and read and be re-inspired about class management.
This year I do have the dream class...the kind of class that substitutes leave gushing notes and messages about and can't wait to return to...15 um, I mean 16 as of last week of the best 1st graders ever!  If only I wasn't being dragged down by meetings and more meetings and new curriculum to ponder, then I could spend more time enjoying their 16 smiling and eager faces!  Ah, such is a teacher's life :)

Back to Mrs. D....

She shares great insight from the perspective of a teacher and a coach.  She also has a very well stocked TpT store HERE.

I love the Edible science experiments, as I'm sure her students do as well :)  They say they are geared to 2nd-4th grades, but I'm sure you could find some inspiration for a 1st grade or for you STEM class lessons!


I also found that she has a large number of novel studies...for many popular titles. I bet you could find one that you use each year!






And for those of you who haven't gotten a raise in a number of years...like me...there is the FREEBIE STUFF.  I mean A LOT of Freebie stuff!  Very exciting to find a talented author/teacher with free stuff!

3rd Grade Thoughts

Stephanie is the blogger/teacher behind this creative blog.  I tell my 1st grade students how important presentation is when you are writing....her blog header is a great example.  It totally caught my eye! I absolutely love it!

When you get past the header, you will love what is beyond...fun resources and ideas for teaching 3rd grade.   Her most recent post is her Top 10 From 2014.  A perfect place to start to find the wide array of resources she has created and tips she gives for teaching 3rd grade.

Class Management and Organization are some of the largest topics Stephanie covers.  She has a classroom that is so stinking organized...could she come do mine please?!

It is all so neat and tidy...but what about when the students walk through the door? Well she has some great classroom management resources as well.  These posters are great and they come with anchor charts as well.  Not only useful in 3rd grade, but I use them in 1st. 

She also has some wonderful resources for building your classroom climate as well.  I can't begin to show or tell you about everything...you will just need to visit her blog or stop by her TpT Store as well.

My last weekend of Summer 2014

Yeah....life is busy and life is full and life is flying by....But this blog is something I really want to revive and move forward with because I realized I am neglecting some of my hobbies I love the most!

This is the blog post that inspired me to blog again!   Post --> {Click THIS}  

Kathy has a whole list of great math game ideas for levels K-3.  My first graders will be coming right after Labor Day, and when I saw this I knew exactly what I needed this for!  

I am going to make one of these...

• My version: The game will be for two-4 people.
• Each person gets 6 linking cubes of of one color (or little bears or whatever you have that they can have six of one color per person) 
• They will roll one die and they get to put a color token in each section when they roll it.  
• If they roll the same number twice, they lose a turn.  
• The winner is the one who gets one of their tokens in each section first!
• This is a very easy beginning of 1st grade center game which won't take adult involvement to participate.

Kathy has other great resources on her website...check her out!

KathyGriffinTeach.com 

Day 113 Clever Classroom Blog

Here's a new blog in the Teacher Blog realm of creativeness.  It's the Clever Classroom a creation of Emma Farrell.  Emma is an Aussie teacher who has been teaching, making and creating for quite some time.  She started on Ebay and moved toward TpT a few years ago.  Her specialty is primary...from pre-school to 3rd grade.  Her blog is brand new...but her eBay store and TpT store have been around for quite some time.  

Emma has over 250 items in her TpT store.  And she has gobs of great FREE stuff...which this time of the month is a blessing to find! (payday is only a week away...man, getting paid once a month really stinks!)

She is a woman after my own heart...she is organized.  She has nice category links to her blog posts making it really easy to find the needful thing you are looking for!   See...functional and cute!  And she has more too...but this is just a few of them....

Right away I found a really cute Mother's Day art idea.  Perfect for framing or mounting on a fridge :)  I think
it will be a fun card to go with our Mother's Day tea and our flower pots my 1st graders are making for their moms.

You also need to check out her description and how-to for keeping your table cloth on the table in your classroom...or if/when the table is outside in a breeze.  This has been a battle over the years....masking tape, binder clips, chip bag clips and even the attractive roll of duct tape to no avail.

This looks like a cool idea.  Click {HERE} to go to her blog and find out how to make it.  You may need a conversion chart because being Aussie she talks in that strange metric language...lol

Thanks for hopping by today!  Come back again real soon and see who else I find!

Day 89 Classroom Caboodle Blog

What a fun find today on TpT...a neighbor teacher.  Yes, we aren't in the same state, but Spokane is just across the border from where I live in North Idaho.  They have Trader Joe's...we have moose.  They have hockey and baseball teams...we have little league.  They have big concerts like Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood...and we have Scout-o-Rama and the rodeo at our fair grounds :)  Good thing they are our neighbors! (But the gas at our Costco is about 20 cents less a gallon than theirs so we can afford to drive over the border more often :)

Betsy has a lot of resources for teachers.  She has a blog a website and a TpT store!   She has done just about everything but fix the kitchen sink in her school district.  But I wouldn't put that down as not being a possibility too!  Her resources are mostly for grades 3rd and up...but much of what she does and says can be brought down to the level you need it.

I love, love, love this lesson she has posted about teaching your class to line up!  I thought this was just a 1st grade problem, but apparently it's something that doesn't stick with the kids and has to be retaught each school year!  Her lesson is called: Teaching your students to Master the Art of lining up.  I just have to chuckle...because next year I plan to try a whole new attitude and approach to this simple task...but one that tends to hold us all up from leaving the classroom at least a couple times a week.

If you are looking for ways to incorporate technology into your classroom...then Betsy is your gal for that too!  She has just gotten a set of iPads for her class!  That is so cool!  I would love to just have a center full of them for all of our primary classrooms.  Betsy has an awesome series of posts about using the iPad and the apps to try with your students.  Click {HERE} to go to the posts.  She is posting more as she is working the kinks out with her students.  It's a great resource to get you started!

And then if you can't find enough treasures in her blog...she also has an actual website and a store on TpT.
Although most of her resources are for beyond the primary years....I found a treasure that I have added to my TpT Wishlist.  Betsy has a lot of math and science in her store.  And this cool lesson, Stacking Heart Challenge, now turned Valentine's Day and conversation hearts into a science project, not just a math project!!

Love it, Love it, Love it!  Can't wait to use it next February!  One of the things I love, even after 18 years of teaching, is discovering a new way to use something old!  Cuz when I'm excited, my students get excited...and when they are excited...they learn more!  Thanks Betsy!!

Today I didn't have to hop far...where shall I hop next?

Day 72 The Creative Chalkboard

Oh my goodness...I find blogs that wow me all the time.  I wish I had as much time as some of these amazing teachers I find online seem to have.  Maybe I just get too distracted by all the "shiny objects" I find made by others...but I just don't feel like I produce as much as I think about in my head.

But thank heavens for those who do seem to have the time or the energy to get it all done and share it with others!  Today's bloggers is one of those that really made me say wow and to fire up the printer and to load up my wish list on TpT.

Krista has the blog The Creative Chalkboard and she has a wonderful store on TpT.  I found her through the TpT newsletter last month.  She does clip art...(I am a clip art hoarder...just to know...they haven't made a tv show about that yet though--guess Honey Boo Boo is more interesting...lol)  and Krista creates things to use with your class as well.

You can get a good freebie taste of it in her TpT store.  I love her writing templates.  They are so darn creative while still being usable.  Sometimes teachers make great stuff, but they don't have enough room for 1st grade writers to write anything on them.  Or they are so full of clip art that there may only be a few math problems actually on the page.

Krista has a nice balance to her creations.  And if you want more free fonts...she has those too.  Very cute, easy to read ones for young kids.

I love this hamburger organizer.  It goes perfectly with the poster I have in my room!  My 1st graders love the analogy.

Now...if the TpT treasures aren't enough...go to Krista's blog.  Now I want to find time to redo my classroom!  Maybe if I sell enough on TpT myself I can find the money to spruce things up a bit.  I dug deeper and found the tour of her classroom from last September because I absolutely love how she displays some of the things in her room!  Click here for the link to the tour of her classroom from last September.  Very cool and organized! 

I want to know what she is using the pizza pans on the wall for...and those lovely large compare and contrast posters...and the fact poster...and...well I think I just need to go to her classroom! I think I need a trip to Delaware!!

And here is a treasure...shows me that I don't go to the Dollar Tree near enough!  She found these cool eyeballs for her readers to inspire them to track with their fingers!  Now I am on a mission to find these!  Monster fingers are cool...but these are cooler...or the coolest (that was our spelling pattern a couple weeks ago -er and -est endings)

I'm still hopping along...this was blog number 72.  I can't believe that the year is flying by so quickly!

Day 65 Double Duty Tuesday

Here is a two-fer day...I was invited to a fun linky party hosted by 1-2-3 Teach With Me.  Do you have a Facebook page for your blog?  Do you want more "likes"?  Well, here is a great way to make new Facebook friends.  Head over there and join up with her Linky Party.

Here is a 3rd grade find...Although I teach 1st grade...I can never get enough of those organized ideas.  I can always improve how I run centers...and pretty much anything else in my classroom and perhaps my life too!

Stephanie teaches 3rd grade in Colorado...one of my favorite places on earth!  Well, second only to North Idaho that is.  Stephanie uses the Daily 5 in her classroom.  She also has a wonderful routine set up for Math Centers.  You have to check it out.

I would love to try more centers in my classroom.  My schedule is just not the way I want it in my new school.  All my free time is the last hour of the day and by then the kids are whooped and not into hard thinking.  I am enjoying my class, but I am also looking forward to it not being my first year again!

So how do you fit in centers and reading groups?  It's hard.  Like I said, the end of the day just doesn't work for me.  I'm tired, the kids are tired...I don't feel like I am as effective as I was when I got to do my reading during the morning.  I am kind of thinking of changing things up a bit after Spring Break.

After 16 years, 3 school districts and 4 schools...I'm still trying to find the perfect routine.  Stephanie from 3rd Grade Thoughts has inspired me to try some new things.  Thanks!

Day 62 Adventure of a Third Grade Teacher

Amber is a third grade teacher from North Carolina. Her blog is called The Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher.  Yes, teaching is definitely an adventure just like her blog. She is an enthusiastic new teacher with lots of great ideas.  I love the mini-lesson ideas she posted.  I do many similar ones with my 1st graders.  I am sure our 3rd grade teachers will be happy once they get my 1st graders in two years :)

Here is one of my favorites that she posted.  Her Mini Lesson on Precise Language...those horrible boring, and dreaded words:  nice, kind, good, bad

We don't call it precise language in my 1st grade classroom...they are Delicious Words.  You know, like Fancy Nancy Delicious.  My kiddos have so much fun adding sticky notes to our chart.  I keep the sticky pads all over the room.  And it not only helps with their enthusiasm for reading, but for their enthusiasm for writing as well.

One of the things that our district wants us to focus on is problem solving and math strategies.  Yup, we never did that before until this year.  {is there a key on my laptop for heavy sarcasm? I would be pressing it about now.}   If you aren't already teaching strategies or you need some fresh ideas to keep the kiddos on top of their game, then you need to check out this cool idea that Amber uses with her third grades.  It could easily be adapted up or down.  If we can write, we can solve.

She has her students solve word problems in these cute little books.

 But the best part of these little books is that all the word problems are made by the students in her class.  She puts them together and then the students solve each others problems.  Wow...my students would absolutely love that! And I'm sure they would be much more creative than I could be!

Keep digging on her blog...Adventure of a Third Grade Teacher...there are lots of great treasures to find!

Day 53 I Teach. What's Your Super Power?

Well, if there were a top 10 of the "Best Teacher Blog Names", this would be in the top 3 for sure!  Perhaps even number 1!

Megan is a Texas teacher, teaching 3rd grade this year and she shares the ups, downs and the need to have super powers...err...I mean the tricks she uses to help her students learn.  I Teach. What's Your Super Power is full of great stuff.  I discovered a new website for classroom behavior management.  It's called Class Dojo.  Megan tells all about using it in her class on THIS Post.

It seems to be pretty popular in some parts of the country from the way she talks about it...but hasn't made it to North Idaho yet. Heck, we are so behind in technology up here that it's no great surprise.  Hey, at least most of us have whiteboards now instead of chalkboards!  I do say most of us...there are a few rooms in my building where the teachers still use stuff called chalk!


Megan not only designs units and activities to use in your classroom but she also designs background papers.  This is a great thing if you want to design projects, cards, bulletin boards or cover pages for your TpT creations!  Click HERE for her TpT Store.

She has this mega pack for sale on her TpT store.  But if you want to take some freebies out for a test drive, she has some in her store too!

Are you following my Blog Hop Challenge?  Choose your favorite method to follow me over in the column on the side of the blog, 

or

friend me on Facebook.  

Day 49 3rd Grade Grapevine

Do you have everything ready for President's Day?  It's the 100th day of school for us tomorrow so President's Day will be on hold for another day.  But if you are in need of some last minute ideas, head over to Mrs. Hardin's 3rd Grade Grapevine.

This coin chart is her freebie for today.  These are great charts for teaching the coins!  I downloaded these and will be using them as I am introducing nickels very soon.  

Susan has some great resources and ideas on her blog...but the bulk of her ideas are in her TpT and TN shops.  Be sure to visit those shops!

Day 48 Teaching 4 Real

Pam is a Georgia teacher who blogs.  Her blog Teaching 4 Real...keeps it real.  She has a great mix of her ideas, shared ideas from other bloggers, freebies and of course my favorite...the giveaways!  She combines it all with a mix of humor and southern charm!

Most of her teaching over the years has been 3rd through 5th...so it's a bit above my young first graders...but there is more than just first grade in the world.  I'm sure there must be...I've heard rumors.  ;-)

I loved  her lesson on Geometry when she was teaching Angles and Lines.  Kind of reminds me of the Line Boogie I made up for my firsties to remember horizontal, vertical and diagonal.

I could just see my principal coming in on a walk through evaluation when I'm doing this.  Oh wait...she did come in once when I was doing my Line Boogie :)  She got quite a kick out of it too!

So what sort of embarrassing lessons have you got caught in the middle of by your administrator?  lol  Please share!

Day 46 Teaches 3rd in Georgia

I have been finding lots of blogs...LOTS of blogs. I think I have my list made through the middle of March already!  It's fun to see all the different styles and personalities through these teacher's blogs.

What I have found is that blogs are like finding a book at a bookstore.  If the title doesn't hook you, the cover photo might.  Now that's good and bad.  It's great marketing, but you might miss some amazing stories if you only look at the cover.  Which is what we teach our students all the time.

Just like there are thousands upon thousands of books, there are almost as many blogs out there as well!  And if I only looked at the header and the most recent post...I might not find  some awesome jewels out there.

Today's blog is a good example.

To the author of this blog, I will apologize first.  I got caught up in the cute and fancy headers that so many bloggers have created to draw me, the user, in.  Your header was pretty simple...and you really don't have very many posts either.  So I almost surfed right on by...But your blog is like the iceberg where only a little bit of the possibility is above the surface.

If you are a 3rd grade teacher...you have to dig into this blog.  She has some very useful tips and ideas...but what you don't see right away is her huge resource over on TpT!  She has a LOT of great units, games and lessons that she has put together for you to use right away in your classroom with your students!  She has 175 items in her store!  Wow!  Go visit her....now!!

Day 24 Simply Centers

They named their blog incorrectly...It should have been called Center Heaven! Because you will be in heaven when you start digging around on this blog.  Simply Centers has literally thousands of ideas for centers...just (simply) centers!  The best part is how it is all organized by subject and grade level!  Lots of different bloggers contribute links to their center activities.

There is not only math and reading, but science, social studies, technology and writing!  It has everything grouped in grade categories too.  K-2  3-5 and 6-8.  And if you are new to centers or if you have a group of students that need something different this year then they also have a category for "Organizing" centers!

You see, this is way cool!  Anyone can do centers now!  check it out!

  

My journey continues, one blog at a time :)  Come along with me!

Day 22 Tonya's Treats for Teachers

 Tonya must think that all of us teachers like ice cream...ok, so maybe it's true....

But on her blog, Tonya's Treats for Teachers, she has treats that won't make you have to take an extra trip to the gym! She is from North Carolina...a state that did not have it's proverbial head in the sand and has been tackling the move to Common Core for much longer than the state of Idaho. When I need help with Common Core, I am always finding resources and references that link back to North Carolina.

Tonya teaches 3rd grade and she has fun ideas on her blog.  She has a Teacher's Notebook store as well as a TpT store.  If you are looking for some great math resources...she has been making a lot of those lately.  She has a huge unit on fractions that she is almost finished with.  I saw some pieces of it and it's clean, organized, and beautifully done.

I also liked this multiplication freebie she has...very visual.  I could probably even use it for my 1st graders at the end of the year.  I linked the post...just make sure you go down a little ways into it to find it.  It looks like this:

Have you followed my blog yet?  Don't miss the next best blogger I find tomorrow!

Day 19 Fern Smith's Classroom Ideas

It has been a long two weeks.  It seems hard to believe that this was the same amount of time that we just had off for Christmas break.  These past two weeks seemed a whole lot longer.  Don't you think so?

But now it's Saturday morning! And to make this one even sweeter, it's a 3 day weekend!  So what fun plans do you have for your weekend?

To start my morning, I am on the search for more teacher blogs.  It's not hard to find them...it's harder to keep track of them.  Pinterest is great for that.  I always tag my favorites that I want to go back to on my board. But I started my 365 Blog Hop Challenge to get to know more of my blog neighbors and to be able to find them again.

If two weeks flew by, then my three day weekend will be gone in a blink of an eye!  Especially with all that I have to do this weekend....

My weekend will include:

• Sleeping in (I got up at 7:00 instead of 5:30 -- woohoo!)
• Adding blogs to my 365 Blog Hop Challenge
• Staying warm (it's 9 degrees outside right now at 8:30 in the morning)
• Finish grading the assessments I gave last week
• Start my report cards
• Taking pictures at my friend's daughter's 18th birthday party
• Adding more blogs to my 365 Blog Hop Challenge
• Working on my report cards
• Watching the 49ers game
• Finish lesson plans for the next two weeks
• Making the program for our Cheer Competition next weekend
• Working on my report cards
• Paying the bills :)
• Turning the pictures I took at the birthday party into a photo book on Shutterfly
• Working on my report cards
• Catching up on the laudry folding

So now you see how a 3 day weekend can fly by?  Goodness....just looking at that list makes me feel like it's already Monday night!

I think I will get back to the fun part of my weekend...looking for blogs...

This is the one I was hanging out on this morning.  Her blog is called Fern Smith's Classroom Ideas!  Fern is from Florida and teaches 3rd grade. She was even chosen as teacher of the year at her school...so her co-workers know what a treasure she is. She has lots of fun ideas and freebies and items on her blog and in her TpT and Teacher's Notebook stores that you and your students will just love!

I have to admit, one of her posts just stopped me in my tracks...

Read what it says under the picture!

Yes, this is the top of her desk when she leaves school everyday.  This is what I have always wanted to achieve, but have never been able to accomplish!  I just love the 3 hole punch next to it all.  Maybe if I had that on my desk it would help me stay organized...lol.

Nope, organization is just something I have to keep striving for...I don't think it is what I will ever attain 100%.  I just have little windows of hope!  But Fern, you are amazing!!  Not only do you create awesome units and activities...but you probably know where they all are! lol

Day 17 3rd Grade Gridiron

Here is the perfect blog for the big game this weekend...The 3rd Grade Gridiron.

I'm a 49ers fan...have been since moving to California from Florida as a kid.  (Before that I was a true blue Dolphins fan...my parents were even lucky enough to have Miami Dolphin season tickets during their "Perfect Season" -- I got to watch the game at home with my little sister and a babysitter -- oh well)

Now I live in North Idaho...and until this season, the Seahawks, being the closest team, have not been worth watching....we thought we were on track this year...but they lost last weekend...so now it's back to the Niners for us.

Now sitting down watching a football game doesn't happen for me.  I am not a good sitter.  I am a good stander and do-er.  I don't know if it's why I am a teacher or if it is from being a teacher, but I have the need to multi-task.  So I will probably be on my laptop looking for new blogs and ideas to pin and post.  But if you ask my boss...I'm working on my report cards...really....I am!

Dana's blog is from Atlanta.  A place I have been to one time...and that one time it snowed while I was there!  This week Dana has some great freebies for Martin Luther King Day...in case you are like me and haven't done that lesson yet, head over and get her free banner and puzzle pages to go with your lesson.

Day 12 Teaching with Hope

I love the title of Hope's blog: Teaching with Hope  We all have to have at least some hope to be a teacher, don't we?  We hope our teaching will stick, we hope the kids do well next year and beyond, we hope that the principal doesn't call another meeting after school, we hope for a few more hours in each day, we hope that summer gets here soon, but not before we have managed to fill those little ones heads with everything they need to know before then!

She is a 3rd grade teacher in Oregon...welcome fellow Pacific Northwest Teacher/Blogger! There don't seem to be as many of us as there are from the southeast.  Perhaps their days are longer and they have more time ;)  Or perhaps there is something in the water that gives them more energy to use more more waking hours and less sleeping ones...not sure :)  But if they were to bottle it and sell it on TpT they would make a lot of money -- especially from me!

She created a very cute Skip Counting book to help teach those 2nd and 3rd graders the patterns involved with learning multiplication.  I used something similar to this when I taught 2nd and 3rd grades.  The visual part of this really helped some kids over the hump of connecting addition to multiplication.

While at her TpT Store...I also found this freebie.  LOVE it!  My first graders will love it too!  I know we just started using Vowac this year...but this one is a fun one for their poem book that they do at centers.  It never hurts to use more than one trick --- or poem as the case may be -- to teach a skill.  One of them is going to stick like glue!

Remember to subscribe to see what blog I find next!  ------------------------------------------------>  

It could be yours!!