My ADD at its best. Guided reading & Easter & Last Break

Well today couldn't go by fast enough if you ask me!!! I know that I am seeing on several different blogs that this is just now your Spring Break! Does that mean you have other breaks before the end of school rolls around? In our district our Spring Break was two weeks ago, then we had a full week then this week was a four day week because we have off tomorrow for Good Friday... However nice that all sounds this is our last break until the LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL!!!! Are you kidding me?!?!?! Granted I have a few scheduled half-days that I am taking off for different reasons. One on April 19th for a roping that we are going to in Llano, Tx (Yummy crawfish!!!) then almost exactly a month later on May 17th about 10 teachers are all taking half-days because we are all running the Beach 2 Bay marathon down at the coast!! This will be the first time that I am running this marathon but I am looking forward to it! If you aren't familiar with this marathon it is a team marathon so each person runs about 3-4 miles and each team had about 6 people on it!

Any way back to my original idea for this post...

Guided Reading!?!?!?!?! Are you all as done with doing guided reading groups as I am??? I know my students are still loving working with me when they get the chance and they will be the first ones to let me know when I have skipped their group for a few days... (shhh I have been doing that quite often here at the end...) My brain is just DRA'd small grouped out!!! So here is where I need your help... another teacher found these really cool foldable she called "Flip-flap" books... I think she found them on TPT, however I have searched and searched and can't find them anywhere!!!! I am always looking for fun things to do with my students and I think they will learn a lot more from doing the different things than me just talking about it and having them write them down in their journals and them me NEVER referring back to them!! (I know you must think I am a horrible teacher! ) (I swear I'm not!!!) So the basic idea is that you give the student a file folder and they cut out different things to be folded up and glued in the folder... examples: "I" can summarize (on an iPhone), Comparing characters, Authors purpose, vocabulary words... all those wonderful ideas!!! However I would really like to get my own copy so that when I leave this school I have an original to take with me!! So if you have anything really SUPER fun and that you are seeing gets your kids to understand and focus and want to work during Guided reading PLEASE pass it this teachers way!!! Like I said we have 7-8 weeks left of school (44 days if you want the EXACT number of days!) and I need to really get back on the guided reading train for the downward slide into summer!! I need to make sure that my students are READY for 3rd grade!!!


Thanks for your comments and ideas!!!

Oh the picture that is somewhere in this post is a close up of our class pet that I had to bring home for the long weekend because I forgot to double check that a student was taking care or it! Yeah!! My son is really excited!!

Hope you have a wonderful Easter with your families!! I am looking forward to trying to relax (even though I brought TONS of works home with me... I even cut my pile of stuff that I was bringing home down a LOT!!! ) We are going up to Buda (south of Austin) to spend time with my husbands dad's side of the family for a mini reunion! I am hoping that on Saturday with everyone being there I can sneak away for a few hours and get as much school work done as possible so I'm not stressing out on Sunday that I have all this work to get ready for Monday!

Well I hope that my random rant/post made your Thursday evening enjoyable!! Almost finished with Team Umizoomi and then its bath and bed time for my 3 year old!!! So we just started him on a real bed time routine! During the week we try to bath him at 8:00 then he gets to watch one "movie" (cartoon) in our bed then he is in his bed by 9:00, granted he doesn't fall asleep right away but he was becoming a BEAST in the mornings... So even though we don't have school and he's not going to his school tomorrow I am letting him slip a little... but not much, still bath 8:30 T.V. 8:45 then bed 9:15 or so...


See this is how my brain works... My ADD is getting worse as the stress builds!!! Not kidding my left eye is starting to twitch... I know when I'm really stressed because it doesn't stop twitching!!!

YIKES here I go again! Ok for real its now bath time and time for this Mommy/Teacher to call it a night! (well at least from writing) I will probably get him in bed then do some work then blog stalk for a little bit!

Night and again have a BLESSED EASTER!!!

Organizing my Chaos!

I can't believe that it's already Friday!!! This week has gone by WAY TOOOO FAST!!!! Last Saturday we celebrated my sons 3rd Birthday! WOW we had so many family members come out to help us celebrate our Big boy! Then on Sunday my parents and I, and of course my son took a road trip up to see my Mom's family up in Oklahoma!! Of course on Spring Break I get sick!! I finally felt better yesterday (Thursday) blah!!! Well today we decided to venture out on a beautiful day, we went and got my Mamma's hair did LOL, then ate a yummy lunch at Jason's Deli, then went to Mardel's! I LOVE THIS STORE!!! My plan was just to look around at all their wonderful things... Well of course I couldn't just do that I HAD to get some things for my classroom.  So here are the pictures from the website of the things that I bought today! I will have an explanation under each picture why I bought these items. 

My ideas for these are ENDLESS!!! However my plan is to use 5 of them to help me stay organized and on top of everything for the week! My goal is to slowly get better and be more prepared for each day. I would like to use one color for each day and then have corresponding folders inside each magazine holder with each subject and all the things that I would need for that day all ready to go and copied if i needed them, or things already cut out for my students. Yes I know that on Monday we are starting our last 9 weeks of the school year, however my hope is to start using them this year and then begin my year using them for the 13-14 school year... I will already have the system down pat! This idea will work for whatever grade level I am teaching next year! (Someone from our 2nd grade team has to move... we have 5 this year and only enough kids moving up to keep 4). What sort of organization do you use to help you keep on track for the week? I have seen several different blogs that use those sterilite stackable things to keep all their papers in. 

These two books I bought to help my students with their math skills. Our school is really big on using Singapore Math, model drawing, number sense... However even though I have been to several different trainings I am still not 100% on using all of these skills. As part of my evaluation for my PDAS I now have to do daily warm-ups using Singapore concepts for my students. So I bought these two books to help me come up with morning warm-ups to do with my students. My plan is to type up the same word problem multiple times and then print it off and then have my students cut and paste them into their morning work journals. From a quick glance of the books I am going to use these a lot for the rest of the year! I'll let you know how things go!

Good Writing Traits: These cute mini posters are good ways to help my students to remember all the different things that we have been working on! Again I know its the end of the year but it's never to late to start new things! Since we are going to start our narratives on Wednesday I thought it was a good way to remind them about all our writing lessons since they have had a week off to forget everything that I have been working on!

Hope these things have helped you see how I spent my Spring Break!!! Please leave me comments about how you stay organized with all your paper things for the week!

Thanks!!!!