Christmas Time is Here... (Cyber Monday Sale!!)

Yeah yeah. I'm one of those people who starts Christmas WAY earlier than I should. Get over it.

So, if you're one of the lucky teachers (like I am) you're still cozied up in your PJ's today! I even had off school yesterday, AND we don't go back until next Tuesday... Something about hunting season on Monday? I don't know. I've never fired a gun. Since we just had school on Monday this week and we were not extremely productive, my wife met me for lunch and read The Grinch to my kiddos before she left! I told the kids she was coming, and one of my sweet little firsties goes "Is she the pretty lady from the picture on your desk??" Made my day.

They were SUCH a good audience!!

And to further prove that I'm already WAY too in the Christmas spirit, here's what I'll be doing tonight... 

Yes, that's me. Yes, I'm dressed as Santa. All through high school and college, and now randomly, I give tours on the Hershey Trolley, where I'm paid to dress up in lots of different costumes and play characters throughout Milton Hershey's life... at Christmas, I even play Santa. It's pretty ridiculous. And awesome. And tonight, I'm covering for a friend who has strep throat. Yuck.

AAAAAAAAND! I'm joining in on the TPT cyber Monday/Tuesday sale by putting my store up for an additional 20% on top of the normal sale! I'm working on December Morning Work NOW, so it will be up sometime on Sunday so you can snag it super cheap!!

Now's the time to load up your cart!! Here's some things I can't wait to get!!
*Elf magic! {craftivities & printables} by A Cupcake For the Teacher
*Christmas Around the World by Falling Into First
*Just about every Christmas themed thing that Creative Clips has to offer...

What's in YOUR cart???

Going on a Pignic!

Happy Friday, ya'll! I don't know about you guys, but it's been a LONG week! I don't think I ever recovered from parent-teacher conferences last week. Anywho, I wanted to share a little project my kiddos did with some of our Kindergarden friends!

*Prologue*
Jelly Bean, our guinea pig, and Henry, the bunny who lives in one of the K classrooms are pretty much BFF's. They write letters to one another on a regular basis. Our kids LOVE writing letters back and forth! The K teacher and I had been joking about having the 2 of them go on a picnic with the classes, then she stumbled upon the cutest little alphabet book... Pignic!

SO. Since it's an alphabet book, I read a few similar books to my kiddos, then grouped them to brainstorm names and words that started with each letter of the alphabet.

After my kiddos came up with LOADS of words for each letter, we wrote sentences as a group. We wrote a few sentences each day, and had so much fun writing them! Yesterday, we finally got to go on our PIGNIC! The K teacher made little Pignic headbands for each of the kids (and she made one for Henry, too!) They were beyond excited to go visit their friends in K!

Jelly Bean and Henry... BFF's 4 life!

Once I read the book to the kids, we paired them off to illustrate the sentences my kids had written. My little firsties were SO pumped to be big buddies to their little K friends! I told them that they should let their friends do most of the work, and just be there to help them if they get stuck. Even my low kids were thrilled to be helpers..

We have to go to school on Monday next week. Jusssssssst Monday. Do you have school next week?

Christmas came early!

My wife surprised me with my early Christmas present this past weekend! She's literally the worst secret keeper (other than myself) that I've ever met, so I'm proud of her for keeping this from me for so long! Some time ago, a friend of our was talking about a new musical written by the writers of Next To Normal, which is one of my FAVORITE musicals. She told us that the show, called If/Then, was also to be starring Idina Menzel and Anthony Rapp, both of whom were in the original production of Rent (which I love) and Idina originated the part of Elphaba in Wicked (which I also love). I remember saying something like "WOW! That sounds so cool!" but then I forgot about it, because I really didn't think that going to see it was an option.

Cori had other plans.

She bought tickets on line AGES ago, and even contacted our friend Sarah who lives in Washington D.C., where the show is currently playing before it heads to Broadway, to ask if she could put us up for the weekend.

Fast forward many weeks. I have NO idea where we're going. Cori says "Hey! Stop and get a couple bottles of wine on your way home, before we leave... Also, don't forget to pack a pillow and a towel." Insert confusion. A pillow and a towel? Obviously we weren't staying at a hotel. And that's probably why we needed a couple bottles of wine. Gifts. I'm starting to think about friends of ours who live in every major city within driving distance of our house, and with every turn we made out of our neighborhood, I started to eliminate a few. As soon as we hit the turnpike and headed West, I said "We're staying with Sarah, aren't we!" Still had no clue about the show. Cori had to tell me. I almost peed a little.

That's our friend Sarah on the left, ME, and my wife, Cori. I was SO surprised at how small the white house is!!

Sarah forced us to try raw oysters for the first time at Old Ebbitt's, right around the corner from the white house.

#groupies #noshame

Anthony Rapp... We met him once before in Pittsburgh when we saw Rent. We're old pals. We go way back. No big deal.

LaChanze? I'd never heard of her, but she's really good. She won a Tony for The Color Purple.

OH MY GOSH. We got Idina's autograph. She was SO fantastic.

The show was absolutely wonderful. Essentially, it starts out with Elizabeth (Idina Menzel) meeting up with some friends. Her new friend refers to her as Liz, while her old college buddy refers to her as Beth. The whole show is about how much your life can change depending upon the choices you make. The whole show she keeps going back and forth between Liz and Beth, which was confusing at first, but then was so beautiful. I can't even describe it. It's just good, haha! The turntable in the stage was supposed to stop during one of Idina's big songs, oddly enough titled "What the f**k?" but it kept spinning, and she started laughing, and the whole show stopped for a minute or two. She made light of the situation, and it was so nice to be reminded that they were real people for a minute!

Moral of the story, my wife loves me and knows me SO well :-)

Here Write Now

Sorry. My wife and I went to see Ghost The Musical a few weeks ago, which was literally the most comically terrible thing I've ever seen, and the song "Here right now" has been stuck in my head. I was feeling witty. Hence, Here Write Now. Look at me go.

ANYWHO. I've really been thinking about how I teach writing in my class lately. In talking to the second grade teachers in my building, I didn't feel that we were doing a great job preparing our students to write in second grade. As soon as our students get to second grade, they are expected to respond to writing each week, in a typical "opening sentence, 3 details, closing sentence" format. I did NONE of this with my kids, because I was way more focused on writing in complete sentences, making sure that the capital letters ended up in the right place, and trying to get them to express personal feeling through their writing. SO, I decided to start throwing in SIMPLE writing prompts to get them in the habit of writing 5 sentences around a single topic. The first few times I've done it, I have heavily guided my students through the pre-writing process.

My pre-writing page is nothing fancy, but I really wanted to provide my students with a way to organize their ideas.

For our first try, I had my kiddos simply think of 3 reasons why they love Thanksgiving. Our opening and closing sentences were all very similar... Things like "Thanksgiving is the best holiday" or "I really love Thanksgiving" or "I can't wait for Thanksgiving" etc... (The turkeys are sight word turkeys that I made last year... I blogged about them HERE.)

We wrapped up reading The Big Circle in Reading Street last week, so on Friday, I had the kiddos think of 3 reasons they would want a dinosaur as a pet. They had SO much fun with this writing project, and even MORE fun making the dinosaurs to match! The dinosaur pattern is FREE on TpT by the fantastic Ms. Leslie Ann at Life in First Grade! Love her stuff.

Do you have any tricks for getting your firsties ready for independent writing prompts?

The Conference Week Blues

It creeps up on me every year, and I'm never as prepared as I'd like to be. I did my best this year to be planned as far ahead as possible. I actually sat down Sunday night and planned the whole week!! This is good for me, as I usually find myself writing my plans a few days ahead. AND I planned most of NEXT week, too! I'm a big "mental planner" and I know I need to get better at actually writing down my plans. So I'm trying. 

I also put together a student data binder this year to help guide my conferences. I forgot to take pictures before I started writing their data all over it. It's nothing overly fancy. Inside, there's dividers for each student. I created a page for each student where I can write their assessment scores (we use DRA2 for reading levels, and I also put a space for their sight word scores). The MOST helpful thing I included was the benchmark score for each marking period so that I could reference it during conferences, and parents had a visual as to how their child scored as opposed to the expected score for that marking period. It's been very handy for conferences! I made a page to list strengths and areas to work on, and made sure to list a few in each section for a each student. 

At my district, we don't have a scheduled day for conferences, so we try to squeeze a few in before and after school. I decided to stay late one night to accommodate parents that couldn't come right before or after school. I've also learned to never schedule them Monday morning! Did that last year and immediately regretted it!! Last night was my night to stay late, so I was at school from 7 to 7. I was EXHAUSTED!! 

How do you schedule your conferences? Any tips for preparing??

November Morning Work (Finally!)

Like many of you, I've been stuck in report card land for quite some time... As such, I am FINALLY getting around to posting my November Morning Work!

Since I feel bad for posting it way later than I would have hoped, it's on sale for the rest of the day... Go snag it for a buck fifty until 9:00 my time (Eastern)!!