Poetry Freebie & Leap Day Sale! :)

Quick & Cute story of the day:  Many of you know I have had a student teacher.  For the past few weeks, she has been required to take over all subject areas in teaching.  She is in her final week, and is observing some other classrooms in the mornings.  I got to teach the whole morning today - yay!  Don't get me wrong, my student teacher did an awesome job but I am very happy and ready to have my kiddos back to myself. (call me selfish...I miss them!)  While we were at the carpet this morning for our Daily 5 Mini-Lesson, one of my students raised his hand and commented: "Miss DeCarbo...you've been kinda lazy for a couple weeks because you haven't really been teaching." Haha!  I had to once again remind him that Mrs. H needed to "take my place" for a couple weeks while she learned how to be a teacher."  "Ohhh..." he said.     :) 

In case you haven't heard, there is Leap Day Sale going on over at TeachersPayTeachers!  You can use the promo code below to get 10% off plus  ALL of my products are an additional 20% off until tomorrow night! Click the picture below to "leap" to my TPT Store.

Click the picture above to head to my 20% off SALE at TPT!

Plus, all of my items on Teachers Notebook are also 20% off on Leap Day only! 

Tonight I have a *freebie* to share with you as a "Thank You" to all of my new followers.  This is a freebie from my Poetry Party learning pack posted on TPT.  It is a Diamante Antonym Poem planning page. When you download, it comes with a colorful final copy page for students to use.  I hope you enjoy!  Click the link below to download.

Don't forget to sign up for my $25 TPT Gift Certificate - Giveaway ends on Friday! :)

Happy Learning,

Thank You and Poetry Party!

I need to give a HUGE *THANK YOU* to Gladys at Teaching in High Heels for giving me a big shout out on her Teacher Feature day!  I am feeling so honored and grateful - her blog is famous to me in bloggy-world and I just think of her as a definite "teacher-blogger celebrity!"  :) She is just the sweetest person and you really need to head over to her blog and say hello.  And, I get to be a guest blogger for her on Friday!! How cool is that?! I'm very excited but also completely nervous and scared to guest write for such a huge blog - Can I do it?! Do you think I can?!


I slept for...oh about 50 hours yesterday (I was still at home, sick.) ...and when I finally got up, I decided to create a poetry unit for my students for next year.  My student teacher just completed a poetry unit with my students and she did a fab job at it!  The one thing we noticed as she was going through it is that it was hard to find a lot of "kid-friendly" poetry templates out there.  So I decided to create my own to use for next year and beyond! :)  I hope you enjoy these!


Included in this Poetry Party! pack is a 35 page poetry unit.  It covers:


Acrostic Poems
Bio Poems
Cinquain Poems
Couplet Poems
Haiku Poems
Diamante Synonym Poems
Diamante Antonym Poems
Free Verse Poetry
Shape Poetry
Tongue Twister Poems


Each type of poem comes with an adorable poster, a planning page for the students to brainstorm and create their original poem, and a final copy page.  The unit also comes with a bonus activity practice page for Haiku Poems and Shape Poems.  It has a "My Poetry" book cover so your students can staple all of their final copy pages into their own poetry book at the end of the unit.  After you are done, have a "Poetry Party" to celebrate all of their hard work! :)

You can find this in my TeachersPayTeachers store or my Teachers Notebook store! 

As with all of my new units, I'll give this Poetry Party! pack away for FREE to the first five people who leave a comment. :)  Leave your e-mail address so that I can send it to you.  

*If you don't win the first 5 comment giveaway, don't forget to sign up for my $25 TPT gift certificate giveaway! See the post below for details!* :)

Happy Learning,

100 Follower GIVEAWAY!!! $25 TPT Gift Certificate

Tonight was my first free Friday night since coaching started in August and I spent it sleeping on my couch...sick.  :(  

But that's okay because tonight I reached over 100 followers!!!  

YAY!!!  If you can't tell I'm excited, I felt like this little guy when I logged on a few hours ago:

100+ followers means its time for a GIVEAWAY!!!

I'm giving away a $25.00 TeachersPayTeachers Gift Certificate to one lucky winner! 

You have up to 5 chances to enter and WIN! :) Please make sure each entry is a separate comment and includes your e-mail address in order to be eligible to win. 

1. Follow my blog with a comment that you follow.

2. Post about this Giveaway on your blog and link back to me. 

3. Follow my TeachersPayTeachers store and leave a comment.

4. Follow (Favorite) my TeachersNotebook store and leave a comment.

5. Grab my button to add to your blog and leave a comment that you did.

GOOD LUCK! :) Giveaway ends Friday morning on Dr. Seuss' birthday (Friday, March 2nd) 

and will be announced later that day!! :)

Happy Learning,

Written Directions...Tricks Anyone?! Freebie, & Wednesday's Pinterest Pick of the Week

I'm constantly amazed at the cleverness and talent of teachers out here in blog-world, so I'm going to pick your brain.  I have such a handful of students this year who are constantly neglecting written directions.  When it says to circle the word, they underline it.  When it says to draw a picture AND write a number sentence they interpret this as: "Draw a picture OR write a number sentence." 

Don't get me wrong. I. Have. Tried. It. All.  We read aloud together first.  We dissect the directions. When the directions say "underline"....we underline the word underline.  We highlight.  I model, model, model.  I remind. They use whole brain "mirror and teach" to remind each other.  Once, I stood up on a chair and sang the directions to them in an opera voice thinking that might get their attention.  (It didn't.)  

So my question tonight is, does anyone out there have any clever little tricks to this that has or is working for you?  Leave your tip or trick and then grab this St. Patrick's Day problem solving math freebie from my newest math pack on TPT. :) 

Now for Wednesday's Pinterest Pick of the Week!

If you know me well, you know I love science experiments!  I found this neat little experiment on Pinterest to share with you tonight.  Fill a cup with water and put shaving cream on top to act as a cloud.  Explain to students that when clouds get really heavy with water, it starts to rain.  Add some blue food coloring drops to the top of the shaving cream and watch it start to rain!  What a great addition to your weather unit.  I already did my weather unit but can't wait to add this to it next year! 

Rain Cloud Experiment

I'm off to catch an episode of Four Weddings that I recorded last week and head to bed!

Happy Learning!

The Calm Before the Storm...

My four day weekend was wonderful. Relaxing. A breath of fresh air. It was calm and filled with peace and happiness...


And then Tuesday happened.


Did anyone else find their little darlings completely out of sync today?!   It was like they took a four day vacation and forgot to pack their brains for school.  These are the days I....wait for it...and don't "unfollow" me when I say this...kind of see the point of year-round schools.  Okay, are you still with me?  Good.  I just mean that it is surprising how many little ones I have that can't seem to take too long of a break from daily routine.  


Luckily, by the end of the day they seemed to remember where they were again and so I have high hopes that tomorrow will return to normal.  Tomorrow, I'm breaking out a few hundred more "Classity class's" and "Yessity-Yes's" than today. ;)  


My student teacher is in her last week of full-out teaching (Impromptu Mental Images Exercise: I have a big frown on my face and feeling sad. Can you visualize?)   So, I used my time today to create an economics unit that I will be starting with my kids next week.  I'm super excited for it!  After studying all of the components of economics, we will complete a Class Business project.  My kiddos are going to create a "factory" and make bracelets to sell during lunches.  We will regroup after each selling day, discussing the supply and demand of our product and deciding if we need to increase or decrease the price of our goods.  We will graph our profits and the expenses we have for our materials.  After 3 days of selling, we will donate our profits to our school to purchase some new books for our library.  How fun is that?!  I can't wait to take pictures and post about how it goes. 


For now, though, you can preview the unit and purchase it on my TPT store or Teachers Notebook  store if you would like! :)  I'll post a freebie from the unit on tomorrow's post.  

As always, I will give this unit away for free to the first 5 people to post a comment! :) Be sure to leave your e-mail address so that I can send it to you.

Happy Learning!

Shout-Out & Dr. Seuss Warning, Mini Giveaway Winners, and Freebie!

First, I have to give a huge Shout-Out to Michelle Tsivgadellis over at The 3AM Teacher.  She helped me in a huge way this morning.  Here's my story: Many of us have purchased and used the Scrappin Doodles Cat with a Hat clipart set.  This morning, they sent out an e-mail asking that no product with the words Seuss or Cat in the Hat should be used in any way.  I know Michelle makes wonderful clip art of her own and figured she'd know much more than I do about this kind of thing.  Michelle was so, so kind to answer some of my questions about copyright and Dr. Seuss!  She is wonderful and if you haven't checked out her blog - please please go over and visit her! :)    


I know many of us have created products and freebies for Dr. Seuss day.  Please be advised that it is probably in our best interests to change the titles of our products and ensure the name Suess or Cat in the Hat (or to be on the safer side, any of his trademarked words) are not in our creations or wording.  I know this is SUCH a bummer because if you are like me, you simply want to make learning and your lesson plans engaging and enjoyable for students. Our primary goal is educational and student centered. However, Michelle said it perfectly when she explained that we "cannot be too careful" about this.


I have changed all of my products to "Read Across America" and "March 2nd" themed-learning packs.  I'm sad that it will not be as "searchable" on TPT or TeachersNotebook, but perhaps all of us will catch on. :) :) 


That being said, the winners of my Mini Giveaway are: 

Comment #4 :  Ali from What Happens In Kindergarten Lasts A Lifetime

     and 

Comment #8:   Nancy

They will win my 7 Winter Math Pack Games, my "Read Across America" writing activities (hahaha) and my American Symbols Mini Unit!  I hope you will all forgive me but I could not get the Random Generator copy/paste thing to work. (I really did try for about 20 minutes before giving up.)

Now, because this was a long post, here is a picture of my "Read Across America" Graphic Organizers pack that can be purchased on my Teachers Notebook store for only $4.75.  (The cover page in the pack now has the name Dr. Seuss taken out of it.)  Below that is another freebie for you from the pack! :) Enjoy!!

Here is a *freebie* for you from the pack that can be used with any book.  

I hope everyone has a great week after such a nice long weekend! :) 

Happy Learning,

MobyMath, Freebie, & A New Love

I wanted to share a great resource with you that I just started using in my classroom a few weeks ago.  Most likely, you have all heard of this already, because I cannot get over what fabulous teachers you all are out there!  

But in case you haven't, you need to check this website out!  

MobyMath

You can get a 30 day trial license if you sign up.  Your students take a placement test on the computer, and it tells you exactly what skills and common core areas the student has a deficit in - even going back to kindergarten skills!  I found out one of my little kiddos completely missed the whole concept of geometry in first grade.  The program started her first online lesson in the area she missed back in kindergarten - working their way back up to 2nd grade skills with her.  It will also tell you the percentage she has improved since her last log-in and you can see the exact problems she missed and her answers.  I am loving it!  If you use it, let me know what you think! :)

Here is a Sunday Freebie for you!  I finished another Dr. Seuss pack that contains 12 graphic organizers in it for reading comprehension.  I'll post more about it tomorrow - tonight is a sneak preview for you! :)  I hope you enjoy! 

Before I head off for the day, I had to post this picture of my new nephew-dog.  Haha, her name is Penny and she is my fiance's brother's new puppy.  How adorable is she?! She completely melts my heart!

I'm off to curl up on the couch and get some lesson plans done.

Happy Learning!

Teachers Notebook Grand Opening and Mini Unit Giveaway!

Yay! My Teachers Notebook store is up and running. :) I'm so excited to have another venue to share my products and ideas with.  To celebrate my store being open, my Dr. Seuss SEUSSational Writing Pack is now only $5.00 for the next 5 days!  Get it on Teachers Pay Teachers or Teachers Notebook.


I also have a little mini-giveaway for you.  I'll give away my Dr. Seuss pack, my 7 Winter Math Games pack, and my American Symbols pack free to 2 lucky followers.  I'll announce the winners on Monday.  All you have to do is be a follower of my blog and a follower of my new Teachers Notebook store!  Leave me a comment that says you follow both my blog and my new Teachers Notebook store with your e-mail address.  :)  

This is what you can win! 

I'm off to enjoy a lazy Saturday afternoon!

Happy Learning,

SEUSSational Writing Pack, Writing Freebie, and Pinterest Pick of the Week!

I've been working on my Dr. Seuss writing pack for awhile now and I can't tell if I'm relieved or a little sad that it's finished.  Either way, I'm ready to share it with you, my favorite bloggers! 

It is packed with 10 writing activities to go with favorite Dr. Seuss books.  The activities include a Class Book cover page, planning page for the students, and a final copy page for their finished product.  You can find the complete, 28 page SEUSSational Writing Pack at my TPT store by clicking the preview picture below! 

As always, I'll give this SEUSSational Writing Pack away FREE to the first 5 people to post a comment!  Please leave your e-mail address so that I can send it to you. :)

For all of my followers, here's a freebie from this writing pack.  This activity goes with the Dr. Seuss book: Oh Say Can You Say? and allows your students to create and write their own wacky tongue twisters! 

*~Now for Wednesday's Pinterest Pic of the Week~*

I found this "poster picture" on Pinterest and I had to post it because it definitely applied to me today...

    We were in math class doing Daily 3 in small groups.  My student teacher was leading a group of struggling students in a lesson on counting money.  Kids were spread all over the room and engaged in various math games, or completing their Math By Myself work. 

     One little girl came up to me and looked very distraught.  "Miss DeCarbo, I don't get it. Why is Carter doing multiplication....and why does Chloe always get to use the computer EVERY DAY?!"  (Chloe is working on MobyMath intervention and I have moved Carter into higher level math activities because he is ready for that challenge.)  

     To this little girl, none of this seemed fair.  I explained to her that "Your important job is to practice making change.  :)  Chloe and Carter have their own jobs to do right now. We are all working on different things, and that's okay - because we're all different!"  :) She stood at my desk for a minute pondering this...nodded her head, smiled, and trotted back to count her coins.  

I chose this picture as a reminder in the busy hustle-and-bustle that while not every child learns the same way, every child can learn.  As teachers, we need to remember that fair isn't always equal....and equal isn't always fair. 

Parent-Teacher conferences tomorrow night = One looong day.  This teacher is off to bed!

Happy Learning,

Linky Party & Valentine's Day Party!

I linked up with Farley's linky party over at Oh Boy Fourth Grade! for this month's edition of "Currently"

Join the Linky Party by visiting her blog below!

On Friday, we had our Valentine's Day party in Room 135!  I am, by no means at all, a "craft" person.  In fact, I'll do everything I can most of the time to avoid crafts if at all possible.  So I was really excited when my student teacher offered to take control of the kids' Valentine's Day bags this year!  Check out these adorable puppy Valentine's bags she made with my kiddos!  

We made the bags using only the 2 stencils below that Michelle had pre-cut for the kids to trace. The bottom stencil was used for the tail.  The kids made two pink hearts for the bodies and cut one red heart in half for the ears.  They drew and cut out their own little hearts to decorate the puppies, then we just added the eyes! Adorable!

We had so much fun at our Valentine's Party!  We played HEART bingo and used red and pink Hershey Kisses for the markers.  And of course, I had to take a picture of the yummy Cheryl's sugar cookies one mom brought to our party! Mmmm! (I'm guilty of purchasing some of these every time I visit the Columbus area!)  If this even existed, I would totally award Room Mom Helper of the Year to her!  Haha, I'm only kidding...kind of. 

I am off to get ready to coach my cheerleaders in our LAST away game of the year! Woo-Hoo! I may even get to relax a little bit next weekend and remember what normalcy feels like again...

Happy Learning!

American Symbols Mini-Unit "Giveaway", and Wednesday's Pinterest Pick of the Week!

I'm going to start with an adorable story I heard last night.  We have an outstanding substitute teacher at our school who owns an apple orchard.  Yesterday, she was teaching kindergarten and had a little darling kiddo who could not remember her name.  She told me last night that he looked up at her and asked "Mrs. Orchard...can I get in line?"  :)  Melted my heart! 

Tonight I finally finished my American Symbols Learning Pack/Unit.  I'm excited about the way it turned out and I've been using the activities in my classroom this week with the students.  Below is an overall preview picture of some of the items in the pack.  There are 18 pages to this unit and you can purchase it at my Teachers Pay Teachers store by clicking the picture below.  I'd love your feedback on it! :)

I'm giving this learning pack away for FREE to the first 5 people who follow my Teachers Pay Teachers store and post a comment that says you follow! :)

Now for...Wednesday's Pinterest Pick of the Week:  

Rate Your Writing Poster

 This picture was pinned from Laurie's blog at First Grade Lyon's Den.

She has some great posts about Writer's Workshop and she shares the same love of Jennifer Jacobson's book No More I'm Done as me!! I know I've posted about this book before, but if you have yet to take a look at it, add it to your must-read list!  It has changed the way I run writer's workshop - for the better. :)  

I love this picture because it allows students to see a real, concrete example of writing from their peers.  I also love that she included both a writing sample and an illustration piece in the rating.  I am planning on creating one of these posters with my students to display in our classroom.  Great idea, Laurie!  

What a nice way to give the student more ownership to their learning and raise motivation within the writer's workshop experience. 

Finally, I want to thank Latricia from Wild About Second Grade for awarding me the Liebster Blog Award!  If you haven't checked out her blog yet, jump on over and say hello. She is a new blogger as well and has some cute freebies you can grab. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of the week! 

Happy Learning,

Short & Sweet & Going to STATE! (And a Social Studies Freebie Preview)

My weekend was once again consumed by cheerleading, so this post will be short and sweet tonight.  My cheerleading team competed in the Regionals Cheerleading Competition on Saturday.  Their score qualified them to compete at the state level in Ohio's State Cheerleading Competition in Columbus on March 4th! Ahh! We are so excited and I am beyond proud of them.  We're going to STATE! :)

With all of the excitement I simply had no time to create anything this weekend.  My class will be learning about American Symbols this week so I have been working on an American Symbols Mini-Unit that I will be posting to TPT by Wednesday. Here is a freebie *preview* for you of the mini-unit. This page is meant to be used with the website "Ben's Guide to U.S. Government." The website can be found at http://bensguide.gpo.gov/
Click on K-2 and then go to Symbols of U.S. Government.  On Friday this week, I'm taking my kids to the computer lab and they will learn more about American Symbols by doing a "Website Research" using the above link and the Question Sheet below.  I hope you enjoy! :)

 As for me, tonight I'll be watching the Superbowl and writing out Valentine's Day cards to my second grade sweeties for our party on Friday. 

Happy Learning,

Wednesday's Pinterest Pick and Math Freebie

        I'm not sure how many of you work with high school students but I work with 8 of them on my cheerleading squad.  Since football season started in August, I see them even more than my fiance.  Today was one of those days that reminded me of a reason I went into early childhood teaching in the first place - the pure joy and enthusiasm my little sweeties have for anything I introduce them to!  My cheerleaders on the other hand were crazy-unfocused and certainly NOT enthusiastic today (not good, considering we have state qualifiers this weekend).  I actually caught myself saying "1-2-3 eyes on me!" to them while they were chatting instead of cheering - until I embarrassingly reminded myself that they were 16 - not 6! Haha

      So I was thinking of how annoyed I was at the chatting during practice while I was roaming through Target this evening.  I came to the craft aisle and picked up some fuzzy balls and googly eyes.  I had pinned a picture of Quiet Critters on Pinterest the other night and thought they were SO cute! I know my little darlings would love to have a Quiet Critter hang out on their desk when I catch them working hard and quietly during independent work time.  The picture I pinned from Pinterest is below. Cute huh?!  This picture is from Meredith at Keen On Kindergarten. Do you think they would work for high school cheerleaders?! (J/K!)

Wednesday's Pinterest Pick of the Week - Quiet Critters from Keen on Kindergarten

I will try to post a new Pinterest Pick of the Week every Wednesday on my blog. :)

While I am making my Quiet Critters for my classroom (Ah, one of the many joys of having a student teacher. Don't be mad yet - I'm also doing a lot of school work on a social studies unit for next week, too!), you can enjoy this Snowman Subtraction freebie!  Use it for math centers or partner games.  This is basically a double-digit subtraction "war" card game.  This is one of 7 games in my Winter Math Games pack on my TPT store.  The pack includes 3 independent games and 4 "math with someone" games.  Enjoy! 

Happy Learning,