Workshop Wednesday- End of the Year Read Alouds!

Hi Friends! It's Chandra from Teaching with Crayons and Curls! I am SO excited about my first post on this amazing blog with some amazing teachers from Georgia!

I am so excited to share Workshop Wednesday with you! 

I am officially SEVEN days away from the last day of school! It's absolutely crazy, but- Oh. So. Exciting! I don't know about you but the end of the year can be completely chaotic- trying to get in all those last minute assessments, award shows, field, day, etc. So many exciting things going on! But, I really enjoy taking some time in between all the chaos to just read to my kids. It's one of my favorite things to do as a teacher. I wanted to share some of my favorite read alouds for the end of the year! 

Last Day Blues is a classic last day of school book. If you don't have it, find one! It goes along perfectly with First Day Jitters (a must-have read for the first day of school) and is such a great read aloud to end the year with! 

Another favorite my Julie Danneberg is First Year Letters! It's a book with a collection of letters written to Sarah Jane Hartwell during her first year teaching! Another great story to end the year! It's a great book to introduce memory books or have students write letters to future students about their year in your class! No matter what, it leads to a great conversation about all the fun you had throughout the year!

Grab these {Letters to Future Students} FREE in my store! 

Dream Big, Little Pig by Kristi Yamaguchi has become one of my favorite books this year! One of my amazing colleagues let me borrow it one day and I ordered it from Amazon immediately! It's about this sweet little pig who has big dreams for herself and realizes to never give up! 

After reading the book, you can have your students discuss their own dreams for their futures OR dreams that they accomplished this year! Grab these freebies! 

Here are some other great read alouds for the end of the year: 

I hope everyone has a fabulous end of the year!  I'd love to know your favorite read alouds for the end of the year! Make sure to comment below with your favorites! 

Using Pic Collage in your classroom

Hey Y'all!

It's Erin from The Elementary Darling.

Today I am back for Technology Tuesday :)

 I can't wait to talk to you about using a super simple app. Most of us have used the Pic collage app or something similar to create collages of our animals, kids, or other things. Have you ever thought of having the students use this app? Let me tell you, there are SO many ways for the kids to use this app. After a quick lesson on HOW to use the app, most of the kids were better at me than using the app.

Today, after learning about parts of a plant, my students used their iPads to create a pic collage of the parts of a plant. They really turned out cute. We took a walk around the school and I gave them free reign on pictures except the roots. I didn't want them pulling up every plant we had :)

You could use this for landforms, facts about people, or so many others! In reading we used this to show text features.

In math, we used pic collage to show different amounts of money.

Thanks for stopping in to see these different ideas. How can you use this app in your classroom? I would love to hear the ways you could use this. Comment below to share your great ideas!

Have a great rest of the week!

Sharing Sunday: Kindergarten Assessments

Hi, y'all! I'm Jayne from Smart Kids. Today I'm sharing some valuable assessment help especially for Kindergarten teachers. If you're not a K teacher, please share this post with kinder teachers you know because this info is going to save them TONS of time and sanity on their GKIDS (if you're in GA), SLOS, GLOS and report cards. 

Here's the scoop. A while back I discovered ESGI—an online assessment tool for early childhood teachers. Next I made a test or tracking tool for EVERY standard included in the Kindergarten Georgia Performance Standards. There's more...I titled all of these tests so that they would match the GKIDS descriptions. (FYI for followers of the CCSS: The Georgia standards are almost identical, so keep reading!) 

Here's what my own ESGI looks like:

For every math unit of study I made a test tab. These units are based on the sequence provided by the Georgia Department of Education.

For every area of the ELA curriculum, I made a test tab.

If you could peek into my own test explorer section, you would see a test for every standard that we enter into GKIDS. The name of each test matches the name on the GKIDS site.

For the benefits of how to track all these tests and print reports, you can see a post on my Smart Kids blog from March 9, 2014.
Here's a peek at one child's SLO scores (with the hidden, of course!).

Also a glimpse into my class report (Again, I've hidden the names.) This makes it easy to complete report cards.

You'll see information on the customer support page about how to get to my tests! You can also click here for a list of my tests.

Here's the great news. Even if you don't subscribe, you can get help on your assessments this year. Just sign up for the 60 day trial! You can use the tests as you wrap up your year and get ready for your GKIDS report or report cards! 
Click here and be sure to use promo code B6336 so you save $40.

Science Saturday - Classroom Terrariums - Naw, not icky at all!

Howdy! It's Gary again from Scrappyguy Designs. I've got something fun for ya today!

For the longest time I pooh-poohed the idea of having my students create a terrarium to observe in the classroom. One of my colleagues swore by them. Said they were SO MUCH fun. She did it every year.

I could only see B U G S. Large icky bugs. Crawling. Endlessly around my room. So I kept saying, "Nope, not for me." It went right along with my feelings about glitter.

Then I tried it last year. Change is good, right?

My OCD wouldn't let me just throw some dirt at them and let them have full rein. I had to come up with an entire plan to CONTAIN any creepy crawlers. So I created a powerpoint presentation to show my students which animals they should look for when we went outside to gather our classroom visitors.

I am sharing it with you!

Click on this link to download the ppt for yourself.

Terrariums - Who can be invited?

This year I am trying again. I told my class to start bringing in 2 liter bottles to share. If I can get six or seven, I should have enough for groups to create their terrariums. One for all of them would be interesting to say the least. Not many brought in 2 liters, but once I said we wouldn't be able to do the activity unless they brought in stuff, they pulled out their water bottles and asked if we could use those. Sigh, I couldn't say no.  I cut a little door off the side of each that can lift up to put the goodies inside.

Fortunately we have a Nature Trail behind the school that has been established for an Eagle Scout project. I trucked the kids outside and down along the trail. We dug in the dirt and filled up our terrariums. After viewing the powerpoint they know to not come running up to me with snakes, lizards, spiders, owls, or dead birds and ask if they can put THAT in their terrariums. Then I let them free to find BUGS! The screams and squeals were so funny.

They didn't find any worms outside to help aerate their soil, so I sought out my student from last year and asked where she had gotten hers. Apparently there is a cooler inside Walmart, back by the sporting goods and fishing poles. You can buy Nightcrawlers or Big Fat worms all for $3.77. Who knew?

Yep, that's my finger touching the worms. Those things were weird. Worms with large flat heads and little hairs to help them dig under the soil. The students could not stop watching them move around. They didn't even want to leave for lunch. We sprinkled some water onto the soil and left them on our desks to keep an eye on them.

This is definitely a fun way to cap off a unit on ecosystems. I highly support making terrariums with your kids. They aren't icky at all! Promise.

Keep It Fresh Friday

Hey peachy friends!  It's Meghan from Keeping Up with Mrs. Harris.  I am so excited for my first post on our collaborative blog.

I am going to share a Keep It Fresh Friday tip to help with end of the year center organization for the next school year.

If you are like me, at the end of each school year I feel like I am nesting for the birth of a new group of students.  Out with the clutter and in with a fresh start of an organized school year!  One of the most painful things to organize are centers!!!  There are so many different sized pieces, direction cards, worksheets, etc.  I tried many methods of organization including filing them away in a filing cabinet.  That didn't work at all and left me with smashed paper dice, and the back of the drawer with all the missing pieces (there were even a few missing socks back there...conspiracy between the dryer and filing cabinet...they are out to get me).

Hey friends!  I'm Meghan from Keeping Up with Mrs. Harris and I'm going to share with you all how I organize all of my center games, activities, and unit materials.  So for my first 4 years teaching, I thought I had the perfect system.  I would start a unit and then as the unit went along, I put an extra copy of everything in a file folder labeled with that unit.  Then at the end of the unit I put all the items  in the same folder and pushed it into the filing cabinet.

While pacing the aisles of Target trying to see what else I could shove in the cart without my husband seeing, it hit me!  The perfect solution to my center organizational needs were Tupperware boxes!  Two years ago in May (end of the year nesting), I started purchasing 3-5 boxes a week.  I slowly started putting center materials in the buckets that we were finishing that week.  Worksheets at the bottom, ziplock baggies and materials on top.  Here's what my center buckets look like today!

Here's a closer view.  Nothing is crammed and all the pages are still looking great after 2 years.  All the pieces are still there and very few things have been misplaced.

As you can see some bins are full and others are not near as full.  I think if I return to the traditional classroom in the future, I will probably divide out some of the buckets that are really full.

Now that I am out of the classroom, I have my bins set up for checkout by other teachers.  I can't tell you how many times this year my bins have already been used by fellow teachers who need a little extra supplemental materials.  

So "nesting" friends, take a trip to your local store and grab you a few boxes so you can change the way you organize your classroom center materials as well.  Thanks for reading!

3 End of the Year "Survival" Tips

Hey Y'all! It's Theresa from True Life I'm a Teacher, and I'm so excited to be sharing my very first post on The Primary Peach!

I'm here today for Teacher Tricks and Tips Thursday...we might be into alliteration :) Tricks and Tips might also be one of my favorite teacher topics of all times! I'm always adding to my "toolbox."

As of this post, I have T-E-N days left of school! How is this even possible?!?!  I'm not even going to question it...anyway, I don't know about you, but my class is a bit rowdier than usual, so I'm pulling out all the stops! Here are my top 3 tips on how to survive (sounds drastic, but you're likely a teacher, so you totally get it, right?!?!) the end of the year!

 There is literally not a second of downtime in my classroom this time of the year. I have backup plans for my backup plans. I almost treat it as if there's a substitute...free time = time for behavior issues. Here are some things I have readily available, some are good for 3 minutes worth of time, while others could take 15-20 minutes, and others could take up as much or as little time as what you need.

- GoNoodle (seriously, check.this.out)

- Read Alouds (random, not necessarily related to anything in particular)

- games (math facts around the world, hangman with spelling/vocabulary words)

- activities themed specifically for the end of the year

After almost 180 days of specific management techniques/routines/seating arrangements/ _______ (fill in whatever you've been doing), switching up your routine or trying something new can the most exciting thing ever! Normally, throughout the year, I use "Copeland Cash" as part of a token economy, but by the end of the year, my kiddos are kind of over it (and so am I). I've started using stickers (never underestimate the power of a sticker) and some incentive charts I picked up at Dollar Tree. I pass out stickers like crazy for good behavior, and the kids plop them on their chart. They can turn in a completely sticker-filled chart for anything from our class store!

Also, by complete dumb luck, stumbled upon something great! I had to flip flop writer's workshop and reader's workshop due to testing, and it was like I'd introduced a completely different subject. I meant, hello??? We've been doing these all year, but apparently just changing the order of our schedule was a game-changer. Go figure!

My last tip is to have a countdown going! The excited surrounding the changing of the countdown is pretty surreal! Last year, I just used this simple {and FREE} countdown. We updated it each morning during morning meeting. The kids love it!

This year, I've put a fun activity in an envelope with the number of days left of school written on the outside. So far, we've enjoyed no shoes in the classroom, a nature walk, a jump rope competition, Blow Pops, and lunch bunch! The mystery surrounding what could possibly be in the envelope is more than my sweet seconds can hardly stand, and their behavior is on point so that they don't miss out on each day's fun activity!

You can find all our countdown activities here!

I'd love to know what you do to help the last few days of school be fun, engaging, and manageable!