Back to School and a SALE!

Whew!  It has been a very busy week this past week!  We start school here on Tuesday, so I spent all of last week fixing up my classroom and getting ready for school!  I DO NOT feel ready to start.  It's so surreal.  I feel like I have all this extra time, when in reality, I don't.  And I have SO MUCH to do!  I don't even know where to start sometimes.  So I'm sorry, neighbors, my grass may not be mowed for a few more days.

I am sure you have all heard about the big Teachers Pay Teachers Back to School Sale!  I know I have already filled up my cart with some great products, and I'm currently trying to guilt myself into hitting the "purchase" button!  Luckily I still have all day today and tomorrow to do it!

Since this is my first Back to School Sale, I decided to do something special to celebrate!  I am having a Buy 2, Get 1 Free sale in my TPT store.  So on top of the 28% off you're already getting (don't forget that promo code- I did once!), you can get an item from my store totally FREE!

All you need to do is:

1.  Purchase 2 items from my store.  

2.  Do NOT put the 3rd item in your cart!  

3.  Email me your username and your choice of a free item to butler . erica @ gmail . com.  

4.  I will email you a link to your free item!

***The free item choice needs to be of equal or lesser value of the regular price.  So for example, you choose my "Talk Derby to Me!" unit for $6 (on sale for $4.80) and my "Investigating Arctic Animals unit" for $5 (on sale for $4), then you can choose an item that is $5 or less for FREE!***

I have been working on something new to put in my store for a very, very long time now, and I am so glad they are finished!  I loved the Beanie Baby Word Attack Strategies that you see all over the internet, so I connected many of the Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension strategies to a different Beanie Baby, and created cards for them.  Now I have decided to create posters for each individual Reading Buddy.  I have been working on creating the buddies for over a year now- matching each Beanie Baby I own (which is a LOT!) with a strategy for teaching comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, and decoding!

For today ONLY, they are 50% off- regular price is $6.00, and they are on sale for $3.00, plus the extra 10% you can get by using the BTS13 code. They also qualify as one of your Buy 2, Get 1 free items because I am feeling super generous today!  Click on the picture to check them out!

I also purchased some of those wooden animal pieces from Hobby Lobby and some other craft stores, and I intend to attach them to dowel rods or popsicle sticks as Reading Buddies the kids can use while they are reading.  I found a lot of them, but there are some more I need, so I may just need to create them from clip art and attach them to foam core or posterboard or something.  I'll definitely share when I get them finished!  

Some of my favorites that are on sale this weekend include:

This is a great unit for back to school!  This is something you can start the first or second week of school if you wish, and the prep is super easy!  I wrote about how I use Family Journals in this post, if you didn't catch it and are interested in learning more.  Family Journals are one of the best things I implemented in my class last year.  

If you haven't started school yet, you may want to consider purchasing my Back to School Postcards.  There are 7 different themes, so hopefully one of them is bound to match your classroom theme or your tastes!  I use mine to welcome my students back to school and remind them about our Back to School Social.  I love it when they come to the social all excited because they got mail from their teacher! 

 

Some of my other favorites are my Investigating Writing Packs.  I loved teaching informational writing last year using my Arctic Animals pack.  This year, with the new Next Gen Science Standards, I will probably be using my Animal Life Cycles pack as my focus as I think it will go well with what we're going to be doing in my district.  My students did an amazing job of creating informational posters and writing their own informational books complete with a Table of Contents and a Glossary.  I almost cried, I was so proud of them.

And if you really want to get thinking ahead and start prepping for fall activities, I have my Trick or Treat Math Centers.  These centers have some fun ways of practicing math, including a Halloween Themed Yahtzee game, a "Cooking Up Some Magic" board game, and a "Slide to 120" game that is similar to Chutes and Ladders.  

Happy Shopping!  And please don't forget to leave feedback!  It's so easy- go to your Purchases, and click on the flashing "Leave Feedback" button!  Plus, you can redownload updated purchases as well.  When you leave feedback, you receive credit towards your new purchases, and you get $$$ off!  It's awesome!  

Getting to Know Your Students

I have been sharing some posts about how to get to know your students and their families.  I think that learning about our students and their families is an important part of our jobs, and one that will make our jobs easier.  There are some simple things you can do to engage your families and connect with them, and these will help you have a successful school year!

One of the most simple ways I get to know my students is by sending home a survey at the beginning of the year.  I send mine home on the first day of school with the rest of their Back to School paperwork.  I call mine "Getting to Know Your Child" and I really love reading the responses on these.  I ask questions about their families, what they like to do, and what they think of school.  

These surveys are a very simple way to get to know your students.  You can place them in a binder, or in a file folder for each student, or whatever works for you.  Then you can reference them whenever you need more information about a student.  I like to read each one of them and then I can use this information to make connections with my students.  

Click on the picture above to get the freebie! 

Do you have a back to school survey you send home at the beginning of the year?  What are some other ways you get to know your students?

For more posts on connecting with your students, you can check these out: 

 Family Journals

Family Visits

Family Visits

Thank you for checking out my posts on Engaging and Connecting with Families!  It is so important to begin the school year on the right foot by building relationships with families!  Today, I am going to share with you some tips for using Family Visits in your classroom.  

Have you heard of Family Visits?  I know several schools require Home Visits, but Family Visits are something different!  Family Visits are a great way to connect with your students and their families, and establish a positive relationship from the very beginning.  I know many people have not heard about Family Visits- myself included- or are just really scared of the idea.  But I promise you, Family Visits are not scary, and they will give you some great insight into your students and valuable information about their families.

If you have never done a Family Visit, then the idea seems daunting, especially if you teach in a low income area, Title 1 school, or your students live in a dangerous area.  The first time I did Family Visits is when I did my student teaching.  It seemed scary to me when and I wasn't sure what to expect.  However, I really enjoyed them and have done them in my own classroom.

Tips for Successful Family Visits:

1.  Choose when you want to do your Family Visits.  You can do them before school begins or after school starts, depending on what works best for you, your school, and your students.  I choose to do mine after school begins, because sometimes a child on my roster may not end up in my classroom.  This way, any children who are added at the last minute still get the opportunity to have a family visit.  I usually do 3 visits a day and choose 2-3 days a week to carve out time to go.

2.  Send a letter home, explaining Family Visits.  I sent my letter home a few weeks after school began and we got into a classroom routine.  I chose a few dates that worked for me, and gave parents options of times to choose from.  You could also send home a postcard before school begins, greeting the students and welcoming them to the class.  You could assign a time and date for the Family Visit on the postcard, or just invite their students and families to schedule a visit before school begins.  I personally prefer to allow the families to choose a time that works for them.   

3. Make your Family Visits non-threatening!  Explain in the letter that you just want to get to know the students and their families better!  This is NOT a visit to check out their homes or judge the families.  It is not a parent-teacher conference!  I make it clear in my letter that I want to get to know them better and they will get to learn more about me too!

4.  Offer alternatives to visiting the home.  This also helps make the Family Visits non-threatening.  Some families are homeless, or live in shelters, or with other family members.  Some families are embarrassed to have their child's teacher visit the home.  So you can offer them the option to meet elsewhere instead.  I always suggest something like a local park or a restaurant like McDonalds.  This allows all families to participate, regardless of their living situation!

5.  Keep it short!  My visits are less than 20 minutes long.  In just a 20 minute visit, you can meet the family members, talk to the parents about what they expect from their child this school year, and answer any questions they have.  If the students want to, and the family is OK with it, they will often show you around their house- their rooms, toys, favorite books, pets, etc...  

6.  Bring a Friend.  I've been on Family Visits by myself, and I've also brought along a coworker.  You need to find out what the guidelines are for your school and follow those.  But you need to do what makes you feel comfortable!  If you are worried about going alone, you can ask a teacher friend, a grade-level colleague, a counselor, or your Principal to go with you.  Safety first!

7.  Take a Picture!  During the visit, I always take a picture of myself with one of my students.  The student gets to choose where the picture is taken.  I get the pictures printed up and create a "Family Visit" book.  The students can write a bit about their visit with their teacher in their home.  This helps each student to feel special, and also helps drum up interest from the other students when they see that another child had their teacher visit their house.

Here is another great resource online with some more information about Family Visits!   

I have also created an example letter you can send home to your students.  This one has my name and information on it, but if you click on the picture, it will take you to my Dropbox, where I have an editable PDF freebie for you.  I hope you will consider downloading the letter and going to visit your students in their homes!

So would you consider doing Family Visits?  Does the idea scare you?  Have you done them before?  Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking!

For more great posts about Engaging Families and building positive relationships, check out these posts!

Family Journals

Student Postcards

Student Surveys

Family Journals

Thank you for checking out my posts on Engaging and Connecting with Families!  It is so important to begin the school year on the right foot by building relationships with families!  Today, I am going to share with you some tips for using Family Visits in your classroom.  

Have you used Family Journals in your classroom before?  I find that Family Journals are one of the best ways to connect with my families.  And a huge bonus is that it gets your kids writing!

I was incredibly lucky to work with one of the best teachers when I did my student teaching, and I learned SO MUCH from her.  She was incredible.  She used Family Journals in her classroom, and that is something that I wanted to take away from my time in her classroom so that I could use them with my own students.

There are a few different ways to do Family Journals, but the result is the same:  increased communication between school and home.  And I don't know about you, but I am always looking for a new way to increase positive communication between me and my families!  One way you can do Family Journals is to have the students write in their journals at school.  They write about something they learned at school that day.  Then they take their journals home that night, and a family member responds to their writing.  There are a few resources here and here, and a book about Family Message Journals as well. (I have that book, and it's pretty good!  It really explains how to make Family Message Journals work in the younger grades!)  Some teachers use the journals every day, while others just use them once or twice a week.  The best thing about these journals is that you can use them however you like!

The other way to do Family Journals is the way that I use them in my classroom, which is where they write in them at home.  I use them as a tool to get to know more about my students and their families.  The student and a family member responds to a prompt that I assign them each week by stapling it into their journal.  The students had an entire week to respond to the prompt, and then they would return their journals to school.  The most important thing about the Family Journals is that they are authentic: the students have a purpose for writing, and they have an audience to communicate to.  The extra writing practice is also incredibly useful!

I know what you're thinking: that sounds like SO MUCH EXTRA WORK.  I understand where you are coming from, but believe me, it's not as hard as it sounds!  Each Monday, I would take out their journals, open to the next page, and staple in that week's prompt.  (This year, I am going to put a ribbon in the journals so that I can easily find the next clean page in their journal!)  I sent home the journals with the students on Monday.  This process took me probably around 7 minutes for 20 students.  The students would respond, their parents or another family member would respond, and they would return the journal to me.

Though I had a strict "homework can't be turned in until Friday" policy in my classroom, I would take the journals any day of the week.  Usually, I read the journals that day, because it only took a minute to read what they had written.  I responded a minimum of once a month (we are busy, after all!), but sometimes I responded more often, especially if the student had something they wrote that caught my eye or something I felt I should respond to.

The very first thing I did when beginning to use the journals in my classroom was to have the students decorate and personalize their journals.  The only requirement I had was that I knew whose journal it was!  I wrote their names (and number) at the top of their journal, and then they decorated them at home as part of their homework the first week of school.  I wanted them to feel like these journals were special.

  

Attached to their journal that first week was a letter from me, explaining what this journal was and how this process worked.  I kept extras on hand for new students as well.  The letter explaining how to do the Family Journal is included in my pack of Family Journal Prompts.  There are actually 2 different letters:  1 where the students first assignment is just to personalize their journal, and a second where they personalize the journal and have a prompt to complete for the week.  There are letters for Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade included, as well as a generic letter for all grade levels.  The pack of prompts includes 69 different prompts, though there are some prompts that are repeated for each grade level, Kindergarten through fifth.  On most pages, there are 10 prompts to a page.  On each page, the prompt is the same, so all you have to do is print the prompts out, cut them out, and staple them into the notebooks.  If you had older students, they could probably even glue the journal entries in themselves.  Or you could have an older student help out by stapling the prompts in.  

The second week, I sent home the first prompt for them to respond to.  There is sometimes one prompt for both parents to respond to, and sometimes there is a separate but related prompt for the parent and child.  Notice I put the world "adult" instead of "parent."  In my school, and in my classroom, I had students who did not live with their parents.  Some of them lived with grandparents, while others lived with foster parents or aunts and uncles.  I didn't want to cause issues by implying that only a parent could respond, and to recognize those families that were different.  Also, some of my students have much older brothers and sisters who responded to their little brothers and sisters, and I wanted them to realize that it didn't matter who responded as long as someone did.


I started off using prompts that I already had, but quickly progressed into writing my own prompts.  I tried to match the prompts to the season, or events that were happening in our classroom, or things that we had learned recently, so that the students could really connect to the prompts.  Of course, having journals like this does come with some problems.  Sometimes the students don't have a parent to respond to them, because they have to work at night, or there is a sick family member that they are visiting at the hospital.  I handled that by requiring that the students did their journal each week.  If, for some reason, a grown up couldn't respond to them, they weren't penalized.  I would find a grown up in the school, such as our preferred sub or our secretary, to respond to the child.  They loved having one of the grown ups at school write in their journals!

Some other problems that my arise with doing family journals are that families may feel uncomfortable responding to a particular prompt, the student loses their journal, or that the student doesn't do their journal at home.  I had some ideas in place just in case these things happened in my classroom.  I tried to be proactive about solving problems beforehand so that these journals would be successful.

And they were so successful!  If I were to say any one thing I have done in the past 5 years has made a difference and helped me to really know my students, these journals would be it!  I loved reading what the families wrote each week.  I loved responding to what they had written.  Sometimes, the journal became a conversation between a student and I or a parent and I.  I even had families include pictures!  Some students had multiple family members write in their journal each week.  I learned more about my students than I ever would have without these journals.  I learned that one student could do the splits, and she demonstrated this ability to the class.  I learned that another student wanted to be a nurse, or that another went out for ice cream each Friday if her behavior was good.  I learned that some of my parents were good writers, while others had a lot of information to share about certain topics.

 

   

And we all know the kids love it when you have "inside information" about them that you can share!  They loved that I knew stuff about them, and this helped me make a connection to some of these students.  

And then, sometimes, you get sweet messages like these that really just make the whole process worth it!

Please check out my Family Journal Prompts in my TPT store!

Throwback Thursday

Happy 4th of July!  I hope that all of you are having a wonderful 4th!  It is raining here in Kentucky, and has been all day week, so I am sitting around my house trying to convince myself to clean.  So far, not good.  I hope the rain goes away before Saturday, when I have actual 4th of July plans!

This is my first Throwback Thursday post, and I decided to post something from back in September when I first started blogging.  Sorry, no freebie or anything in this post- I just realized it was Thursday about 5 minutes ago.  Maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, this is my "classroom reveal" post where I showed you photographic evidence that my classroom was, at one point, clean.  :-)

***Original post from September 3 starts here***

This is the bulletin board outside of my classroom.  The sun is made of a tablecloth from the dollar store, and the flowers are made of tissue paper.

Each of my tables has one of these cute table caddies.  I have a green, blue, yellow and red table.

My CAFE board.  One of these days, it won't be empty!

 I needed another bookshelf, and I found one in the hallway.  I painted it green, and covered the back of it with contact paper.  It looks so much better than the basic brown it was before!

 I made these pom pom flowers from tissue paper along with one of the Kingergarten teachers.  I love them!

My mom made this curtain for the bottom of my TV cart and for my games shelf.  Helps hide some of the clutter! 

My newly recovered homework folder bin!

My "I Can" board.  The caddies on top of the student mailboxes hold supplies for poetry journals.  The 3 whiteboards are for word wall words.  I have 3 sets of words for 3 groups of students (high, medium and low).

My reading table, supplies, math supplies, I Can chart.  The doorway is behind that teal shelf beside my table.

My reading table.  Usually my bag and purse aren't sitting on the table. :-) 

The view of the room from the corner opposite the door.

The view of my room from the door.

Math bins.  Student book boxes will go underneath this shelf.  I built the shelf myself since I had nowhere to put their book boxes!

View from the carpet. 

"Bucket Fillers" and helper chart.  Each student's name is on an insect cutout.

Daily schedule.  It's not in the correct order, and there are no times, because I've already had to change my schedule.  

I'm trying this new method out for holding poetry, science and math notebooks.

Calendar chart, phonics dance, and MY NEW RUG!  Yay Donors Choose!

New rug! :-)  I love that each student has their own square.  (Well, kind of... it has 20 squares, and I am over my cap of 20, so 5 students have to sit in 1 of the rows.) 

So that is my classroom, as of a few days before school began.  I've already managed to move a few things around, so I may have to update with some new pictures later.

Hope you enjoyed looking around my classroom!