Our Amazing School!

Hello all! I wanted to share the video our district made of Laketown's first day of school! I love my school and this video was so well put together and it really captures the amazing essence of our school!
Laketown First Day Video

I <3 duct tape

Amazingly fun what you can do with duct tape!

Student pockets...

These are the pockets I made for students. Needed a lot because between speech and resource we have a lot of kiddos. I took neon poster board and put these fun-peel and stick- pockets on them. Then I laminated it. Cut open the pockets and ta-da pockets for their punch cards. We will probably use just address label for names once we know our case loads and that way makes for easy switching when we add or drop students.

Behavior for this year...

These are the cards our room is going to use this year for our Behavior management. We will each have a different shape hole punch so we know which one of use gave students the punch as well as helping avoid students who try to cheat by using a basic hole punch. When they fill up a card they get to turn it in for a reward coupon! We are doing reward coupons so we can get rid of our huge disgusting treasure box. That thing was just bulking, in the way, and became more of a problem than it needed to be.

Click here for my pdf if you would like it! 

I just printed it off on several different types of colored card stock and will be using the paper cutter to cut them. There are 9 per sheet. I printed enough to hopefully get us through 2 quarters :)

Almost time to go back!

Well it is about that time of year again! As most people assume us teachers just had the whole summer off, I definitely did not! Over the summer I took an extremely demanding class and worked at the Dyslexia Center. Now that my class is finished and the center is on break, I have had the time to rest some but start prep. for a new year. I will hopefully be doing a better job at blogging this year and hopefully have some great things to share with everyone!

I'm new to this people!

Okay, so when I started this I just assumed that my page would be like everyone's that I visit with the blogger line at the top of the page with the ability to follow my blog. Guess I was wrong because I have had a few requests to add a follow button LOL. So I think I did. Let me know if I did it correctly!!

Thanks!!

Tough Cookie to Crack....And that is putting it lightly!

So today I believe I finally got through to a student that wouldn't budge! And now I just need to get real creative on how to utilize this in school. I have a student that is stubborn, unmotivated, and does not really work for anything. But I do know he likes to dance- A LOT. I saw this video on my own and thought immediately of him. So today, during our last ISAT we talked some about music and dancing in his "Frequent Breaks". I told him I had a video that made me think of him. He wanted to see it so I said okay if you work hard I will show it to you after you finish. He worked SOOOO hard and I am pretty sure nailed the math extended response! So, like I always say, no matter what it takes- Make a relationship with your students!! Here is the awesome video I found!

Inferencing Lessons Can Come From Anywhere, and I Mean ANYWHERE!

So in the midst of ISAT craziness this week. We had a moment I am going to make a writing inferencing lesson next week! All of our students loved the snack mix we had for testing breaks this week. We had it in this nice container I got from Wal-Mart that has a spout for easy pour. Today as the SLP was replenishing it, I hear a "crash". The lid had popped off and the container hit the floor and the above mess is what we were left with. In our "go figure, only us" thought process we think, "we need to take a picture of this". Why? Because sometimes we need proof of how messed up our days can get that's why! LOL After I took a picture, I thought you know this would be really good if we don't tell the students what happened to it and just say it disappeared. Then next week when we get back to regular schedule, I will use the picture as a writing prompt. "What do you think happened here?" I figured it would be a great way for the students to be creative and they can connect/relate to it because they will recognize it!

ISAT Thank You!

If you are aware of anything teacher or educational related, you know what it is like when Standardized Testing Begins!! This week was the start of ours. As a resource teacher, this means lots of rescheduling, read allowable parts, and anxiety for everyone you come in contact with! Because we need the flexibility of nearly everyone in the school (not just grades 3-5) to move classes to get into rooms for testing. I came up with a cute "Thank You" for staff in our building from the resource room. I found pre-cut butterflies in the scrapbook section of Michael's craft store, double-sided tape, Hershey's Bliss Chocolates, and some witty saying to type and print off. This is what the outcome was. Lot's of happy staff members! LOL

Dr. Seuss Day......How about Month!

For Dr. Seuss' Birthday I found a very cute idea and made it our own for our school! In honor of "The Foot Book", the beautiful and wonderful parent educator, Vivian went around and took pictures of everyone in our staffs feet! (Covered with shoes of course) Then I compiled all of them into categories mostly based on the book. Such as Black Feet, Fast Feet, Up in the Air Feet, etc. I then posted them on a bulletin board in the school and set out answer sheets for classes. So currently the classes are competing to see who can guess the most feet in our building! It was really easy and so far it has raised lots of conversations!