Product Swap

This is our first time participating in Jessica's Product Swap.  We both lucked out and got take a look at some amazing products.  Juli's review is below mine.  I was linked up with Heidi Harrell from In That Room...Adventures In Second Grade.

 

If you are not a follower of her blog, you really should go follow her.  I love her blog. She shares great ideas and even blogs about her class pet guinea pig. As an animal lover, I look forward to updates on Patches. She suggested I take a look at her Freckle Juice Novel Study:

 and I am so glad she did! My class LOVED it! The book itself is perfect for second graders. Her unit includes pre reading activities, chapter quizzes, inference activities, a craftivity, a fact and opinion flip book, a graphing activity, and MORE! First I started off with the pre reading and prediction activities.  I loved some of the answers for the predictions!

She wrote that she predicts that Freckle Juice is probably a name of a juice of someone pops a freckle and juice comes out of it. GROSS!

One of the more dramatic predictions was that Freckle Juice will kill someone! Yikes!

The craftivity was really cute and the class enjoyed making their very own Freckle Juice folder to hold their work.  I thought they turned out really cute...

I was being cheap and printed the covers off in black and white. The product actually comes with red dots which would have looked really cute. Color printer ink is actually more valuable than gold in our school.  

The class really enjoyed the inference activity and it was a great way to encourage finding text evidence (you're welcome 3rd grade teachers).  I had them work in pairs to find the character actions that led to our inferences about the characters: 

If you are regular follower of our blog, then you know my class tends to be a tad dramatic.  This meant I wasn't surprised by some of my girls Text To Self responses:

At least they are honest right?!

There are SO many other activities that we did and that are included in this pack. I strongly encourage you to do this novel study (with this unit of course!) if you teach second grade. I think it would work well with third graders as well.  My class really enjoyed the book and the activities from Heidi's unit.  If you wish to visit her blog, you can find it HERE. If you want direct access to this awesome unit, you can find it at TPT HERE.  

She also has a really cute contraction activity:

You can find this fun activity at TPT HERE.

I was so excited about Jessica's Product Swap the last time she did it that I decided that if she hosted it again, I would sign up!  I was excited when I got the email letting me know that I had been linked up with Anita from i live 2 learn i love 2 grow.  If you don't already, head on over to her blog and begin following her.  She loves to use technology in her classroom and I have enjoyed all of her posts.  .

She gave me her All About the Sonoran Desert pack to try in my classroom.   

When she first told me about the pack I got really excited because my students are working on reading informational text.  Specifically, we are working with determining importance when reading text.  The first things I got really excited about were the QR codes.  If you have a device that can read a QR code, it will pull up articles, websites, and videos for the students to read.  

I decided that I was going to use this pack to accompany the work that my students have been doing in Guided Reading.  I only have one device to read a QR code so I decided to split my guided reading groups into three stations.  A computer station, a book station, and the desert fact card station.  Instead of using the QR codes, I pulled all of the websites and videos up on my computer for my kids to browse through.  While they looked through all of the information online they adding details to their books that they created about the Sonoran Desert.  

Then I had a basket of books all about deserts.  The students needed to browse through the books looking for specific details about the Sonoran Desert.  

Finally at the third station the students worked with the desert fact cards. 

The thing I enjoyed most about using this pack in my guided reading groups, was that I could tailor the books they were creating to different things so that all of them weren't creating the exact same book.  I also loved that the kids were wonderfully engaged in the research of the desert.  While they were so engaged, I could rotate through the group and work individually with my students on the skills and strategies they need work with.  The kids really had a great time completing this activity and it worked really well with the guided reading skills that I have been teaching.

I highly recommend heading over to Anita's shop and picking this packet up.  It is priced so well too!  Only $3.00 for all of these amazing activities for your students in your classroom.

I am so happy that I signed up for Jessica's product swap and I am excited to hear about all of the other products that were swapped!

Happy Swapping!    

October Currently

The blog hasn't done a CURRENTLY lately and I've never done one before so I thought that I would give it a try.  Hop on over to Farley's blog to check it out and participate in it.

It is so much fun to see what everyone is up to in October.

On an exciting note, I won my first giveaway this week from Jeannie at The 2nd Grade Surprise.  She is new to blogging so please head over and check out her new blog.  It is super cute!!!

On another exciting note, Heather and I threw a bridal shower today for one of our teammates.  It was a great time but I am exhausted!  I am so glad that this week we get to wear jeans everyday this week with pink to show our support for Breast Cancer Awareness.  I am thrilled to be able to support such a worthy cause, but to be honest I am just as excited to not have to think or plan my outfits in the mornings this week!

Hope you guys have a great week!

Newbie Bloggers Blog Hop!!!

Good Morning Blogging World!

We are linking up this morning with Abby from Mrs. Saunders' Lovelies

She joined a Blog Hop for Newbie bloggers that Janis from Grade Three is the Place for Me is hosting.

Being that we are newbie bloggers and learning day by day about this new found blogging world, we thought that we too would link up!

Here are the questions:

    1.  what state you are in

    2.  your current teaching position

    3.  your teaching experience

    4.  when you started blogging

    5.  share a blogging tip / blogging resource

Here are our answers...

1.  We teach in North Carolina

2.  We are currently teaching 2nd grade. (The best grade EVER!)

3.  Juli- 2 years in 1st grade and 8 in second.

     Heather- 1 year in 3rd and 10 in second.

4.  We started blogging in May 2012 after being Blog Stalkers forever!

5.  There are SO many tips and resources to share.  The one I feel like is the best to share is Kristin from Ladybugs Teacher Files.  

She has a wonderful section of video tutorials on her site that we have watched and learned so much from as we have started in the blog world.  They have been absolutely invaluable and we are so thankful to her for putting things out there so we can learn and get better at this blogging business!

So there we have it!  Our first Blog Hop for Newbie Bloggers.  Thanks to Janis for hosting this fun party.  We have really enjoyed linking up with so many new bloggers!!

Happy Hopping!

Juli and Heather

App Happy Linky Party

Heather let me know that Hope over at Second Grade Shenanigans was having an App Happy Linky Party.

 I have had my iPhone for 3 years and I am pretty much addicted to it.  The things that we can do with these machines is absolutely mind blowing.  My husband has a Droid and we are always comparing our phones.  I must admit that when he first got his phone I liked a lot of the things that it could do.  Some, even, that I couldn't do with my iPhone.  But as time has progressed, we joke that my phone remains amazing and his phone is slowly becoming inferior to mine. :-)  I have been looking at the other posts that people have added to the linky party and I have almost all of them.  And I would admit that they are all amazing Apps to have!  Hope spoke of the book retriever app that she has purchased.  It looks like a great tool!  I found an app on Pinterest that is very similar to the book retriever.  It is called Class Book Organizer made by Booksource.

I initially posted about this resource earlier this summer HERE.  I have been attached to this app and website for a good portion of the summer.  Early in the morning, sadly, I will sit in my bed and take a basket of books and scan the barcodes before I even get out of bed.  That is a sad statement!!!  As of today, I have 797 books in my classroom library and I still have 13 baskets to go!  YIKES!!!  That's a lot of books!  What I do like about the program is that I can add my students.  They can use my iPhone or iPad to check the books out.  I can track the books that they are checking out and see the levels and genres of the books that my students are consistently choosing.


The best thing about it, the app is FREE.  It is called Classroom Organizer and it is available for iPhone and Android.  

I am so excited to see what everyone else is using out there on their phones to impact their classroom.


What makes you App Happy!?!?

Juli

Inky Linky!

 

I am linking up with Mr. B's Beach Brains for an Inky Linky party. Teachers share the stories of the ink they have along with a picture. Juli doesn't have any tattoos and I have only one but that still qualifies us right?  It is located on my right ankle - kind of hard to tell from the picture.  My tattoo means a lot to me. I got it when I was going through a really hard time in my life.  It is the symbol for strength with Heather flowers wrapped around it.  It was to remind me that I have the strength to make it through anything in life.  I feel like it is a true reflection of me. I would love to have more but have no plans to do so.  I would really like another small one somewhere to represent my 2 boys. A friend of mine found an amazing tattoo on Pinterest (seriously is there anything you can't find there?) where you place a fingerprint from child laid over each other in the shape of a heart. How sweet is that?!  I struggle with my tattoo sometimes in the teaching field as I feel I may be judged for having it being a teacher and all.  My love of teaching children has been the same as it was before I got the tattoo so I don't think it makes me any less of a teacher. I will say that being a parent I don't ever want to expose other people's children to something they don't agree with.  So I do cover my tattoo with a band aid when it isn't covered by my clothes. None of my students have ever seen it.  I have had a few children ask why I always wear a band aid.  I just tell them to cover up a scar - sort of the truth right?  I love my tattoo even if I cover it because everyone has different values and children are impressionable.  I hope you have enjoyed the story behind my tattoo.

On a totally different note, we worked in the school garden today so be on the look out for a post from Juli if you have been following our garden adventures.
 Heather