PTTD:Post Traumatic Teaching Disorder

Have you noticed we haven't blogged in like an entire school year?! We are suffering from PTTD. It was a ROUGH school year. We struggled, taught, and cried but we made it through.  Before this school year, Juli and I were very proactive in our teaching. We surfed blogs, created products for TPT, and brainstormed new ideas constantly.

THEN...this year happened. The group came to us with a reputation for being a tough crew. We are experienced we thought. We have had rowdy classes before we thought. We've got this we thought.

THEN...the first day of school happened. Wow! Okay we thought. We have all sorts of tricks and techniques we thought. It will take a more creative approach we thought.

THEN...survival mode happened. Exhausted, deflated, and at a complete lost, we went into survival mode. Blog surfing ended. TPT shopping ceased. I lost ten pounds and started struggling with massive anxiety. At winter break, I cried and begged my husband not to make me go back  - not that there was really any choice! All teaching desire had been drained from me. I would feel guilty at times and try to muster the energy to get back in the groove, only to face the class and reality they brought with them and retreat back into survival mode.

THEN...the school year ended! We survived! Barely but we survived! Juli has been traveling with her family. I have done the same. Slowly we are recovering. I have gained back almost all my weight in the month we have been out of school. I still fight anxiety, but not the extent I was during the school year. While I am not quite ready to start mentally planning my school year, the thought of classroom prep doesn't make my stomach hurt.

We know that the group we had was a once in a teaching career group - or at least we hope! To go into detail about the group would be fruitless as we are putting it behind us and the group itself doesn't deserve to be analyzed or discussed openly on the web. We are picking ourselves up and brushing ourselves off. We hope to blog, create, and share once again.  To any followers that have stuck around and are reading this, thank you! We hope this coming year will be full of new and creative teaching ideas and products. Hope everyone is having as an enjoyable summer as we are!

   AND

Happy Birthday Juli!

What a better day to return to blogging than to wish Juli a Happy Birthday! As you can tell from like the past ten posts - she has been holding up the blogging fort around here.  This school year has been somewhat different to say the least, but that is another post for another day. Just wanted to stop by and let everyone know that my amazing friend is celebrating her birthday today. In addition to be a great friend, she is also an awesome teacher, fun violin teacher, super mom, and recently added swimmer to her many titles. I do not know anyone who is busier than Juli, but was not at all surprised to hear she now gets up even earlier 3 days a week to go jump in a cold pool and swim for endless laps.  She is crazy! Join me in wishing Juli a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Place Value

I don't know about you guys but I LOVE Sundays!  Don't get me wrong.  I like Saturdays too, but my family is very busy on Saturdays.  It almost seems like it is another day of the work week.  We have soccer games, football games, and dance rehearsals on Saturdays.  But on Sunday, we have one thing to focus on.  Our family!  We begin with a carefree morning of quietness, coffee (husband not me), breakfast and lounging around.  Then we go to church and enjoy a morning of worship together.  Then we head home for relaxing, football games on TV, Sabbath rests (my personal FAVE), and playing.  Today we even baked cookies together.  This evening we will headed to our small group meeting with our dear friends.  We have the best time.  PLUS...I don't have to cook.  Each week two couples share the cooking responsibility for the whole group.  It is just a remarkable day.  I don't want you to think that it's all play and no work.  I definitely work, especially on school and TPT stuff.  And I still find a few minutes to make it to the gym.  But it just feels different!

So as I have been planning for the week, I thought I would pop in a show you what we're up to this week.  PLACE VALUE!  Aren't we always working on place value?  I'm being dead serious.  I literally feel like it is ALL.THE.TIME.  There is always lots to cover so we try to make it as fun as possible.  It is also a skill that is great practice through application in games.

So this week, we will be breaking out the Web Themed games that specifically cover 2.NBT.1 and 2.NBT.3.  I hope you pop over and pick up your own copy too!  I also have lots of other ones as well that cover Place Value.  Let's be honest, it is one of the most important skills we teach as second grade teachers.

I am also excited to be pulling the pumpkins out and teaching through pumpkins on Thursday!!

 Make sure to stop by and pick up all the Place Value packs available to you.  As always, the first comment picks up a copy of your own for your classroom.  (And as an added bonus, If you have a blog and post about your class using this packet, please send me the link and I will let you choose ANY product from my TPT store for free!)

Happy Halloween Week!

Fall and Frenzied

Wowza!  I feel like every time we get on to blog we are complaining about how stressed we are.  It has to be said though...we are STRESSED.  I hope that we aren't the only ones feeling the pressure.

Last year seemed to be quite stressful with the addition of all those extra kids.  Let's just say that it is a good thing that didn't happen THIS year.  I am quite certain my family would have me committed!  This is the most challenging year I have had to date in 13 years of teaching.  I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it.

With that being said, I love my class.  They have lots of needs and they are exhausting.  But I love them.  They have fun personalities, they make me laugh, and they love to be at school (even if for most of them I am asking them to do near impossible things!)

This week we had a short week.  We took our kids to the zoo on Thursday and then had a half day on Friday.  Tomorrow we will not be having school so that teachers can get some much needed time in their classrooms.  I have scheduled parent conferences for tomorrow so I am looking forward to meeting with my parents and discussing their kids!

This past week we spent 3 and 1/2 days reviewing skip counting.  Seems like a simple enough task for these kids.  However, we pretty much can only do it up to 100.  Past 100 is hit and miss and all the way to 1,000 is laughable.  We spent lots of time evaluating and discovering number patterns this week.

So this coming week, we have decided to use my Fall Activities pack for the kids to review.  It should be fun for them and the fall decor is perfect for the weather we have had here in NC.  I love October so it seems perfect to embrace the fall weather while practicing our skip counting.

Be sure to head over to my TPT store and pick up a copy for yourself before Fall leaves us!  As always, first comment gets a copy for free!

Happy Fall!

Check out all the awesome stuff that you get in the pack!!! (There's much more, but I couldn't do a preview of ALL 51 pages that it includes)  The range is from 5-1,000.  It is a perfect pack to use to differentiate!!

And as I promised, click below to get yourself a fun little fall freebie!!

Place Value Perfection

What a week!  This is going to be one crazy year if last week has any indication!!  Let's just say that both Heather and I have characterized our week as "teaching first grade."  Yes, first grade.  This isn't the typical first graders coming to second grade and we just don't "remember" what they're like at the beginning of the year.  This is like kindergarteners coming to first grade.  It is B-A-D y'all.  Now, trust us when we tell you that we were warned from the first day of school LAST year by all of the first grade teachers that "they were coming".  I have spent all of this week reviewing short vowel sounds.  Well, back up.  I have reviewed what a vowel is, and then what sound they make when they are short.  YIKES!  Toward the end of this week, we began analyzing our words their way lists.  I have the full spectrum of ability levels.  I have two who know NO sounds and will be beginning on the picture lists.  Then I have two who made it all the way through the primary list and 3/4 of the way through the elementary list.  So they are on the final 3 spelling skills and all in between.  My grandfather grew up going to school in a one room schoolhouse.  I spent three weeks with him this summer and we talked a lot about that one room school house.  He truly believes it is the best way of learning.  I thought a lot about those conversations this week.  Even though I don't have different ages like he did in a one room schoolhouse, I do have all of the levels of one.  It is exhausting.  I am tired.  However, more than ever before in a school year I see my PURPOSE for these children.  It is clear as day.  I will not let the negative get the better of me on this year.  I will see the good in everything and be the best I can be for these little ones who have SO MANY NEEDS!!!!!!!  So that brings to me to place value.  They don't know it.  So this weekend I hopped on the place value train and started making some games.  I think we are going to need them and I am hoping that you will too!  There are two card games with levels of all sorts.  Use them all.  Use what you need.  Use it throughout the year as they improve.  It includes a value challenge game which is played like war.  It also includes a concentration game with numbers in standard form, expanded form, base ten model, and number word.  I hope it helps your classes build that number sense that is so vitally important!  First comment gets their own copy free!

Building place value perfection!

Fact Families- 2.NBT.5

This week we are teaching addition and subtraction strategies.  One thing I plan to focus on this year is moving my students to become better mental mathematicians.  I really dislike the reliance on fingers and pictures that my students have.  One of the strategies that we teach to help with this is Fact Families.  There are lots of great resources out there to help with teaching fact families.  I wanted to create a fun game that my students could play in an independent station to review the concept.  I also wanted to be able to hold my students accountable with a recording sheet.  This game will allow your students to play and review the concept while also having fun!  I also included a variety of cards so that it can easily be adapted for a variety of ability levels.  As always, the first comment gets their own copy FREE!

Happy Fact Families!

Book Baskets

Ever since our school adopted the Reader's Workshop approach, I have been trying to find what will work best for my kids during their IDR (independent daily reading).  For the past two years, I have used the cardboard magazine files from IKEA.  They are cheap and easy to replace.  However, being cheap means that I am buying class sets twice a year.  As the year began, I ran to IKEA to pick up another class set and to my surprise, they were sold out of them.  I started racking my brain about what else I could do that wouldn't cost a lot of money.  I went to the Dollar Tree to pick up some more book baskets for my book collection (I mean when you have 63 baskets of books holding your classroom library, you are constantly buying them!).  I came across these cute blue baskets with handles.

I LOVE them!  I figured $23 was a good investment and they will hopefully hold up for a few years!  I wasn't exactly sure how to identify everyone's baskets since they look the same.  I didn't want to write on the basket so I decided to take some Rock Star name tags, mount them to card stock, laminate them, and then write on the name tag with Sharpie.  That way, I can reuse them as well.  Since there are holes all over the basket and it would be hard to stick anything to it, I punched a hole in the name tag and used a book ring to attach it.  So far, it is working wonderfully and I think they're super cute!!!

On a personal note, all of my children are finally in school with me.  Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade.  I am so happy that I get to take them to school with me each day.  It brings a lot of other issues that I have to learn to manage, but having them with me is priceless.  They are also in the classes of 3 of my personal friends.  So it is a lot of fun.  Not to mention my second grader is in Heather's class!  Each night, my job is to pack lunches and backpacks.  This is what my house looks like every night!

Here is what we looked like on our first day of school!  We have a very early start school (7:15 for students).  I leave my house at 6:30 every morning and have to have all of these precious ones ready as well.  So it is EARLY in our house getting up and ready.  They are pretty wide eyed for the first day and their first wake up call of 5:45!

Here we are leaving school in the afternoon (the morning pic is in the dark).  Everyone jokes because we always walk with Momma and her ducklings.  I don't know why, but they always walk in their birth order.  (Oh, and they are all 15 months apart from each other.)

I don't know about you guys, but we have completed 2 weeks of school and I am BEAT!  Exhausted does not even come close to what I am feeling.  Heather and I met at school today (Saturday) because we sill had hours of work to do.  We currently feel like we can't catch up.  Hopefully it will get better but until then, I will continue to look bleary eyed and breaking out in hives dealing with the stress and exhaustion.  My husband made a comment today about me not having put anything out on TPT for awhile.  He is right, but there just isn't a spare minute in the day.  Hopefully soon people!

Happy Back to School!