Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

   

Phew!  Busy, busy, busy!  The light is bright at the end of the tunnel though.  ;)  

For teacher appreciation week, I have many freebies I want to share with you!

Click on the image of each below, or click HERE to visit my store and see all of my products!  Feedback and requests are always welcome and appreciated.  I enjoy making new products and improving my skills.  ;)

Please check out my store for other products and freebies!

Mo Willems Read Aloud QR Codes

The kindergarten team at my school is starting a Mo Willems author study the week after Spring Break.  I am working on a QR code read aloud packet for them.  In my search for good quality read aloud videos, I found the most adorable read aloud yet!  The child reading the book does a fantastic job.  Their voice paired with this clever text is just hilarious!  I was laughing out loud in my class watching this video!
Enjoy!

Check out the Mo Willems read aloud QR code at my TpT store 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Mo-Willems-Read-Aloud-QR-Codes-1151203

or my Teacher's Notebook shop.

Christmas Celebrations in Mrs. Colwell's Class!

I think we are fortunate in our school district, because we still have the freedom to say, "Merry Christmas!" and decorate our rooms and school with Santas, trees, and candy canes, etc!  We study the reasons behind all holidays and celebrations, but it's nice to not be censored in that way.  So, our Christmas party was a blast!  The week before the party, we wrote letters to Santa.  Of course, this was optional, but all of my students chose to do so.  We "mailed" the letters, and some high school volunteer "elves" wrote the kids back!!!  One of my teammates dressed up as Santa and went from room to room posing for a picture of him delivering the letters.  ;)  When the kids returned from P.E., I showed them the picture of Santa in our classroom and they FLIPPED!!!!  It was awesome!  Then, I gave them their personalized letter.  :)
Check out what this looked like...

Personalize your own digital slideshow

Our party was a blast!  We decorated gingerbread men cookies and ate them, we decorated snowflake ornaments, and played a snowman decorating contest.  Check out the fun...

Free photo slideshow made with Smilebox

I hope you have had a wonderful Christmas or holiday season.  The holiday time at school is so magical, and I cannot believe it is already behind us.

Sorry about the mess… we're learning!

I saw this cute sign on Pinterest, of course, and wanted to make it digitally. Click on any of the preview images below to download it for free.

Merry Christmas From My Class!

Merry Christmas

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

...but my Macbook is so delightful! And since we've no place to go... let's create, let's create, let's create! We are stuck inside here in McKinney, TX. The roads are iced over and the windchill puts the temp. at 7! We are NOT use to these conditions. ;) School was closed yesterday, and I spent the day on my computer making fun new products for my store! Check them out! I'm most excited about the Winter Holiday QR Codes, because my students will be using these next week! Click on the image below for more information.

The Candy Cane Senses Poem template is FREE!

My Classroom 2013-2014

I spend so much time in my classroom, as do my students, that it's very important to me that my classroom is a comfortable, soothing place.  I'm so fortunate to have a large classroom with huge windows!  I repeated my owl and nature theme from last year with minor changes to improve functionality.  Check out my slide show from Meet the Teacher night created with the Animoto app!

Try our slideshow maker at Animoto.

Boggle on the SMARTboard = Working With Words

Something I know technology people would like to see us teachers do more, is to have our kids use the SMARTboard instead of us using it as pretty much a large T.V. screen. ;)  I'm often guilty of this, but I'm going to make a bigger effort to give the kids more opportunities. 

I think it could be fun for the kids to play boggle with this website as part of working with words at Daily 5:  http://www.teacherled.com/resources/letterdice/letterdiceload.html

You can get a free boggle recording sheet here:  https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9mzL30n6cCdZmM0YTkwNGMtYjM4Yi00MzczLWFhZWMtMzY0MWE2MGQ3YTlk/edit?hl=en_US 

I'm not ready to introduce this quite yet.  iPads will be next in my room, then working with words.  LOVE Daily 5!

We Arrrrr Starting a Pirate Unit

This week begins our two week pirate unit.  We're reading children's books that include How I Became a Pirate, and Pirate's Don't Change Diapers.  These books can both be found on Tumblebooks!

Our curriculum connection is using context clues to determine the meaning of new vocabulary words.  New words are easy to find in pirate books!  There are so many great terms like shiver me timbers, ahoy matey,
We will also connect pirates to our map unit next week when we make the connection to treasure maps!

We're going to read this pirate poem as well!  Click on the image to visit my TpT store and download it.  :)

On Thursday, the teachers and students in first grade are invited to dress like a pirate!  This will make for a great class picture. :)

Of course, I have consulted Pinterest for pirate themed ideas.  Check out my Pirate pinboard.

There's a free app from Disney's Jake and the Never Land Pirates.

 Click above and then scroll down to #10 on the list.

Also, check out the Toontastic, Jr. app for story creating.  (See comment below.) 

Instead of Saying "I don't know."

Today, our school hosted a fabulous training from Seidlitz Education.  Our presenter, Valerie, was a great speaker and she taught us many valuable strategies for vocabulary development with all students, including English language learners.  She really made us think about how we teaching.  We were challenged to analyze the way we teach, and consider how much talking we do versus our students.  Our students, especially our ELL's need to talk and use the academic vocabulary more than us!  Yet, we, as teachers, have perfected the art of saying it all!

"Talking doesn't mean teaching!" -Valerie

We were given a copy of John Seidlitz's book, 7 Steps to  Language-Rich Interactive Classroom.  Step 1 is to teach students what to say when they don't know the answer.  I made the posters below to post in my classroom.  I am sharing them with you for free!  Click on the images below to visit my TpT store and download them.

The first 2 posters in the download have 4 questions that my team has decided to focus on in first grade.
The rest have all 6 questions from the book and our training with different colored borders. 

4 Back to School Freebies

I've been making posters and decorations for my classroom like crazy!  I thought I should share some of the simple little things I've made in the hopes that someone else will like them and want to use them in their classroom.  :)
They're all FREE... my favorite price!  ;)
Click on the images to visit my TpT store to download them for free.
Here's to a great school year!

The reward menu is a word document, so you can edit it and make it fit your needs.  We use popsicle sticks as compliment sticks in a token economy system.  Take it and tweak it!

Virtual Postcards from Virtual Trips

Imagine your students emailing home an epostcard from a virtual field trip!  Use Google Earth and interactive virtual field trip sites to journey to a place you've been reading about or studying.  Then, have students use images from that location to "write" home about what they have seen and learned.

Check out the app called PhotoCard by Bill Atkinson.  It's FREE!  You can even record a voice message to go with it!  E-mailing is free.  If you want your post card printed and mailed in a hard copy, there's a less than $2 fee in the U.S.  Not bad!