Editing: COPS and Badge Buddies

Hey everyone!

I'm jealous that some of you are out of school already. Just a few more weeks and I'm there too!

My teacher friend had a few kiddos that were struggling with their editing during writing. They would say they were finished but looking at their paper, there wasn't any punctuation. Talk about a run-on sentence! After giggling as I demonstrated what their paper sounded like in one run-on, we got down to business.

Another teacher friend of mine had a brilliant idea! She'd seen the "COPS" thing on Pinterest and blogs and decided to a spin on it. Cue the badges from Dollar Tree.

This is how I would use them. Pick a few kids that have no problem editing at all. They are the ones that get badges and become "Badge Buddies". When they are done writing, they can pair up with the ones that need that editing help!

Here's a poster I saw on Stephanie's blog:

Of course I had to put my spin on it and also make a few things to go along with this, including a poster and a badge buddy certificate! I mean, any chance to use clip art to make cute things is a good reason, right?

I've added color and b/w versions, along with bullet and non bullet versions. And two badge certificates! This will hopefully make editing more fun!

Click here to grab your freebie

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Friday Freebie and Summer Writing

*gasp* *pant* Excuse me while I pass out from almost over doing my exercising today lol. I'm working a half day this afternoon and then have a volunteer work party later, so I wanted to fit in my exercise this  morning, even if it meant getting up a little earlier. So worth it!

Anyway, I'll be in kindergarten today, and then that'll be my last sub job before summer vacation, woohoo!

I've started working on another packet, but just created this cute little summer writing prompt pack.

There's writing prompts about clouds, lemonade stands, and more! Plus a watermelon story/watermelon seed poster. The whole thing is only $1 at my TN store! If you're still in school it's perfect, or you can do this with your kids over the summer. Or grab it for next year!

See that watermelon background? I made it! I was so happy with it, I made another border and that's my freebie today.

Click it! It's all yours :)

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Excellent Writers

   Writing is a skill we can improve on at any age.   As a sub, I am blessed with being able to see various ideas in the many classrooms I work in. I love the materials ready at hand for students, the inspirational writing centers and display boards, and lessons taught on writing. All of these together help students to become that ‘superb writer’.

   One thing students need to be successful in writing, are ideas to write about. Too often I hear students say that they do not know what to write about and are stumped. Providing students with a list of ideas and topics is one helpful way to guide them on to the path of writing. Posting a picture on the board as a writing prompt is another way to spark writing. Giving students a display of different things they can write such as poems, letters, posters, stories, etc. can help spark that creativity in the students and ignite their passion for writing.

   Display boards or bulletin boards with writing tips and information are also a help to students when writing. These displays could show the steps in the writing process, a rubric or scoring guide for students writing, descriptive words for students to use, or examples of student writing. Bulletin boards can be a very valuable tool in the classroom. Having these tools that are readily available, this helps them become better writers.

   Having the right materials also helps students when writing. A variety of writing papers and writing templates gives students a choice. One classroom I was subbing for had blank paper, lined paper, paper with a spot for writing and drawing, comic strip paper, and more. The kids loved having a choice of paper to use, even construction paper.

   Ways to improve their vocabulary is also important. I’ve been in classrooms that gave each student a personal dictionary to use. It was readily at hand in their desk to pull out any time they needed to look up a word for correct spelling. A local club in our community likes to donate dictionaries to all third grade classrooms in the district. The look on the students’ faces as they realize that they have their own dictionary to keep forever is priceless.

   Another source of checking vocabulary are pocket spellers or online sites, such as Grammarly. Pocket spellers are compact and quick to use. Several classes I’ve subbed in have class sets for children. The kids love them because there are sometimes word games on these pocket spellers, but they’re still learning!

  Word walls can be another great addition to the classroom for those young writers. It helps them become more independent in their writing and more likely to learn the words with repetition. I’ve seen various word walls, some including environmental prints of stores in the community that the students are apt to write about. Including the kids’ names in the word wall is great and when students write about other students or write letters to other students, they are able to look up the name of the person they are writing about.

  Having the right materials, a variety of resources, and ways to influence student writing, will helps students excel in their writing. Writing is a way for them to voice their opinions and let their imagination run free. They’ll become stronger and better writers and even superb writers.

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Bunny Hop Freebie

I'm so excited to be part of this BIG celebration! TBA's one year anniversary is happening and it falls on Easter! We're celebrating for a week, TBA style!

Ok people I must like you guys or something. Or I'm doing this in the spirit of celebration. Today is also TBA Author's Behind the Scenes. As in, what I look like as I'm blogging. *gulp* So I normally blog in my pjs on the weekend (and now Spring Break) or a day I'm not subbing. I blog after work, but then I'm usually in sweatpants because that's more comfortable than teacher clothes!

 I wear glasses while I'm at the computer.

Cheese :) See I'm in my pjs. My top is from a shirt from my student teaching.

My favorite pj bottoms ever from Old Navy

My little helper asleep on the job!

My blogging snack, peanut butter Cheerios!

Seriously people, I must love you to show you me in my pjs. With no makeup. Yikes! Ok, onto the Bunny Hop Freebie!

I was debating so hard on do I do an Easter theme or a party theme? So I decided to do a little of both! I've done a party writing pack freebie and an Easter bookmark freebie!

You can grab my writing freebie at my TN store.

 There are 3 kinds of bookmarks. You can get them at my TN store!

Keep reading until the bottom...so you can hop your way to the next freebie!

This is what's happening April 1st-7th. Be on the look out for other freebies from the other amazing TBA authors! I'm so egg-cited! (had to throw a funny one in!)

Your next bunny hop stop is to Little Miss Kindergarten! Click the egg to hop on over there!

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Crazy Day and a Freebie

Wow this week has flown by! I just got booked for tomorrow, making this a full week. Today I was supposed to be first, then it got cancelled. Then I got a 1/2 day in first (same school) then a call it was full day. I show up today and it was morning in first and afternoon in kinder. Fine with me as long as I have a job! Lol.

Kinders are so funny. One kiddo gushed over the flowers I drew. "Those are the mostest beautiful flowers I've ever seen! You're a good drawer!"

And another kiddo told the assistant I had 2 names. She looked at me confused and a kiddo said, "One is Ms. Tlusty and one is Ms. T. " Ahhh kinders! :)

One of my favorite first grade classes I sub for has this awesome paper for the kiddos to use for writing and I decided to make my own. The kids have boxes to check for capitals, punctuation, spaces, and words.

Got to love the box for the title, courtesy The 3 AM Teacher.

Did I mention it's FREE?! I know, and not even Friday yet! Hop on over to my TN store to get it! 

I'm also astonished that my free Miss Nelson is Missing pack has had 224 downloads! That's one reason I love having a TN store, I can see how many things are downloaded and it helps me see what people like, compared to Google Docs where I can't see what is downloaded.

Hope you all have a great Friday tomorrow! I'm subbing for music :)

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Sentence Sensation and Currently

Oh what a day. Got called for music and had a full day, lunch duty, and taught choir after school. Whew!

Here's my currently for Farley's currently party:

Sorry it's so small. Second currently ever, so still working it out!

Ack! 2 followers away from a giveaway! Can you smell the giftcard people? We're talking about Amazon or TpT folks! It's practically burning a hole in my pocket computer.

I uploaded two new things to my TN store. One is a pack for sentences (K-1 grade more so) with posters and sentence practice. The other is just the poster pack. The poster is a perfect guide for kiddos needing help with writing sentences. Capital, words, spaces, and punctuation.

I also made mini versions of the poster that could be put on student journals/folders. This poster pack is only 50 cents at my store!

I'm giving away the full Sentence Sensation pack with posters and sentence work to the first 5 commenters with their e-mails. Happy Monday!

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Fun Letter Poster Idea

One of the things I love most about being a sub is seeing so many ideas in the classroom. I swear I'm always writing stuff down on papers or copying a worksheet or taking pictures so that I have this all down when I get my forever home someday :)

It's also one of the reasons my teacher friends like me (not the only reason, but one of the reasons lol) because they are always on the look out for new ideas and I see so many and in different districts too. That's part of the reason why I love having a blog so I can see others ideas and share ideas with all of you wonderful teachers too!

Last week I was in kinder for three days in two different classes, but since they were at the same school, they were working on the same stuff and I loved what I saw. (Remember the snarler kid? I'm in his class tomorrow *sigh*)

A lot of the kiddos were having trouble pronouncing and seperating the difference of the letter 'b' and the letter 'v'. So the teachers made these adorable and simple  posters (you could do them for any/all letters!)

Forgive my phone again, but it came out pretty well! So on the letter 'b' there is beach ball, banana, butterfly, bus, ballerina, binoculars, bicycle and balloons.  "V" has van, vase, violet, vacation, veternarion, veil, and violin.

 

I was going to save this for another post but decided it was too cute to wait and you could do it now for Thanksgiving, but the teacher also had a "words we use" spot.

This is obviously for Halloween and the words that the kids might frequently use for writing. Oh my goodness I am SO going to do this or something similar. I know I saw something like this in a blog the other day where the teacher put the words/pics at her writing station, but I love this on the wall so that all the kids can see and it adds color.

Hope you all enjoy these and get inspired by these. I know I do !

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Still loving summer vacation

Still loving summer vacation, even though today was another trip to the dentist. Not too bad, just a filling. But boy was my face numb! 

Sitting there in the chair, I had some time to think about what I've done this summer so far. I can say that I've done Relay for Life, went to Las Vegas, went to the Grand Canyon, helped out at my friend's work a few times, and starting next week I teach a Safety Camp for a week **hmmmm I think I can post stuff for that next week, new inspiration to blog about!**  That's a lot for July, though it's not over yet! I've also been to some BBQ's, graduation parties, and next month I get to go to the coast :) I love the coast!

Anyhoo....don't forget to have those kiddos write about the summer. Either as a parent at home or as a teacher back at school. Kinda cliche, but still, those memories need to be kept! 

Here's a quick and simple paper I whipped up  :)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BXB6hRXojxr-3pGUF-PCtQGld7Ubr7eA70fBvK0lcvA/edit?hl=en_US

Still need to learn how to get it so the pic of the item shows up and you can click it and go straight to Google docs!

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