Friday Favorites {9-2-16}

Although I've been sick all week and it seems like nothing was too great around here, I still want to share my Friday FAVORITES from this week!  

My first FAVORITE is this GIVEAWAY that I am co-hosting with An Apple For The Teacher!  Enter the Rafflecopter HERE for a chance to win at $25 Gift Card to TPT!!!

One of my daily FAVORITES is watching my sweet baby girl do tummy time! She just smiles, roll around and tries to giggle! She's almost got it down! Gawd my heart could just explode with love!

This thing. Guys, this is the read deal. Since I've been under the weather I haven't cooked much, so I stopped in to try out Taco Bell's breakfast, which I had never done before. I got the Breakfast Crunchwrap and it is definitely a new FAVORITE! Any time I decide to break my diet I am definitely heading to Taco Bell for Breakfast!

My FAVORITE lesson I taught this week was a lab with Skittles to walk my students through the scientific method. I feel like it's very important for them to have a good grasp on the scientific method before we begin our actual district curriculum, so we tested the question "Do Skittles dissolve faster in warm or cold water?"  They loved watching the Skittles dissolve!

My absolute FAVORITE thing each day is when I see my beautiful Pre-K baby walking down the hall with her "buckle and bubble"! She is soaking up information like a sponge and I couldn't be happier that I get to see her every day! Love this kid tooooo much!

My FAVORITE moment from this week is when I realized that I've lost 17 lbs since I started my weight loss journey in June! My face really tells the tale!

My last FAVORITE of the week is this recipe my mom made my family the other night when I wasn't feeling well enough to cook: Chicken and Potatoes with Garlic Parmesan Cream Sauce!  I love this recipe so much that I've blogged about it before, but when my mom made it, it tasted even better!   Definitely try this recipe out!

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Back to School! Lots of pics!

I was truly SO excited to get back to school! Of course I missed my girls every day, but I enjoyed the routine, the challenge, and getting to know my new kiddos!

Monday morning was our district's convocation and it was awesome! They brought in the drum lines from all three of our high schools and it took me straight back to when I was in high school! This is a pic of me and my teammate and right-hand-man, Mrs. Vann, at convocation!

Tuesday, the second day of "Back to School" for me was a FULL DAY OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT.  I literally spent the entire day with this look on my face.

Wednesday morning we had a whole-school meeting in the morning, and then we FINALLY got to work in our rooms in the afternoon! Then that evening we had Meet the Teacher Night! It was so great to see my new kiddos walk through the door with huge smiles on their faces as they got to pick out their seats for the year!  I also got visits from many previous students and that truly made my day!  Get my Back 2 School Pack HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How I collect supplies on Meet the Teacher Night!

My Classroom!

My Welcome Back Pack and Parent & Student Information Pack!

Thursday was my baby girls' 1st Day of School!  It went so well! She loved every second of it!  My husband got her donuts and 'pink milk' and had breakfast with her in the cafeteria the first morning.  It was a great day for her, as well as for me and my students!

Breakfast!

Painting! One of her favorite things to do!

Her teacher took this and sent it to me!

Her precious name tag and backpack!

And finally, Friday was field/team-building day and my 29th birthday! My students loved competing against other classes playing fun games like Sharks and Minnows, Over/Under, Relay Tic-Tac-Toe, and Tug of War!  

Playing girls against boys tug of war! The boys had to take their shoes off but they still won! 

And my incredible husband came to surprise me at school and bring me my gift- A Fitbit Charge HR!  I was so surprised! I absolutely loved it!  And after school we went to dinner at my favorite Mexican restaurant, Teds Escondido!

My husband and I at dinner!

My awesome present!

And lastly, today has been a day of lesson planning and relaxation.  I've gotten to spend a lot of time with my husband and girls and I've loved every minute of it after having such a busy week!  But my favorite moment of the entire week?  This...

Classroom reveal and something you MUST do NOW to help you later in the year!

I was so excited to get back into my classroom and get my room together! To my surprise, when I entered my room the desks were already put out into tables so that saved me a lot of time and sweat!

Here are some pics of my room!

Right behind my desk

Middle wall between windows

Scientific Method 

Some personal items on my counter so my students can see that I'm a normal human being with a family! Ha!

"How I Get Home" clip chart and my "Voice Levels Clip Chart"
Get my Voice Levels Clip Chart HERE!!!!!

Behavior Process, Hand Signals Poster (get it HERE) and my Scale of Understanding (get it HERE)

"I CAN" magnets so I can post my daily objective under them with expo markers.
My Choice Board so I can write down what my students can do when they finish their work.

Fifth Grade Photo Booth! The lights in the building were off, so I couldn't get a good pic.  The kiddos will stand in front of it for our Meet the Teacher Night and their parents can take pics of them!

Here is a close up of the border and letters!

Now on to the most important part of this post- Something you MUST do NOW to help you out later in the year!

One thing that I always make sure to do before school starts is to make Substitute Packets for days that I have to miss school with short notice.  I get sick, my kids get sick, my car could break down, and I always like to have at least 3 sets on hand for if I'm gone multiple days.

All I do is copy multiple pages (I'd rather them have more work, than not enough) of mazes, coloring sheets, 4th grade math worksheets (since I teach 5th), reading comprehension worksheets, and other fun things, and I make them into a packet.  Then I make copies of the packet for each student in my class.  That way, if I'm gone, one of my team teachers can simply go and get my sub packets and the students have something to do for the day!  It takes all of the stress out of being absent.  And it takes pressure off of my teammates who would be stuck coming up with things for the substitute to do with my students if I didn't leave anything for them to do!

Making Substitute Packets has been a HUGE helper for me and takes most of the stress out of being absent.

What is something that you do in the beginning of the year that helps you later in the year??!!

Leave me a comment and let me know!

Well that's all I've got for now! Enjoy!
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My Classroom- Take a Peek!

Here is my classroom!  I'm so glad that I got in early and got it done before teacher's report tomorrow!  I am currently enjoying my last day of summer by lounging around watching How I Met Your Mother re-runs!  Goodbye, summertime!

P.S.-I have no idea why my pictures are so blurry!

I use the green pocket chart for my math center rotations.

The Scientific Method posters!

My "I Can" statement headers!

Our Behavior Process, Rubric and Hand Signals!

How I Get Home sign and Voice Levels

Compliments Chain! Every time my students get a compliment they get to hang a letter up! When they get every letter I give them a compliment party!

I file my student's completed work in here!

All of my science materials and math centers lined up on my shelf!

Love our triangle desks!

Hope you enjoyed!

How I use Data Folders in my Classroom!

Good afternoon!  Last night I set about creating student data folders that I am going to use this year. Of course, as soon as I asked my husband for help he disappeared until I was done, but somehow I got them all done up pretty quickly.  And it will be well worth the time in the end!

Last year I had my students glue graphs in their interactive notebooks and many times it would fall out, the notebook would get lost, etc.  This year each student will have a data folder that I keep in a crate so they don't get lost!

I got some of the pages that I use in my data folders as a FREEBIE on TpT from Christina Bainbridge's store.  I heart freebies!  I also created two pages for my students to graph their math and science unit test scores on.

Up first is the page that my students will decorate and tape onto the front of their data folder.  It will be fun for them and will keep me from making labels for them!

The first two pages inside the data folder are for my student's Math and Science Unit Test Scores. We take multiple unit tests during the year and they graph their scores here.  Before they color their scores in, I have a conference with each student.  I ask the students what they thought of the test, how they feel about their score, and what they could do better next time.  We go over the problems they got right and the ones they got wrong. Then they color in the column using either green, yellow, or red- based on whether they got mastery, near mastery, or remediation on the test.  (P.S.- Using Mastery Connect makes these testing conferences with my students an absolute breeze...if you haven't heard of it, check it out HERE!)

Last year I really felt like having students graph their own scores made them take ownership over showing what they've learned.  They knew the scores they got on their tests actually meant something, that they weren't just another grade in a grade book.  They got to analyze their answers and see what they did wrong so they could correct it in the future.  Sidenote:: I absolutely do not believe that a test defines a student, but we rely heavily on these tests for many things so my students have to know that they are important.

Next up in the folders is a place for my students to graph their reading level and reading fluency through out the year.  Graphing this gives students a visual on their improvement, and being a visual person myself, I know I would've appreciated this in school!  These graphs also take their levels from being just a letter or a number to something more meaningful to them when they can see it on paper.

Lastly is a Personal Goals sheet.  I plan on doing this with my students every 9 weeks.  I did not do this last year so I'm excited to add it in this year!