Lifehack for Teachers #9 - Keep spiral binding bound!

There's nothing worse than having one of your spiral bound teacher editions start to fall apart become the spiral pops through the top hole. And once it has slipped out, it's tough to get it back in. 

But don't worry! Just hot glue/super glue a pony bead to the end of the spiral, and your spiral binding will stay bound! 

Color code your beads and you'll be able to pull out the right book on the first try every time, too!

Lifehack for Teachers #8 - Reign in the hand sanitizer

I don't know about you guys, but for some reason my kids love to get a giant dollop of hand sanitizer and slather it all over their hands and forearms. It drives me nuts when I see a kid who has slimy hands dripping with WAY more sanitizer than is actually needed to do the job. 

Most of the time the pump squirts out more than even I need. I learned this trick to wrap a simple rubber band around the neck of the bottle to limit the amount the pump can depress, and it has solved my problem! It's adjustable, so you can control how much gets pumped out now. Love it!

Five for Friday - 10/10

I'm FINALLY chiming in with a Five for Friday!

1.

I know this excuse is probably getting a little tired, but I've been super busy getting everything ready for our adoption home study. There was a bunch of paperwork to prepare, and of course we had to get our house in order. I have to say, one benefit of this whole process is that my house is now cleaner than it was when we moved into it! The good news is that the home visit for the home study is complete! Our caseworker stopped by last Friday and interviewed us, collected our paperwork, and toured our home. She said that we were more prepared than anyone she's worked with! Hurray! The home study has to be written up by her and submitted, but it is safe to say that we passed! We've already started to get information about some birthmothers, though I must admit the situations we've seen so far have not been a good match for us. 

Done!

But, the positive thing is that my home is finally back in order, the construction on the basement and bathroom are totally done, the paperwork is collected, and now we just have to sit and wait for the right birthmother to come along. We'll definitely be learning patience in the coming months! I think the waiting with nothing to make progress on is actually harder  than working on a to-do list of things!

2.

On the school front, we've got a lot going on too! We're studying healthy habits in science right now. I wanted to share this cool game all about the new MyPlate stuff that the government has made to replace the Food Pyramid. It's called Blast Off and it is a great way for kids to practice making healthy food choices.

3.

One of my favorite questions to answer is "What are we reading?" I thought I'd share my plan for our class read alouds. I use my read-alouds as part of my mini-lesson and as models for teaching the CAFE strategies.

We just finished The Year of Billy Miller, and the kids loved it! We'll be finishing up Dear Mr. Henshaw next week, and the kids can't wait to find out what happens. I'll be going a different route with Lulu and the Brontosaurus next. It's a fun book with a unique structure that I hope will serve as a little break after a more serious book. Finally, I'm really anxious to begin our novel study of The Invention of Hugo Cabret! 

I've also been working on several new things for my Math Workshop that I thought I'd share. The first is our current project based learning project. It's all about making a lemonade stand. The kids have been really enjoying it. The kids have taken the profits from their original stands and built new stands to make Lemonade Empires! We're finishing up the project this week. 

I also made this fun version of the popular game Battleship. The kids play the game just like normal, only the grid where they place their boats is a multiplication table! It has been a great way for them to practice their multiplication facts...something they always seem to need a lot of work on! This game is available in my store for just a buck! Go grab it up!

4.

My PTO has started a new tradition that I'm in love with! Free Coffee Friday! Every Friday morning the PTO sets up a big carafe of coffee with a selection of flavored creamers. It saves me the time of making my own coffee that morning, and the different flavors of creamer are great too. This led to the discovery that most of the people in line before me were mixing their creamer in inefficiently. When I showed them my simple method, they loved it...so I figured I'd share it with you as my latest Lifehack for Teachers!

5.

This year I've been honored with (and I'm not being sarcastic, I really DO see it as an honor) the task of mentoring two first year teachers in my building. It has been great working with them and my yearlong intern from Penn State. I feel like mentoring is a great way to push yourself to stay on top of your game and to push yourself further. I mostly just get to answer a lot of their questions, help them set up their workshops, and I share my lesson plans with them to serve as a guide/starting point. I'll also be doing some Peer Coaching and observing in their classrooms, which I'm really looking forward to. We talked a lot lately about whether our "espoused teaching platform" matches our actual "platform in action." For those that are unfamiliar with that lingo, you probably know it as your "philosophy of education." 

These discussions have made me think a lot about what my espoused platform is (what I SAY I believe about teaching) and what my platform in action is (what I am actually DOING in the classroom). The goal of course is for those two things to match. I think I'm doing a pretty good job with that, but I have definitely had some things to reflect on. Most of my reflections have all gone back to something to do with time. Mainly, could I use my time in better ways? I spend a lot of time making fun math games, making projects for my kids, spicing up our bland science and social studies units, devising interesting writing lessons, and making individualized strategy group plans for reading groups. I believe all of those things are important, but I've started to realize more and more that the work hours I've been imposing on myself for the first 14 years of my career are not reasonable, and will not be realistic once I have a child. 

A professor I know made the point that no other professional
sees more than one client at a time. Doctors see one patient,
and Lawyers see one client, an hour or so at a time. Teachers
see 20-30 at once, all day...and are meeting all of their needs.

So, what's going to give? Will I allow myself to let something give? I've reached that point in my career where I feel relatively confident in my ability to teach well...but I am always trying to be better. It goes against my instinct, but I guess I need to give myself permission sometimes to let something be "good enough" so that I can be sure to take care of the rest of the things in my life! I'm sure this is something all teachers have dealt with. What are your experiences with this? How do you decide when something has to give, or is "good enough?"

Be sure to stop by Doodlebug Teaching to check out the other Five for Fridays!

Lifehack for Teachers #6!

Hi all! I just wanted to pop in with a life update, another fun lifehack and news about the next Tunes Tuesday!

Can you believe that until this past weekend I'd never been to Washington, DC?! Me neither! I used the excuse of being raised in the south as my main reasoning for that, but let's face it...I've been living 3 hours away from DC for 6 years now. So, Killer B and I decided to pack up and take a long weekend trip. As a big bonus I got to see my lifelong childhood friend and his family. And the newest addition to the family was especially exciting to see because he's named after me! 

DC was a lot of fun, and I can definitely see us going back in the future. We got a chance to see all of the main national monuments, a couple of the Smithsonian museums (I wasn't that impressed by the Hope Diamond), Arlington Cemetery and the changing of the guard, and of course The White House. Now if I can talk my beloved wife into going to NYC as our next long weekend adventure, I'll be good to go. (I'm embarrassed to say I've never been there either!)

Now for the lifehack! So... if you've been teaching for a while, or have kids of your own, then you may have seen this trick already. But believe it or not, I didn't learn it until about 5-6 years ago! As a teacher it seems like I'm bombarded with cupcakes. Between birthdays, staff celebrations, and holidays it seems like a week hardly goes by where I don't eat at least one cupcake.

But cupcakes and their icing can be so messy! Not with this handy cupcake hack though!

And in other news, Tunes Tuesday is coming back next week! I really hope some people will link up their ideas about how they're using music to help teach math! I know I've seen some great blog posts out there before. Remember, feel free to link up a previous post or a new one!

Also, because some people have asked for it, I thought I'd let everyone know that my Monster Math Battles - Division Tournament has been up in my store for a bit! It lines up with the Multiplication Tournament, so you can mix and match if you have both! 

Lifehack for Teachers #5 - The knuckle calendar!

I'm back with another lifehack that'll hopefully solve a problem for you or your students! 

I'm not sure what my problem is exactly...but every single time I'm trying to figure out how many days are in a month I have to sit and think about it. I know a lot of people know that rhyme, "30 days has September..." but I can never seem to remember it correctly, and then I doubt whether I've said it right, yada yada. 

Now, I don't have to worry about it! I just use the knuckle calendar! Bumps are 31 and gaps are 30 (except February)! After July, go back to the first knuckle! Easy!

And if that wasn't a good tip for you, maybe this one will be...

And I really hope some of you will come along tomorrow and link up for this month's Tunes Tuesday! It's all about how you use music to teach Social Studies!

Five for Friday - Finished Testing, Lifehack, and Tunes Tuesday Coming!

I'm linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching for Five for Friday! 

It's been a busy week! I'm definitely ready for the weekend!

I'm excited to announce that our state testing for the year is over! I've taken down the black paper covering everything, and our schedule is back to normal! Woohoo! The kids loved their testing treats, and today we're celebrating by having a Pajama/Game Day! (Really the games are only happening for an hour in the afternoon, but still!)

Wednesday, my kids finished up their Rube Goldberg Device projects and shared them with the class. Here's a tiny 5 second clip of my favorite one! 

This week I taught a pretty cool lesson that goes along with one of the new Common Core standards. It's all about "Shades of Meaning." I feel like when kids come to me and tell me what a synonym means they always say, "two words that mean the same thing." But that's not really true. It's a misconception that really needs to be cleared up. For example, sad, glum, and depressed are synonyms. But they have shades of meaning. 

The common core standard asks you to distinguish shades of meaning between words that describe states of mind. I started my kids off with something a little more concrete, the color green. Mint, Olive, and Kelly are all Green. But they're very different too. 

This eventually led to an understanding that words like Question, Ponder, Wonder, and Inquire are all synonyms too...but there are nuances to those words that make them different. The lesson and sheets I used for the lesson, along with an interactive notebook piece and a poem activity are in my store for 2 smackeroos. Smackeroos, clams, bread, and dough are all slang synonyms for money!  ;)

Here comes Lifehack for Teachers #4! Have you or your kids ever had a word that you just can't seem to remember how to spell? Become a better speller by forcing yourself to spell it all the time by making it your password!

Tunes Tuesday is coming up again! Tuesday, April 15th will be our Tunes Tuesday for Social Studies! If you're a blogger, then I hope you'll start preparing a post now about how you use music to teach Social Studies, or link up a previous post of yours!

Thanks for reading!

Lifehack #3 and Poetry Month is coming!

Time for another quick lifehack! This one is for my Mac peeps! If you're a PC person, then your tip for the day is to get a Mac!  ;) 

Have you ever wanted to look up a word super quick, but didn't want to have to open another tab in your browser to check out dictionary.com, or go grab a real dictionary, or even worse...don't have internet access? Use your built in "look up" dictionary! It works offline!

I'm also linking up with my bud Jivey for Workshop Wednesday! 

So, April is Poetry Month, and it's almost upon us! But I couldn't wait to get started with poetry, so we've been working on it for a while now! :) I've been using AMC's (from Looking from Third to Fourth) Poetry Posters and writing frames to help along the way!

I like to have my kids create a Poetry Anthology that we share with parents at one of our big school nights. So over the course of the month I ask the kids to write lots of different kind of poems. 

My intern has been doing a lot of teaching with writing, and has been reading some great books to the kids. She just discovered one called A Kick in the Head by Paul B. Janeczko. It has an example and definition of most of the kinds of poetry that we study. But the definitions in the book are written as footnotes and are super tiny.

I love that AMC's pack comes with a colorful poster that gives the definition of each kind of poem, and another poster that includes an example. I have the posters printed out and laminated, but I think it's cool to project the poster for each type of poetry as it's introduced. No trouble reading THAT definition!
There are handy writing frame organizers included in the pack too! It's great for cinquain or diamante poems because the "rules" for those poems lines are listed. Once the kids have written a good one on the organizer, I ask them to write more on regular paper. 

AMC's poetry poster pack is just one of the products you can get in this new Educents bundle! I have all of the items in this bundle, and can say they're all top notch. For just $10.99 you can't beat it! That price is kind of ridiculously low if you ask me. There are 11 products for less than 11 dollars...you're basically stealing them! Click the image below to go grab it up if you haven't already!

Lifehacks for Teachers #2 and a Made It Monday!

I'm back for another quick tip to hopefully help you out and make the little things in life a little less tedious!

I don't know about you, but up until I learned this trick a couple years ago, every time I have to take a key off or put a key on my keyring I'd end up hurting my fingertips or at least struggling with it. My wife would break or chip a nail. Now we just keep one of these little staple removers handy in our "junk drawer" and there you go! If you're like me you probably have a couple in your classroom already. Problem solved!

I wanted to share a quick St. Paddy's Day Monday Made It! I saw this adorable leprechaun drawing blog post from Rockin' and Lovin' Learnin' and had to try it with my kids.

I think they came out pretty awesome!

I hope you'll join me tomorrow for our Tunes Tuesday linky party about how to teach science through music!

Five for Pi Day!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday! It's been an exciting week! But it's not over yet, there's a lot still going on, so check it all out!

I'm joining in with some of my BBBs and throwing a special Pi Day Sale! That's 20% off all of the math products in my store. That makes some of them cost a mere 80 cents! This is a great time to grab up some projects or games!

My big celebration ends tonight at midnight EST!

Head on over to this post to enter for your chance to win one of the four prize packs! 

So I was looking around instagram the other day (do you follow me? My username is reitz2001) and I saw a great idea from a fellow PA Blogger, Autumn (user firstgradetchrlady on instagram) from the blog First Grade Teacher Lady. She had taken the free Red Apple Teacher calendar from Scholastic and turned it into a cool banner. Well, I happened to have the same calender from a recent book order taking up space on my counter. I knew I'd never hang up or use the calendar as an actual calendar...so I turned it into a banner like Autumn's and hung it up in my classroom library! I think it turned out great!

Cool, right?!

This week I introduced a new feature on my blog! Each week I'll be posting a new time-saving, efficiency-bringing lifehack! I'll be keeping them all in one handy spot, which is accessible from my new tab bar at the top of the page! Stop by each week to pick up a new tip!

Another cool feature that I'm bringing back from the dead for a brand new life is Tunes Tuesday! Now each month will have a new theme! The first link-up will be next Tuesday, March 18th! The topic is science! I hope you'll link up a post showing how you use music to teach Science!

In other news, we've got a lot going on at school right now!

In writing we're working on poetry. We study many of the different types of poetry, and of course we have to cover Haiku! I've already read Dogku and If Not For the Cat. So this past week we read Haiku Hike (written by kids!) and Guyku (which should really just be called Kidku!) 

Our Mentor Sentence this past week came from Thundercake, and we just finished reading a kid favorite, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. 


Our newest read-aloud is a book that is new to me, but is really entertaining. It's being called a mix of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and A Night at the Museum. So far the kids are really into it and it is a perfect read-aloud to discuss foreshadowing!

In math we're doing a bunch of review before our big state tests. I don't believe in doing a lot of "test prep," so for me reviewing for the test is business as usual...math workshop with a bunch of math games, task cards, a good project to work on, etc. is enough prep for me!

One of the things kids really need to work with a lot are word problems. 

These task cards have the kids solving multiplication and division problems. But there's a twist! Each word problem has too much information! The kids really have to read the problem carefully to determine which operation is needed and which numbers they need to use!  I put them here in my store! (Remember the Pi Day Sale!)  Placing the cards all around the room and letting kids wander and solve them is a perfect way to do a "worksheet that's not a worksheet!"

Whew! That was a lot! I'm looking forward to the weekend!