Biggest loser and SLAM Fair

So this Friday will be bringing a couple of fun things. 

The first is that my school's "Biggest Loser" competition will be starting, and I will be competing. I stepped on the scale a couple weeks ago and realized that I'm bigger than I have ever been in my life. I mean, I'm relatively average sized...but I used to be fit. So I decided to do something about it! Two things in fact!

The first thing is that I've been using an app called Lose it! If you haven't heard of it or used it before, it is basically a calorie tracking/budgeting app. It really helps you think about how much and what kind of foods you're eating. Cupcakes in the faculty room? Not worth it when you realize you could eat a mountain of carrots and hummus instead. 

The second thing I've been doing is using this fun little "fitbit" gadget. It's essentially a really tiny and accurate pedometer that automatically syncs with my phone. It also tracks my calories burned and my sleep. I've found it to be pretty accurate too. My wife also has one and it is fun to track/compete with each others steps. The website awards you little virtual achievements for walking a certain number of miles, etc. I'm a sucker for the essentially pointless virtual badges. 

Long story short, it's already working! I'm down two pounds already! Of course, this is bittersweet since the first weigh in for the school's biggest loser competition is on Friday!

Also, this Friday night is my school's SLAM Fair. The SLAM stands for Science, Literature, Art and Music. We have students and guests set up presentations all over the school and parents and kids come and look at or participate in the activities. The fifth grade teachers in my school work with the 5th graders after school and the kids do most of the work. I think the fair will be a lot of fun, and the kids will be proud of their projects. 

Of course, I'm also excited to reclaim the hour I have been volunteering after school each week for this. That hour often turns into an hour and half when a student is forgotten by their parents and picked up late. Today one of kids wasn't picked up until 5pm. A full hour late. It's kind of aggravating. But the fair will be fun!

Those are my biggies for the week! Kind of hard to believe that there are only 2 months of school left in the year! We've got a jam packed calendar for the next two months though! 

Free at last! Harlem Shake! Giveaways! And some dog news...

I'm so excited to be able to share that our state testing is done for the year! Now we can finally get back to normal teaching and learning! I told my kids that if we tried our best on the test I'd let them make a Harlem Shake video.

Here it is!

The kids had a blast. Yes, that is me in my motorcycle helmet, dancing horribly at the beginning. The kids insisted that I be the lone dancer at the beginning.

I'm excited to get back to school next week and get back to teaching the way I love to teach. These past three weeks or so haven't been normal. I've tried to squeeze in good stuff, but not like I normally can. I'm happy to get back to our normal math workshop mornings and our Westward Expansion simulation, and our reading workshop, etc. We've managed to keep reading through Wonder even during the testing this week. I had about 90% of the class in tears this week when we hit a certain event in the book. After we finished our final state test on Friday I gave the kids a choice between 10 minutes of extra recess or 10 minutes of extra Wonder...kids voted for Wonder!

Congrats to I'm Lovin Lit for winning my fifty follower giveaway! We're on our way to 100! I hope to do a much bigger giveaway when I reach that milestone! I hope you enjoy your 50 States I have, who has game!

On a sad/personal note...
For some reason my oldest German Shepherd, Barghest, got it into his head this week to pull his bottle of arthritis medicine down from the counter and completely destroy it and then ingest the whole bottle of pills. Strangely enough, he also ate an entire plastic sealed baklava, wrapper and all. Luckily, my in-laws came for a visit and discovered the mess he'd made of the bottle and called me at work. I rushed him to the vet to discover he'd eaten twice the lethal dose of pills. He's been on a 48 hour observed IV fluid cleanse. $1,200 that we don't have later...he's coming home tonight, supposedly fit as a fiddle. Apparently, the combination of him eating an entire baklava and my in-laws finding him a couple hours earlier than I would have is what saved his life. He's lucky we love him...he also has EPI (a weird dog condition that means he can't digest food without an expensive enzyme supplement) he's now officially the most expensive thing I've ever owned I think. Sigh...dogs.

Now, on brighter note, head on over to the wonderful Ideas by Jivey blog and enter her 300 followers giveaway!

http://ideasbyjivey.blogspot.com/p/300-follower-giveaway.html 

It looks like some great products are up for grabs!  

Going Green efforts in my school

So, in my school I'm one of the teachers who leads our going green efforts. I've always been into conservation and the environment. I love getting kids excited about it too. 

We do a lot in my school towards the goal of becoming a "Zero Waste" school. We have a ways to go, but I think we're doing pretty well. I'll talk about some of our efforts in upcoming posts.

For my first post I'll be talking about Terracycle.com. 

I'm in charge of my school's terracycling efforts. If you haven't heard of terracycling (or upcycling) it is basically taking something and making it into something new without having to melt it down or destroy it. 

You've seen those purses and bookbags made of Capri-sun pouches, right? Or birdhouses made out of bent license plates? That's terracycling!

In my school we collect a bunch of items throughout the year that we send in to terracycle.com. They pay for the shipping AND they pay us for the items (usually about 2 cents for each item) and then we decide what to do with the money. So far each year we've made about $400, usually making more than the year before though. I always give my kids the option of spending the money on themselves or others and every year they've made me proud by choosing to spend it on others.

We collect Elmer's glue sticks and bottles, plastic tape dispensers, Solo-style plastic cups, pens/markers, and Capri-sun style juice pouches. 

These bins in our school lobby make it easy for the whole school to contribute.

These bigger bins are placed at the ends of  all the hallways to snatch up stuff that people aren't willing to take to the lobby bins.

That's when I have the kids research organizations (Terracycle has many on their website as a starting point) and write a persuasive letter to their classmates about why we should donate to their chosen organization. In the end we decide to give a percentage of the total to each of the organizations and then translate that into the amount of money they get from us. The kids love it!

Last year we bought an acre of land in Alaska for a nature preserve, provide 25 veterans with a 'meals on wheels' type dinner, provided 7 young mothers a week's worth of diapers, offset the carbon footprint of me riding my Vespa to work every day, two families in Africa were outfitted with baby chicks through Heifer International, and 25 people in central Asia were given clean water for a year!

Way better than blowing it all on a pizza party, right?!

On top of all that we keep a running tally of the number of pounds of trash we keep from going into the landfill. So far this year we've already kept about 75 pounds of Capri-sun pouches out of the landfill! My students over the years that I've done this have kept nearly half a ton of garbage out of the landfill!

If you haven't checked out terracycling before, give it a try! It takes a little work to collect and box up the materials, but I think it's worth it. It's a great way to work some service learning into your school year.

Like I said, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what we do here to be Zero Waste, but I think it's the easiest place to start and has the most obvious/concrete rewards. ($) 

Do you terracycle in your school?

Philly Fun and another visit from the Terrible Trivium!

So I survived the longest day of school so far in my career! Last Friday morning I arrived at school at 4:45 AM and began greeting my students around 5AM. By 5:30 we were all loaded on the bus and had begun the long journey to Philadelphia! Later that night, I handed over my last student into the loving arms of her father. It was 10:00 PM. That was a 17 hour school day!

I think the kids really enjoyed themselves. I think they were more excited about the gift shops, the bus ride and eating fast food at a truck stop than they were about the Liberty Bell though!

They did me proud by answering all of the National Park Ranger's questions in Independence Hall! Their behavior was excellent, and no one got lost! All in all, I have to say it was a successful trip!

I only slept til 11 in the morning the next day too!

George W. was a big dude. The life-size statues in the constitution center were a huge hit with the kids.

On a more sour note...I had to spend an hour after school preparing my classroom for a visit from the Terrible Trivium. Tomorrow begins our week of state standardized testing for Reading and Math. Like in most states, I'm required to take down or cover up all of my posters, student work, etc. I think it really makes the room look awful. All the butcher paper hanging on the walls makes the room look disorganized. I have to believe it affects the moods and thinking of my students.

Either way, we'll work our way through this week's tests and then be done for the year! We're also still reading Wonder, starting a new list of Greek/Latin roots, and studying our Westward Expansion unit. The kids love all of those things, so they'll be a nice relief in between the morning and afternoon tests each day. We're getting close to the first part in Wonder where I think kids might cry. I hope I can hold it together while I read it!

In TpT news, I finally finished up a game to help review telling time and practicing elapsed time. It's another "I have, who has?" game. I like to have the kids play these in a small group during math workshop. Both games come bundled together for $3! Check it out here by clicking the cover picture:

My kids love the "steampunk" look of the victorian pocket watches.

Finally, another great piece of news is that the weather here has finally gotten reasonably Spring-like! There's nothing better than breaking out my Vespa and riding it around the countryside here in central PA on a slightly warm evening. I'm so excited to be able to start riding to work again now. You can't beat 74 mpg!

Not a whole lot of entries on my recent giveaway!  :(  Sign up, it's ending soon! 

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Pass the Torch Linky!

Get Ready for Bloggy Olympics!!!

Join The 3AM Teacher, the Reading Olympians, and over 80 SUPREME education bloggers as we take you through a tour of the Reading Olympians Root Study Program!!

I had already been thinking about how helpful it would be for my kids in their "Expand Vocabulary" efforts to learn Latin and Greek roots, so when I saw this resource I knew I had to give it a try. Let me just start by saying that my kids have loved using this resource! 

I showed the kids the first list, and we talked a bit about how many of our words are derived from Latin and Greek roots. I gave them some really fun examples of words that have these in them and how knowing the roots, prefixes and suffixes could help you define a word you'd never heard before. 

The root bio really resonated with the kids. They know words with this root, biography, biology, etc. It was surprising how many of them never made the connection that bio means life. They were excited to learn this!

We worked on the first list of words for three 15 minute periods this week. Some of that time was independent work time to fill out their study cards. The kids really enjoyed coming up with a picture to help them remember the root and thinking or finding words that contain the root. We talked about the new roots the first day, and they were given their packet and about 7 minutes to work. They independently finished their packets by the second day. They spent that day practicing with the roots, making up new words together and quizzing each other at their table sets while I went to the groups and talked to them. The third day we took the matching and cloze quizzes. Pretty simple!

I've heard kids all week long making up new words using the roots they've learned. Little do they know that many of the words they're "creating" already exist. 

I HAD to snap a picture of this student, who pulled her packet out, without being prompted, during indoor recess because she wanted to work on it some more!

These examples of the students' work after just a few minutes with the packet show that they were working hard.

I sat my kids down on Wednesday and told them that part of being this year's 5th graders is that they get to help me make 5th grade better for the next set of kids. I asked them for their honest feedback about this resource and their feelings about it in general. The answer from the kids was not surprising based on what I'd seen all week long. The love it! The kids all wish that we had been doing this all year long. They told me that I have to do it next year. They can't wait to add to their repertoire of roots. 

The best part is, they aren't just all talk. I quizzed them briefly on Wednesday verbally and then I quizzed them on Thursday with the included matching and cloze quizzes and they all aced them!

Based on the success I've seen with it over the last two weeks I am definitely planning to make it part of my grammar/expand vocabulary program. It is super easy to implement, all of the materials you need are provided and the kids are having fun. I can't wait to show them their new list next week!


Discover the program IN ACTION in more K-6th grade classrooms as you Pass the Torch!! Get ideas, discover the progression of the program, and enter the Raffle for a chance to win ONE of the three prizes listed below!!

First Place Winner : Gold Medal

  Prizes: Complete Reading Olympians Program
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            50% off Discount Code for a 1-Day shopping spree at The 3AM Teacher's Etsy store!

Second Place Winner: Silver Medal

   Prizes: $25.00 Amazon Gift Card
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Third Place Winner: Bronze Medal

    Prizes: 30% off Discount Code for a 1-Day shopping spree at The 3AM Teacher's Etsy store!

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50 Followers and Workshop Wednesday!

I'm linking up to one of my favorite weekly linkies again this week. Workshop Wednesday from Ideas by Jivey! The topic this week is all about sharing math websites we love. 

My district was generous enough for the last two years to buy all of the students a subscription to IXL.com. I love the features of the site. It spans all the grade levels and provides tons of diverse practice for the kids. If I don't have "normal' math homework to assign, I usually ask the kids to work on IXL. Kids can use the site for a limited time each day for free, without tracking. 

I also am a fan of Sumdog.com. This site is full of fun math games and is free to use! A subscription is available which adds things like student progress tracking. I mostly just use it for free!

The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives has some great tools. Especially for teachers with projectors in their rooms. 

Finally, as much as we might hate it...sometimes you just need a worksheet. http://www.algebra4children.com/printables.html

This site is FULL of them. All free to download!

In other news...

I hit 50 followers! Woohoo! I'm so excited about it! I'm starting to feel slightly successful at this whole blogging thing now! To celebrate I'm giving away a copy of my "50 States - I have, who has" game. I figured a state per follower was appropriate! 

The winner of my last giveaway let me know that she was able to get some books for her class today and I'm excited to think that I was able to spread a little joy to a 2nd grade classroom out there!

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Let me know in the comments how you teach the States in your classroom! 

Time to watch some mindless TV and veg out for a change!

April Currently

I'm linking up to the April Currently from Oh' Boy 4th Grade!

I think mine are pretty self-explanatory this time around! But here goes:

Listening: I'm a big fan of the Office, and after the last episode with Dwight's family singing that weird song at the end, Killer B couldn't get it out of her head. We finally downloaded it from iTunes.

Loving: I've been playing video games since they were invented. I still make time to veg out and play a video game even now. Since I had today off, I got to squeeze in a couple hours of play time! Good stuff!

Thinking: I can not stop stressing out about our trip on Friday. Taking 100 kids between 4 teachers, 3 interns, and a handful of parents to Philly for the day will be both exciting and stressful. Add in the 4 hours on the bus (a charter thank goodness) both ways and it's going to be the longest day of school known to man.

Wanting: I'm ready for all those things. And none are coming! Boo. hiss.

Needing: I'm SO behind on laundry it isn't even funny. I literally own 35 polo shirts of different colors and like 8 pairs of khakis. And none of them are clean. Sometimes I'm a little jealous of the variety women teachers have at their disposal for dressing for work.

Advice: My advice might be obvious. If you're making stuff for TpT, stick to stuff you can use in your own classroom. It's more authentic that way, and that way even if you don't sell it, you can use it for years to come. Everything in my store is stuff I use or used for years (for the K-2 stuff).

And that's it for me! What's everyone else up to?