No Talking Punch Cards

So Tonya over at Tonya's Treats for Teachers is celebrating 700 followers, and besides hosting an AMAZING giveaway, she's also doing a pretty sweet sale in her TPT store! I was browsing through her store the other day and I came across this freebie:

Click HERE to grab your copy!

Basically, you give every student one of these NO TALKING punch cards, and every time someone is talking when they shouldn't be, you use a hole punch to punch out a letter. Ummmm.... why didn't I think of this???

I copied a bazillion (give or take) of these punch cards on red construction paper yesterday, and we tried it out today. I told the bunnies that they would have one "freebie," because everyone makes mistakes. But for every letter punched after that, the individual student would owe me a minute of afternoon recess for each letter punched. If every single letter was punched, that student would owe me their entire recess (15 minutes). Oh, and if they lose it.... then they owe me their whole recess! If there were no punches on the card for the day, I would give the student 2 Gotcha stickers for their chart. Gotcha stickers are a K-2 incentive system we use at my school... Whenever we catch someone being good ("Gotcha being good"), they get a little smiley face sticker. When they fill up their Gotcha cards, they can go to the Gotcha store and get a little prize. Their names are also read on the morning announcements.

So how did it go today? Well I would say it hasn't been that quiet in my room for a loonnnggg time!! Although I need to make myself a little necklace with the hole punch attached to it, because I kept leaving it around the room and then would forget where I put it. Oops! I had a couple kids in at recess with me, most for 2-3 minutes, with one student owing me 5 minutes. Most of the bunnies didn't get a single punch on their cards... I was giving out a ton of gotchas at the end of the day! Those kids were super excited that they could use the same card tomorrow... they said that they were recycling their cards! So cute! I had one guy lose his card, and he was on the verge of tears. I guess I'm too much of a softie though, because I didn't keep him in at recess. I'll have a little chat with him tomorrow about being more responsible, because if he loses it again, I have to follow through and keep him in.

I'm so excited about this change in behavior in my class! Hopefully it keeps up!!!

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Five for Friday 2/22

Happy Weekend Everyone! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching again for another installment of.....

1. We'll get the sad news out of the way first...
We had to put our dog, Pedro, to sleep today. We've been in denial for a few months or so. After running many tests on him that always came back negative, the vet came to the conclusion that he basically had dementia. We rescued Pedro from the Humane Society 9 years ago, and they estimated him to be between 3-5 years old (although our vet said that was probably a low estimate). He lived a long life, but we are still very sad and will miss him very much :(

2. I had parent-teacher conferences last night. It makes for a long night, and while I always get those butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling, I love meeting with parents. Seriously, I do! I like to take the team approach when meeting with parents; we both truly want what's best for their child!

3. We had an inservice day today. It was nice because we got most of the day to work on what we wanted to... although I had a hard time staying focused (see #1) so my time wasn't as productive as I would have liked. We had to work 7 hours and the start time was flexible. So I arrived at 6:20, and while I could have left at 1:20, I actually stayed until about 2:30.... I always find just one more thing to do! But it was still nice to leave earlier than normal. I decided to wear my pink fuzzy slippers at school today. Everyone was jealous. As they should be :)

4. My son was in the newspaper! The hubs is an associate principal at a high school. He oversees the Robotics Club, and they were having a competition last weekend. Sly loves robots, so the hubs took him, and POOF! He ended up on the FRONT PAGE! Unfortunately, since there was no article (just the photo was in the paper), the photo isn't online, so you'll have to settle with a picture of the picture.

He was SO excited to drive the robots like the big kids do!

5. Lastly my half-birthday was this week. I normally don't celebrate it, but all the teachers at my school bring in treats for their birthday, and I wanted to too. So I brought HALF birthday snacks:

Get it? Half-Birthday? Half? Everything was either cut in half or half-and-half. COME ON! IT'S FUNNY!!! The hubs says that if I have to tell people it's funny, then it's not funny. But I don't agree. It really IS funny! HAHA!

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WINNER + Something Good Linky

And the winner of my Valentine's Day Giveaway is....

True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: 

Result: 7

Powered by RANDOM.ORG

{I don't know why it says 100 for max, but I did enter the max number as 8!}
That means that the winner is E Reyes!!! Please email me: angelanerby (at) hotmail (dot) com so I can send you my Nonfiction Genres Posters!

So I'm a little late linking up, but I really love this linky party:

Thanks so much Jennifer at Rowdy in First Grade for organizing! What a great way to focus on the positives, especially when the cold and YUCK weather in Wisconsin does a great job to put a damper on your spirits.

Something Good at Home:
My hat making business, Baby Ella Millinery, is really taking off!!! Here are some of the hats/projects I've made in the last month or so:

Scalloped Beanie with Flower

Garden Bonnet

Puppy Hat

"Beverage" Mitten... I made these for a girl I play hockey with. Willing to bet she didn't put Diet Coke in hers :)

And you MUST click HERE to check out a mermaid photo prop I made for my favorite local photographer {she's the mom to two of my former students!} Seriously, go to this link!! I don't feel right sharing her photo on my blog since I didn't ask for her permission, but I am SO happy with how it turned out!

Right now I don't have an Etsy store, and I'm totally fine with that. I'm a teacher, I have two kids and a hubs, I make things for TPT, oh, and I have a life too... I don't need to add that to my plate as well! Right now I just make things to order, but I'm thinking about making up some hats during spring and summer so I can start up an Etsy shop :)

Something Good at School:
In 2010 my school won a contest through Goodwill. The school that donated the most items to Goodwill during a certain time period got a visit from Donald Driver, a famous Green Bay Packers player {and Dancing with the Stars champ! LOL!}. We donated something like 35,000 items!! It was such an awesome experience to see our school decked out in the green and gold!

Well Donald Driver retired a few weeks ago. It was kind of a big deal around these parts. When he came to our school, one of our students was battling Leukemia, and Driver made a special visit to him. All the news stations remembered this and they aired a special story about it! Click on the picture below to watch the video!

{That would be me in the Reggie White jersey walking right in front of the camera at 33 seconds... Oops!}

I had this little sweetie when he was in second grade. He is a really awesome kid! It was just a really fun atmosphere these past two weeks to celebrate Donald Driver and to remember how awesome it was when he came to our school!

Happy Weekend Everyone!!

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Five for Friday + Freebie!

How's that for an alliteration?! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for another installment of Five for Friday!

1. We've been learning about resource books this week. Not the most exciting topic. Today's topic was encyclopedias. Ummm.... do they even still make those?! We have the 2008 edition in our library, so I took the bunnies down there to check them out. As you can imagine, it wasn't all that thrilling. Then I said, "So, do you think Justin Beiber is in here" {It kind of felt like word vomit coming out, but whatever works to get their attention!}? We looked him up, and of course, no Justin Beiber. We discussed how the print copy of encyclopedias are out of date as soon as they're printed.

Then we went next door to the computer lab. My district has a subscription to World Book Online:

I don't know how much it costs, but you should definitely find out if you have it at your school, because it is AWESOME! I showed the kids how to browse and search, and gave them 5-10 minutes to look around. They were SO engaged!!

We are working on writing informative/explanatory texts in February, so I gave each student a web graphic organizer and they chose a topic to research. I had everything from Taylor Swift to Tim Tebow to World War 2 to black holes to worms... ewwwww!! Thankfully I don't have anyone researching Justin Beiber, although one little girl was quite upset that there wasn't any information on One Direction... We ran out of time, so we'll have to finish researching and prewriting next week. I'm SUPER excited to see how these writing pieces turn out!


2. I love National Geographic Kids magazine! Here's this month's issue:

We've been working on determining importance in reading and not only are the articles high interest, but they're also short, making mini-lessons truly "mini."That's one thing that I need to work on... Anyway, we read the article Extreme Ice and completed this graphic organizer together:

Click on the picture above to snag a FREE copy :)

This was such a great way for kids to visualize and grasp what's really important, versus the interesting details! We did this as a whole class, so next week I'm planning on having the bunnies read another article and complete this with a partner.

3. I went to spinning class tonight. I haven't been to Spin in like four years. A coworker and I decided we'd start going together. It was supposed to be an "express" class, only 30 minutes. The instructor showed up, and it ended up being a mom at our school! I never had any of her children, but my coworker has! She was so funny, making comments during the class like, "I don't tease the newbies, but especially today because my kids go to their school and I don't want to get them in trouble!" She also said, while she was running us through a super hard sequence, "These teachers are probably thinking, 'If this lady's their mom, no wonder her kids are crazy!" HA!

OK, so remember how I said it was a 30 minute class? It was supposed to start at 4:45. The instructor was a few minutes late {I don't think she's the normal instructor of the class}, and by the time she checked in with everyone, we started at maybe 4:55. When 5:15 hit and we didn't stop, I wasn't too surprised. Maybe she was trying to give us our full 30 minutes. Then at 5:30 when we were still going, I was thinking, "Maybe she just wants us to get a full-fledged workout." At 5:45, I'm about to die, and she FINALLY stops. Thank goodness!!! We do some stretching, and I'm ready to go aannnddddd... she tells everyone to get a mat because we're going to do some arm and ab work. Wha wha WHAT?!?!  Sorry, but I have to go. Not just because I'm sweaty and smelly, but mostly because the hubs was expecting me home about 20 minutes ago! Hopefully I'll be able to walk tomorrow...

4. I had my first Shamrock Shake of the season today!!! Hey, after working my tail off at Spin, I deserve it! And I've already burned it off anyway!

YUMMM!!!

5. Today is my grandpa's 82nd birthday!!

Here he is with my babies about 10 months ago :)

The cool thing is that today is also his sister's 93rd birthday! Yep, brother and sister, same birthday, NOT twins!! Oh it gets even better... if my great grandfater {their dad} was still alive, today would've also been HIS birthday! How crazy is that?! Three people in the same family with the same birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA AND AUNT HARRIETTE!!

Well I'm off to rest and relax after my crazy workout today.
PS: My Valentine's Day Giveaway is still open for the next 2ish hours. Any item from my store! WOO!!! Check it out!
PPS: My super creative bloggy friend Jean from ~Diving Into Second Grade~ is TWO FOLLOWERS away from 100!! She's planning a FAB giveaway, so getcher buns over to her blog and FOLLOW HER!!! :)

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Valentine's Day Festivities + FLASH Giveaway!

I'll be honest. I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's Day. I don't really have a reason why... just not a fan. We will still celebrate in style in our classroom though! I actually put some thought into my valentines this year and came up with these:

Get it? Hippo? Hip?! Yeah... I'm a dork. Hippos are my trademark though, so it had to be done. I attached a snack sized sleeve of Oreos to each valentine. Other than the fact that I need a new color ink cartridge, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Next up: Valentines Containers. In the past, I used to supply brown bags and die cut hearts, and I would give time in class for the bunnies to decorate a bag to collect their valentines. Not only did I not have time for that this year, but I also wanted to give them the chance to create something. So this year I sent a note home along with some colored construction paper and asked families to create a "container" for their valentines. I love how they turned out! We also had a little voting action going on. Here are the winners:

Prettiest 

Most Creative... we actually had a 4-way tie!

It's hard to tell, but this one had teeth like a monster and in the corner he made a "Hello, my name is..." badge and he named it after himself: "Student" Jr. LOL!

Most Original

I wish I didn't have to blur out his name, because he actually made his name with small stickers that looked like Lego guys' heads. It was SUPER cute!

What do you think???

This one is mine. I use the same one every year. I know, I know... I need to up my game.

How We Celebrated: I have a hard time throwing an all-out party in my class. Call me a Valentine's Day Grinch if you will, but that's how I roll. Because of my district's nutrition policy and the junk that will inevitably come in anyway, we have a "Healthy Heart" party. A few days before the party, the bunnies voted on what kinds of healthy snacks they would like. The party started at 1:00. First, they passed out their valentines. Students put their containers on their desks, and then they all just walked around, passing them out. While this is going on, the parent helpers and myself are getting the food situation under control.

Look at these HEALTHY Jello snacks a parent made! Super tasty!! 

Once everything was passed out, they were able to choose 2, yes TWO, valentines they could eat. I don't need bunnies bouncing off the walls here! The rest they can take home. Then I turned on a movie.  And because I'm a Grinch, of course it was educational. We watched Magic School Bus Lost in Space. We just finished up our solar system unit, so I don't feel so bad taking time out of our day to watch this "educational" video. While the video is going on, I called up groups of students to the snack table to make a plate of food. I try hard to make sure we don't have too much food and/or too many choices, or else I end up with a ton of leftovers and the bunnies end up with a belly ache from eating so much.

After the movie was over, we cleaned up and headed outside for recess. I like to do my parties at the end of the day {so I don't have to worry about how I'm going to get them focused back on school and learning}, but today I had music at the end of the day, so I had to do my party early. I'm sorry, Ms. Music Teacher, that I did this to you... hopefully the bunnies burnt off some of their energy at recess.

The hubs informed me a few weeks ago that he has to work late tonight, so it's just me and my little valentines hanging out tonight. I think we're going to lay in my bed and watch a movie after dinner :) And speaking of my own little babies, check out the awesome hockey valentines I made for my son to give to his preschool friends:

Yes friends, those are hockey stick pencils! How cool is that?!

Because I'm feelin' all lovey dovey {yes, this Grinch does have a heart!}, I wanted to do a quick giveaway! Go to my TPT store, pick something out, and leave me a comment including your email. Aannnddd, if you pin something from my store and leave an additional comment with the link, I'll give you an extra entry! Do all of this before Friday 2/15 at midnight, central time. I'll randomly choose a winner on Saturday and BAM! It's yours!!!

Have a LOVEly night!!

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Currently, Five for Friday, and SALE!

Hey hey! It's the weekend! WOO HOO!!!

Linking up with the ever-fabulous Farley for this month's installment of Currently:

Listening: My 3 year old's favorite movie is Cars. He is OBSESSED! And I'm OK with that because I love seeing how giddy he gets during his favorite parts. KACHOW!!

Loving: It's FREEZING cold here in Wisconsin right now. I'm as snug as a bug in a rug here with my laptop, typing away to you, my bloggy friends!

Thinking: Indoor recess... ugh! So on Tuesday it was 55 degrees here. GLORIOUS! Wednesday it was a crazy sleet/hail/snow hot mess. Indoor Recess. Thursday and Friday: below zero wind chills. Indoor Recess. We have a SERIOUS case of cabin fever over here!

Wanting/Needing: We were supposed to go to the Dells this weekend. The Dells is a tourist community in WI about 2 hours from my house. Indoor water parks, theme parks, and my brother-in-law lives there too. We had the car all packed up tonight aannnddd... my car wouldn't start. BOO!! And it was even in the shop all day today! After trying to charge the battery and jump start it, it still won't start. So we had to cancel our trip and stay home this weekend. Maybe next weekend. My grandpa has a cottage there, so it's not that big of a deal, but still :(

Pet Peeve: We've been talking about the difference between real reading and fake reading. I get so disheartened when I see (or think I'm seeing) fake reading. We do Daily 5 in my classroom, and I think it's so empowering when the kiddos get to choose their own books. Except when I give them the option to choose their own books and they don't take advantage... it makes me sad.

I also despise the sound of velcro being pulled over and over. I know. It's weird. But it's like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Up next... Doodle Bugs Teaching's Five for Friday!

I'll try to be brief :)

1. WE FINISHED MAP TESTING!!  Shout it from the roof tops! I am so, so, SO proud of how my kiddos did too! I had several kids gain 30+ points (!!!!!!) from their Fall scores! For those of you who don't MAP test, I would say an average growth over the entire year is anywhere between 10-15 points. 30 points!?!?! YESSSS!!!!

2. We've been working on Cause & Effect this week. So. Tough. I made a Pinterest-inspired anchor chart with Angry Birds, and I think that REALLY helped! Sorry I forgot to snap a pic :(

3. Speaking of Cause & Effect, I've also been using Google Forms to do a little formative assessment. Here are a few of my kiddos taking their quiz:

LOVE how I can print out the spread sheet and figure out who "gets it" and who doesn't!

4. So I have a reading group with two very eager-to-participate readers and one quiet reader. The quiet one never gets a chance to talk. Enter Talking Tokens.

They each get three red/yellow counting chips. When they answer a question, they have to give me one. When they're out, sorry, no more talking for you until everyone uses their tokens. After everyone uses their tokens, I give them all back for Round 2. I've even done "Phone a Friend," where if you don't know the answer, you can pass your token to someone who's out, and they can help you. Except the person who passed the token has to answer the question. You're not off the hook that easily! The funny thing was, with the group I mentioned above, guess who was out of tokens first? Yep, my quiet reader! I guess the other two were planning how to use their tokens wisely LOL!

5. Science Interactive Notebooks! We've started our Solar System unit, and they are just LOVIN' writing in their notebooks again. Here we are completing a Venn Diagram.

What I love about this Venn Diagram is that it's actually a foldable. The kiddos aren't actually writing in the circles or the football shaped wedge in the middle. There are three flaps, and they write underneath the flaps! YAY for not having to cram lots of ideas in a teeny tiny space!

Last but not least, I'm participating in the SUPER SALE on SUNDAY (and Monday)!  WOO HOO!!! Check out my store HERE!

Thanks Ashley Hughes for the cute graphic!

Happy weekend! Not sure what we're going to do now that we're not getting away... Sometimes those end up being the best weekends though :)

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