Wordle in the Room

Teaching My Calling is hosting a Digital Learning Day Linky Party. I love using any kind of technology (like most of you!) One staple in my room is Wordle. This is a fab site where you can make word clouds. There is another one that is similar called Tagxedo. Tagxedo lets you pick a shape to put your word cloud in. It is pretty cool (especially if your making a cloud about a specific subject).
I use wordle a lot! I use it for a spelling center! I enter my spelling words on wordle, then it creates a cloud like this:

My kids do ABC order by cutting the words out and pasting them on a different page. You can change the colors, style, and font.

In other news I had an epiphany today during math. I couldn't find our place value mats--- lost somewhere in the clutter! So, instead of freaking out I just thought why don't we just write on our desk! Hello!! Where has this idea been?? I write their names on their desks with sharpie and it seems to come off after a couple of months (no...I didn't give them a sharpie!!)
They used their dry erase markers to make their own place value mats... genius (if I do say so myself!)

(oh and by the way... we did clean our desks afterwards! But we will do this again tomorrow!)

New TPT Store and Upcoming Giveaway!!!

I finally did it! I created a unit! Yes!! It took a while (I am a bit of a perfectionist!) So I have listed my unit on TPT. This is a BIG step for me and I am so excited!
I created a unit in anticipation of an upcoming field trip I am going to take with my firsties to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. We are going to see "Treasured Stories" by Eric Carle. It is a play with puppets, dancing, and art that depicts 3 of Eric Carle's "treasured stories" ("Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?", "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", and "Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me"). Check it out on the TPAC website for more info.
I have made a unit to go along with this play. My unit includes:

It is a 55 page unit and filled with math and literacy activities like:
- A glyph activity with graphing
- Sequencing activities
- Text-to-text and text-to-self activities
- Long I sorting
- Compound word creation
- Science connections with the ladybug life cycle
- Vocabulary word cards
- Fraction activity
- 12 math problem solving prompts
- Haiku and acrostic poetry prompts

I can't wait to complete this with my kiddos and hope you feel the same! If you want to check out this product at my store click here!

I am also excited when I open my blogger dashboard and see I am up to 85 followers! Woohoo! When I reach 100 followers I will be doing a giveaway of my new unit!

Thanks for all your support! In other news...
This week we studied polar bears and penguins. My kids LOVE learning about animals and finding out a fact that is little known. For example, did you know a male polar bear is called a boar and a female is a sow? [I didn't!] So I borrowed an idea from Courtney at Swimming into Second to make polar bears for my students to post their non-fiction writing. They loved it. I made another template for penguins so they could choose if they wanted to write about penguins or polar bears. I had a good mix!

They had so much fun making them and learned a lot about penguins and polar bears! Now, time to do some planning for the upcoming week! Have a great rest of the day!!

Bossy R and YouTube

Hey ya'll! I can't believe it is already 9 o'clock. Wheew... I am ready for bed! I wanted to make a quick post about a couple of things first. So, remember that bossy r sort I posted the other day? Well, we are using it a couple different ways in our classroom. I printed out a second copy of words and gave each kiddo one. Then we practiced writing with them. Before they could write a sentence with their bossy r word they had to illustrate the word.

How cute is that tiger?? I love it when a student can pull the idea right out of my head!

Do you use You Tube? I know most districts have it blocked [mine does]. I know there is a lot of crap on there but there is also a lot of good stuff. Like this one:



I am planning an Eric Carle unit right now so that is why I have this one on my mind. But recently I have used videos off you tube for MLK, polar bears and penguins. So, wanna know how to watch a YouTube video at school?

It all starts at home!
1. Find the YouTube video you like.
2. In another tab or window open www.savevid.com
3. Copy and paste the url for that video from YouTube in the text box on SaveVid.
4. Click download.
5. Next, a small picture of the video you want will show up and then some options for the type of download you will choose.
6. I always choose mp4 then after the file downloads I save it into my iTunes.
7. Once you save it to your desktop you can email to yourself at school.
8. Now you can watch your video at school.

This is really helpful to me and hopefully to you too!! Think I am heading to bed EARLY! :)