This To Shall Pass...But With A Crash and Bang (and a FREEBIE!)

First off sorry for the unexpected hiatus in postings! Rebecca and I are on Spring Break - Finally! While Rebecca is off gallivanting in Washington D.C. with her sis, I am home listening to my kitchen be demolished! Yes, my friends, the Hubs and I are remodeling our kitchen - well the nice construction crew is! I am so excited for the finished product, but as of now, all I hear is BANG...CLING...CRASH and occasionally the crew muttering something under their breath (I'm afraid of what that might be!!!).

So now that our house is in complete shambles - our fridge is in what will be the dining room, and the microwave is in the living room, plus no kitchen sink to speak of - I decided to make a quick Spring Inspired Freebie to help me feel a bit more productive!

Click on the picture to download it!

Oh, and the other thing keeping my spirits up - these delicious brownies I made! If you like chocolate and caramel, definitely give them a try. So dangerously yummy! 

Photo courtesy of What's Gaby Cooking

~ Katie

Giveaway - Lucky Literacy Centers Pack

Ta da! We are proud, and super excited, to host our very first giveaway. We just finished our Lucky Literacy Centers Pack and we are so stoked that we just had to host a giveaway so 3 lucky winners could enjoy this pack as much as we do!

But how can you win you ask? It's simple! Just follow us on our blog and leave us a comment, and that counts as one entry. If you want to up your chances of winning, also follow us on our TpT site and leave us a comment that you do. Simple!

We will be announcing the winners on Tuesday evening. Good Luck! Thanks!

~ Katie and Rebecca

Valentines Freebie - Scrambled Words Center

With only a few short days until Valentines, Rebecca and I decided we needed yet one more Valentines center. We found this really great Valentines heart-shaped eggs in the dollar bin at Target (is that a teacher's best friend? I'm sure by now my hubby hates hearing "oh, we have to check the dollar bins" each and every Target run we make).

We typed and laminated some Valentines words and cut them apart, putting each word into its own egg. Our kiddos are loving this new take on our scrambled words center. As an extension, we challenge our kiddos to see how many words they can make using the letters from just one egg. Download this freebie here or head to our TpT store to download it (remember to check out our Heart-y Literacy Centers Packet as well!)

Literacy Love Struck!

Click here to purchase our Lovely Literacy Centers Pack

We have finally finished our Valentines Literacy Unit and we are so excited to share it! Thanks to KPM Doodles for having such inspiring clipart, we just had to get a jump start on some of next month's heart-themed literacy centers. We can't wait to show our kiddos!

There are 11 fabulous literacy centers - writing, word work, and games! We hope you love this unit as much as we do! Please drop us a note if you do get this unit - we would love to hear what you think about it!

~ Katie and Rebecca

Let's Recap: And take a breath

This week has been such an adventure for us, but wow has it felt long! Thank goodness the weekend is here, right?! Ok, to recap our fabulous centers overhaul!

Katie: "Today was amazing! My kiddos were so engaged in writing today!"

Rebecca: "I am excited that your post office is up and running! My kids will be excited too. I love the idea of building stamina with both reading and writing. How did you set the stage for your firsties to have such an engaged writing day? "

Katie: "To begin, we reviewed our anchor charts on why reading and writing are important. I had my kiddos echo read them with me so they heard themselves read the purpose to centers."

Rebecca: "I like that you keep connecting back to the importance of the charts to help your friends remember. What do you think has been your "winning strategy" with the implementation thus far?"

Katie: "I think what worked in my favor was conducting the check-ins. Once a student was demonstrating off task behavior, I rang the bell and had the students gather for a quick check-in on how they felt they were doing with the current center they were working on. I also use this time, which is no more than 3 minutes, to review what the reading and writing stations should look like and sound like."

Rebecca: "Check-ins are brilliant! I need to be better about doing that. I think that would really help my posse of rowdy boys be better about being on task!  "

Katie: "What worked well for you?"

Rebecca: "In my room we have been working on being "deep thinkers" during centers. I have done lots of modeling on making connections (text to self, text to text, and text to world) and using our comprehension strategy animals. Ooh Katie, we should share our comprehension strategy animals!"

Katie: "We totally should! I love that you are teaching your students how to be deep thinkers and tying it to the strategies that we use in our classrooms!"


Rebecca: "I have absolutely LOVED center share. It has been a really positive thing for my friends. They are eager to share their connections and their hearts from centers. Some of the connections are a little...should we say... superficial, but at least they are making them. I think as they develop a real consciousness about what they are doing the quality of their connections will improve."

Katie: "Center Share has become such a fantastic time! I love that we are teaching our kiddos to think and reflect about what they have been working on and learning. As time goes on, I bet we will see less and less of the superficial comments and more outstanding insights!"

All and all, we think we are going to love this new center system. It will be interesting to see what happens when we incorporate Learning Licenses!

~ Katie and Rebecca

Daily Five with a Twist: Recap of Day 2 & 3

With the first day of our centers overhaul a success, both Rebecca and I felt empowered to tackle day two and three! (yippy!!!) Our students had a completely different reaction to centers using this new system. They were more engaged and had a clearer understand that what they were working directly impacted their reading and writing. The first day, and most of the second, we focused on reading centers and what they should look like, sound like, and feel like. We each made sure to refer back to our anchor charts that each of our classes had created the day before. We also would periodically have students gather on our rugs for a check in to see how well students were doing with the new structure of centers.

Katie's

Rebecca's

One thing that was very powerful was discussing and modeling the three ways to read a book. After going through each of the three ways, we each had our students practice reading a book. It was amazing to see all of our kiddos engaged in reading - whether pictures, words or retelling - a book of their choice. Even our struggling readers were actively engaged! Amazing!

When introducing the writing centers, we gathered our students onto our rugs to create a new anchor chart focused on why writing is important. It is wonderful to hear the students' perception about writing and what it means to them. By using this brainstorming session and anchor chart creation, our students are able to more successfully see the purpose of centers. They are also developing a sense of empowerment and ownership over their own learning. Isn't that what it is all about?!

Katie's

Rebecca's

We can't wait to see what happens when we reteach our word work centers and have students choosing between all three categories! Here's to tomorrow!

~ Katie and Rebecca

Daily Five With A Twist

Over the wonderful winter break, Rebecca and I began to discuss just how our language arts centers block was at best frustrating. At first I (Katie) was embarrassed to say anything, after all if it worked last year what was I doing wrong this year?! Thankfully, Rebecca shared the same feelings. Our students, bless their hearts, were not as engaged in the centers and our guided reading groups felt choppy at best. So where did I turn? To the amazing online community of teacher blogs. This was the first time either of us had heard about the Daily Five. I rushed to Amazon to order the book and it is indeed as fabulous as everyone has made it out to be.

The catch. It is mid-year and now we are both facing a complete overhaul of centers. If I think too much about it, I become slightly nervous. But fingers crossed that it can be done! As with a new year and any new goal, we made a plan and discussed the varied needs of our students. Luckily, most of the centers that we have can easily be categorized into the three main language arts tasks outlined in the Daily Five. One thing that is working to our benefit is our students already have the an established foundation in center procedures. Those centers that didn't fit into any of the categories we decided to retire. How we decided which centers to keep and which to toss came down to the same questions "Is this center enhancing our students' learning? Is there something to be gained by engaging in this center?"

Using our Gifted and Talented endorsements, we decided to make a hybrid center system - part Daily Five and part Learning Licenses (more on this to come). This, my dear friends, is a new adventure for both of us and our kiddos.

Day 1

The Daily Five focuses on three language arts tasks - reading, writing, and word work. We decided to introduce each task by topic. Today we focused on reading and why reading is important. As a class, we made an anchor chart to answer this question. The kiddos are so great at offering their reasoning (my favorite - so "when you grow up, you don't mess up." Priceless!)

Katie's

Rebecca's

Afterward we did loads and loads of modeling the correct behavior at each reading center. I modeled both correct and incorrect behaviors then I had students model the correct behavior to their classmates. Afterward, the entire class  had a turn. As in the Daily Five, I had my students practice REALLY reading a book (either pictures or words) in one spot in the classroom. We were able to do it for about 4 minutes before any off task behavior arose.

It was amazing to see the different perception the students had in just one day. Throughout our blog journey we will explain each of our centers and how we conduct them - and whether or not our center hybrid will work!

~ Katie and Rebecca

Classroom Post Office

After our letter writing unit my firsties became fast and furious letter writers. Their take home cubbies were beginning to overflow with letters, so I decided to make a little classroom post office. I picked up a 12-pair (24 pocket), over the door shoe rack from Target, sliced it in half, and stapled it up under my whiteboard. I added a name label on each pocket and viola! My kids love to choose letter writing as the day’s writing center.

So no one feels left out, I have a “need a letter” pocket and an “already have a letter” pocket. Friends choose a stick from the “need a letter” pocket and then after they have written and delivered the letter, they deposit the stick in the “already have a letter pocket”.  The only requirement is that their letters have all 5 parts: heading, greeting, body, closing, and signature.

It has been so neat watching the students have an authentic purpose for writing! We are excited for Katie’s class to get their post office up and running so we can write letters to them too!

Here is the letter template we use. Katie and I add clip art to make the letter writing template thematic. Enjoy!

~ Rebecca