Attention 2nd Grade Teachers...12 Days of Christmas FREEBIES

Merry Christmas!

  I am so excited!  Lory Evans from Lory's Page and Amy Lemons from Step Into Second Grade have asked me to join in on an exciting Christmas giveaway with a group of amazing 2nd grade bloggers!

We are thrilled to announce that beginning December 1st (tomorrow), 12 of us bloggers will wish 12 lucky teachers a very Merry Christmas!!!

Listed below are some of the 12 bloggers that have chosen their favorite unit to give away... not once... but 12 times... for 12 days... to 12 teachers!

That's right... you might win 12 different units created by these wonderful ladies to use in your classroom during the 2013 school year.

We are so grateful for our blog-ships and we want to thank our followers and hopefully develop new blog-ships for the upcoming year.

December 1st is Saturday... we will accept entries bright and early... then announce     the December 1st winner at 10:00 PM Saturday night.

We'll start over December 2nd and continue through the 12th of December.

All you'll need to do is leave a bit of cheer with your email each day on Lory's Page.

Be sure to stop by and follow these amazing blogs... they are always sharing terrific 2nd grade ideas and many freebies.

See you Saturday!!!

Amy

Monica

Denise

Hope

 Yvonne

Anna

Kylie

Kate

Savvy in Second

Can't wait till tomorrow! Have a great Friday night friends!-Yvonne

Cyber Monday Plus Tuesday TpT Sale!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I am off to the grocery store (YES... on Wednesday the day before Thanksgiving) to tackle the crowds and hope everything is not sold out!  Before I head out I wanted to tell you about a great sale coming up on TpT!  Monday and Tuesday (Nov. 26th and 27th) all of the items in my store will be 20% off and TpT will offer an additional discount on sale prices!  Just enter the code CMT12 and you could buy your teaching packets up to 28% off!  I wanted to give you plenty of time to shop over your Thanksgiving break to fill your shopping carts!  To celebrate the sale I've created a FREEBIE Christmas center...Christmas Penguin Prefix or Suffix Sort!  It is a center similar to the those in my new Merry Christmas Common Core Math and Literacy Centers.  I'd love for you to click on the pictures below to preview my centers along with some of my other Christmas fun activities.   I want to say thanks to Michelle (3 AM Teacher) for her great button above advertising our TpT sale!  Have a great holiday and enjoy your days off from school!-Yvonne

Check out some of these great deals from these amazing teachers as well!  

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!-Yvonne

Color Coding for Language Arts!

Hi friends!  Just curious...how many of you have ever tried "color coding" your language arts instruction?  I just finished my newest packet (click here to see it) and couldn't wait to share it with you all! What do I mean by color coding? Well, each student has a complete set of colored pencils that they use to "code" their language arts skills and parts of speech in their writings, class chart stories, and sentences.
When I started teaching I was fortunate enough to be with a very energetic mentor teacher.  Whew...she was wide open "wild" with the energy of a wild child!  I'll never forget her (really...she could have been a stand-up comedian).  She taught first grade and one of her daily routines was to do a morning "chart story" and act it out with her students.  I was amazed at how well this routine of "clapping our ending marks" and "saluting our capital letters" helped our students retain the skills.  I followed her lead and used this technique when I started teaching and taught first grade.  My students LOVED this idea of acting out their grammar skills and following charts for coding their nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more!  Here is a sneak peak of my packet...Language Arts Code, Count, and Tally Tickets based on the same idea but designed to follow Common Core Standards:

 There are sentences and language prompts coded with the CCSS standards.  Each ticket has a writing prompt for students to write in their journals! 

On another note, I've been finishing up my fall conferences and I have LOVED using my Common Core Notebooks with my students!  I have to brag on my students for their first "student-led conferences" and their organizational skills.  I've loved hearing my students share with their parents their evidence of learning the standards and skills checklists.  Wow...it has made conferences so much easier!!! Yes, it was work at the beginning to train the kids with the notebooks but now it is all worth it!  They love writing new standards down on recording forms and filing work samples as evidence.

We are working now on goal setting and weekly reflection tickets.  My students are very familiar with goal tickets because we use them with our Common Core notebooks but I would like to try a weekly reflection/goal sheet.  I found this freebie I really like from some fabulous teachers at "Fab in Fourth" on TpT!  Check out their "Week at a Glance" sheet available for us all to use!  I am starting this with my kiddos this week and hope it will help them with goal setting and reflection of learning for each week in Reading, Math, and Science/Social Studies.  I'll keep you posted and let you know how our "week at a glance" reflection is going.  Thanks to the ladies at Fab in Fourth! Thanks so much friends and have a great week!-Yvonne :)