Giveaway to Enter!

I just entered a great giveaway going on at The Peanut Gallery !  Hop on over and join the contest!  Good Luck!  Thanks Peanut Gallery!

Liebster Award

Blogs I have nominated:

Here is what you need to do:

1.  Post 11 random things about yourself!

2.  Answer the 11 questions I have posted for you to answer in my last post!

3.  Create 11 questions for your nominees

4.  Find 11 blogs with 200 or less followers and nominate them for the Leibster Award.

5.  Send me your URL to your Liebster Post with all of the above!

Finally, I am completing my Liebster Award nomination which I am very grateful for from Flamingos and Butterflies for nominating me!  First things first, 11 random things about me....
1.  I have 2 beautiful daughters who are successful and my pride and joy!  Jordan, lives in Alexandria VA with her husband Jeff.  She will graduate in May from Georgetown University and she will complete her graduate degree while working full time for Lockheed Martin.  My youngest daughter Ashlan lives in PA and is a first time homeowner with her fiance' Trevor.  They purchased a  ONE ROOM SCHOOL HOUSE! Of course I am over the top with this!  It has the original school bell outside from 1891!  AHHHH!
2.  I live and teach by the beach!  It is a summer beach in Lewes DE which is the first town in the first state to sign the Declaration of Independence!
3.  My husband just reminded me of one of my favorite shows growing up...The Courtship of Eddie's Father.  I sang the whole song even though he told me to stop!  Big challenge with the Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family!  I think I love you....
4.  I have two adorable dogs, Lewey (named after Lewes) and Lindy (named before we rescued her).  They are both Yorkshire Terriers and we love them as if they were our own children!
5.  I am remarried and living my dream.  There is something to be said about finding someone who also dreamed of living at the beach.  I use to come to this same beach as a child on summer vacation and dream about the houses I rode my bike past and how I would decorate it if I owned it.  Forshadowing????????
6.  I will be 50 years old in the year 2013 so I am NOT looking forward to New Year's Eve!
7.  I have taught 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade and I was a remediation teacher for K-6 grade.  Kindergarten is where I learned about the King of ing!
8.  Everyone is going to have snow tomorrow except us, we live too close to the ocean.  (Good or bad?  Hmmm!)
9.  I think about the New Jersey shore communities who lost everything as a result of Hurricane Sandy and I know how it could have so easily been the Delaware beaches.  I am proud of all the organizations and student groups who I have contributed to that sent supplies to Jersey.
10.  I am trying so hard to amp up my teaching to meet the common core although I am not sure exactly what that means!  I am going to a Lucy Calkin's common core course in January and I cannot wait!
11.  Sandy Hook Elementary School.  What more can I say?  So sad, so real, so unbelievable, so close to home.  You are all in my heart and prayers forever.

My answer's to my nominator's questions:

1. What grade do you teach, and how long have you been teaching?  I am currently teaching 4th grade and this is my 20th year of teaching.
2. Where are you currently teaching?  I teach in the Cape Henlopen School District at Shields Elementary School in Lewes, DE.  We are one of the top 15 schools in our state!!!!!
3. If you were not a teacher, what would be your dream job?  There is no other profession I would want to be in.  When I was moving to Delaware from Pennsylvania I thought of other careers but I kept saying, "I teach, that is what I do!"  Luckily I was hired as a teacher!  
4. What is your favorite adult book?  Killing Kennedy
5. What is your favorite kid book?  Claudia
6. If you could meet any author, who would it be and why?  Bill O'Reilly.  I know, I know but he was a teacher and he knows so much about history.  I would love to just talk to him about what he thinks is important for students to know about history.
7. Why did you start blogging?  I wanted to give back to all the bloggers who helped me through my empty nest syndrome!  I received so many ideas and great activities from other bloggers!  We need to help each other!
8. How did you come up with the name for your blog?  It was fall and it was the peach season in Delaware.  A large part of our state in agriculture.  Also I will always remember my mom crying to my dad about how much my brother and I fought when we were younger.  His response was "No one said it would be peaches and cream, Marlene."
9. If you could have any super power, what would it be and why?  My super power would be to be able to teach every student to love reading.  Why?  Because when you fall in love with reading you have a passion for it and it becomes part of who you are!
10. Are you an early bird or night owl?  I am a night owl but, my husband is an early bird.  He LOVES Everybody Loves Raymond on TV Land and that starts at 9:00 PM so I become an early bird by default!
11. As you sit here blog hopping and answering questions from a random stranger, (just kidding) what are you thinking in the back of your mind you should really be doing right now?  I should be doing nothing else but answering questions to  a random stranger because all of my bestest friends were random strangers at some point!!!!!!

Here are my 11 random questions to the blogs I nominated!

1.  What grade do you teach?

2.  How long have you been teaching?

3.  Where do you teach?

4.  What is your favorite professional sport to watch?

5.  Why did you decide on a career in teaching?

6.  What was your most rewarding moment as an educator?

7.  How do you decide on when to blog and what to blog?

8.  What is the most unique thing about where you teach?

9.  What do you do in your free time?

10.  Are all of your closest friends teachers?  If so, what do you do outside of school?

11.  What would you like to accomplish most in your lifetime?

Here are the 11 blogs I am nominating:

1.  The Tennessee Teacher

2.  Awesomeness and Autism

3.  Live. Laugh, Love Kindergarten

4.  What's Working This Year in Kindergarten?

5.  Mindful Rambles

6.  Two Peas Learning

7.  Lovely Literacy and More

8.  Dancing In Our Teacher Shoes

9.  Better With Bows

10.  Backpacks and Snafus

11. 4th Grade Racers

  

I am linking up with What I've learned for a list of my holiday goals.

• Clean out my closet!  I am so tired of wearing things I don't like and keeping it anyway!  Ugh!  I can't find anything because my closet is about to explode!
• Clean out my jewelry.  I have so many beads and bangles to match my outfits but it is so unorganized I end up wearing the same few things!
• Get started on the next Language Arts unit that will integrate into the next Social Studies unit. ( I love when that happens!)
• Create materials so I feel confident enough to start a teachers pay teachers or teacher's notebook account.  Hmmmm...
• Eat better and exercise more.  Yeah, I add that on every year.  Maybe sooner or later I will become motivated!
• Blog more freebies which means create cuter things!  It's a win-win!

I thing I will stick with these 6 goals.  I don't want to get to "lofty"!  I feel good about putting it out on my blog because that just might hold me accountable!

Freebies

November and December have been crazy as far as days off from school.  I decided in November to challenge students to record reading minutes.  Their minutes turned into points and after Thanksgiving they received "tickets" for the points they earned.  They were able to shop for goodies.  It went over so well I decided to do it for December.  I offered them double points for minutes read on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.  They were so excited!  Below are the coupons I used and the December Calendar.  Thank you Scrappin Doodles for the great clipart!

december calendar

Coupons


The past few days we have done centers with a gingerbread theme.  Here are the directions for creating a gingerbread town!

Gingerbread Town

Silence for Sandy Hook Elementary

Maniac Monday Freebie!

Yeah, I finally got my iphone and pictures of my reading folders!!!
I meet with different reading groups that are reading novels.  There are groups reading Hatchet, Bunnicula, Because of Winn Dixie, Sarah Plain and Tall and Fudgamania.  The books are differentiated but the reading folders are all the same.

This is what our folders look like.  Just manilla file folders.

Students use sticky notes to record unknown words.  When we meet as a group we try to first figure out the word using context clues or we look it up on ipods using an online dictionary app.  One of my parents worked for Hallmark in retail stores and was able to keep unwanted envelopes at the end of the holiday!

This is where we write our summary for the chapters read.  It is just 5 inch colored paper stacked with about 1/2 on the bottom, folded, and stapled at the top to the folder.  Under each flap is where we write the summary.

This is a foldable that allows us to record the story elements.

This is a spinner that we use for the students to discuss what was read.  They spin and then choose who they want to respond.  That person is the next one to spin.  I have two different spinners so there are different questions in one group.  I gave half the students in a group one spinner and half the other.  We cut out the circle, glued it to the folder and then poked a hole in the middle.  Next, we added a brass fastener with our spinner.  I used card stock to create the spinner.  

Here are my spinner templates.  I copied them on colored paper.  I was going to cut each triangle apart and create a spinner with different colored triangles but, I ran out of energy!!!  Sorry you have to copy and past into your browser.  I can't figure out how to insert this any other way...help!!! :)

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5VyzjcBZdaAR3RzaFl0eFpPZFU

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