Winter... what's that? Show and Tell time!

Happy Wednesday Friends!!
I'm linking up with Denise over at Sunny Days in Second Grade for her Show and Tell Tuesday linky party! This week's theme is WINTER!! I'm a day late, but I was feeling pretty gross last night so I went to bed at 7:30, right after Jeopardy. I think it was a record for me.

Ok... so I am going to knock on some wood right now because I am LOVING the fact that it hasn't been too cold here in Orlando so far this winter. We've had one or two days where there was a little frost on my car in the morning, but that's it. {knock on wood} It's been 80 degrees for a week now. Rough life, I know.  But it's hard to wear flip flops and sandals to work all of the time...your feet always have to look good! =)


With that being said, getting into the "winter spirit" has been a little difficult for me, and for my kids. I'm hoping to change that next week! Well, I hope the spirit changes... not the weather!  Anyway, my copies of my Magic Tree House Polar Bears unit are all ready to go and I've found a class set of both books {Polar Bears past Bedtime and Polar Bears and the Arctic Fact Tracker}. I can't wait 'till Tuesday!  We are going to work on this unit for about three weeks. I would also like to do some cute polar bear craftivities with it, so I'm on the hunt for some super cute  ones! If you've got any ideas, please let me know!  If you haven't seen my unit, check it out on TPT! It's going to be tons of fun!

Thanks so much, Denise for hosting such a great party!!

-Jackie-

P.S. If you haven't checked out our 300 follower giveaway, check it out, there's just 4 days left to enter!

Mid-Year Assessments

Hi Friends!
It's that lovely time of the year again... mid-year assessments. Over the years I've heard lots of moaning and groaning about this topic, but it's actually something I really enjoy. It must be the teacher geek in me! I like it because it's the time where I can see all of the work we've put in over the past 5 months finally paying off. Don't get me wrong,  I see the growth in snippets each week from progress monitoring, weekly assessments, or when I read with my kids for a minute or two during guided reading each day, but when I do my mid year assessments I see tons of growth in comparison to where they started! I also like it because it's 1 on 1... a time to connect with my kids in a quiet setting.

I do three different assessments. First, I do the DRA  assessment. I only have a K-3 kit, so for most of my students this is a great assessment. It's not helpful for those kits who tested out of the kit at the beginning of the year. I wish we had the higher level DRA assessment on our campus, but we don't. Today I was so excited {and relieved} when I tested one of my kiddos (who came to me a little over a half of year behind ) and he tested exactly where 2nd graders should be right now. That means he made a whole years growth in just 5 months!! I was so proud of him!! It tells me that what I'm doing with him works!! :-)

The next assessment I do is with our FRY sight words. Up until now, our 2nd graders were supposed to have the 1st 500 words mastered. While we teach and practice many of those words in class, many of the words have to be learned on their own at home. My students did really well on this assessment. It's a reflection of their hard work {and their parents} at home.







Finally, the assessment I leave for last is our FAIR {Florida Assessment In Reading}. About four or five years ago it took the place of DIBELS in Florida schools. I haven't started to FAIR test my students yet. I'm going to begin as soon as all of my DRA tests are done. My thoughts are mixed as far as FAIR goes. I've seen some discrepancies in the reading passages. There are a few passages on the 1st and 2nd grade test which are clearly way higher than they are supposed to be. I'm also not thrilled that students are given a probability of reading success strictly based off of how many words they can read in 45 seconds{list is in the picture above}. Other than that, it's pretty good information, but I don't use it strictly in isolation. DRA is an excellent supplement for it.

The thing I struggled with up until a few years ago was classroom management during my tests. I had a hard time figuring out what to do with my other kids while was testing. I used to have busy work packets and tons of interruptions, lots of clips moving down. My poor former kids!  For the past 3 years, I've been doing Daily 5. I absolutely love doing the Daily 5 in my class because my kids are completely independent, they know exactly what is expected of them, and they do it. Plus, it's benefiting them and they're not bored with busy work! If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it!!

So that's my mid-year assessment routine. What's yours? What do you love& what could you live without? I'd love to know!

Happy Monday!
-Jackie-

If you haven't stopped by our giveaway post, check it out. There are tons of prizes to be won!!!!

Our 300 Follower Giveaway!

Hi Friends!! Thank you so much for being a part of our blogging lives! We can't believe we have 311 great friends who love teaching as much as we do.
To celebrate this very awesome milestone, we've teamed up with 11 amazing bloggers and Troy from Classroom Friendly Supplies for this exciting giveaway. There are two chances to win through rafflecopter!

For the first raffelcopter giveaway, Danielle and I, along with these fabulous bloggers will be giving the winner an item or two {winner's choice} from our TPT stores.

Danielle and I would like to give our winner 2 items {winner's choice} from our TPT store!

Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper would like to give our winner 2 items {winner's choice} from her TPT store!


Jayme from Trendy in Third would like to give our winner 1 item {winner's choice} from her TPT store!


Heather from The Busy Beehive would like to give our winner 2 items {winner's choice} from her TPT store!
The Busy Beehive

Jessica from Ideas by Jivey would like to give our winner 2 items {winner's choice} from her TPT store!

Stacia and Amanda from Collaboration Cuties would like to give our winner 1 item {winner's choice} from their TPT store!

Beth Ann from Taming My Flock of Firsties would like to give our winner 2 items {winner's choice} from her TPT store!
Taming My Flock of Firsties

Finally, my very own terrific former intern, Brittany at Salt Life Teacher would like to give our winner 1 item {winner's choice} from her TPT store! She is a brand new blogger! Go check her out!




For our second rafflecopter giveaway, Danielle, myself, and these fantastic bloggers will be giving items away from our TPT stores that we think you will really LOVE! Troy from Classroom Friendly Supplies is also in on this giveaway!

I would like to give our winner my newest Magic Tree House Polar Bear unit! I am going to begin working on it with my kids this week! They can't wait!

I would also like to give our winner my Magic Tree House Christmas in Camelot book study unit. Although "Christmas" is in the title, it's not really a Christmasy book. =)

Danielle would like to give our winner her So You Want to Be President? Exemplar Text unit, just in time for President's Day!

Danielle is also going to give our winner her Magic Tree House Night of the New Magicians book study unit. It's fantastic!! She's working on it right now with her class, and they LOVE it!!

Karen from Mrs. Jones's Kindergarten is giving our winner Sight Word Construction mats! They look awesome!! I'd like to buy them for my daughter. =)

Njat from Mrs. Murillo's Class is giving our winner her Martin Luther King day pack. This is perfect for MLK day!

Gina from Beach, Sand, and Lesson Plans is giving our winner her Common Noun and Proper Noun Practice Pack. Gina is so talented and super sweet too!

Melissa from Don't Let the Teacher Stay Up Late is giving our winner her Winter Literacy Centers. They look like fun!!

Last, but certainly NOT LEAST, Troy from Classroom Friendly Supplies would like to give away 1 of his absolutely amazing, Quietest Classroom Pencil Sharpeners to our winner in his/her choice of colors {green, blue, red, or black}. This is a $24.99 value for FREE! Wow!!

WOW!!What a giveaway! We wish we could win!! Just kidding!! OK... so how do you enter?? Follow the directions on these two rafflecopters for lots of chances to win... that's it!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you to all of our followers, old and new!! You mean so much to us! Thank you, thank you, thank you, to our amazing fellow blog friends who participated in this giveaway! We truly appreciate your generosity!!! 


If you'd like to blog about this giveaway in your own blog, and you want to include the flier at the top of this post, here's the code:

<div align="center"><a href="http://sisterteachers.blogspot.com/2013/01/our-300-follower-giveaway.html" title="Sister Teachers"><img src="http://i1343.photobucket.com/albums/o787/teachersisters/300_zps8adbfafb.png" alt="Sister Teachers" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

 Happy Blogging!
-Jackie and Danielle-

A 300 Follower Giveaway, Polar Bears, and a Freebie!

Happy Wednesday! What an exciting day! We are so blessed and and extremely excited that we now have 300 blog followers! We love and appreciate every single one of you!! I am working on organizing our 300 follower giveaway and it's going to be great! If you're a TPT or TN seller and would like to help us out with the giveaway, please let me know. You can email me at sisterteachers@gmail.com or leave a comment below with your email address.

Speaking of 300 followers, our very wonderful bloggy friend, Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper is having a HUGE 300 follower giveaway with tons of amazing prizes! She's teamed up with us and 17 other fabulous bloggers for this giveaway! Check it out!! {Fourth Grade Flipper}

I am also sooo excited that I have completed my Magic Tree House Polar Bear Non-Fiction and Fiction book study unit! A very huge Thank You to Gina from Beach, Sand, and Lesson Plans for being such an amazing friend and proof reader! Your help is greatly appreciated!

My Polar Bears unit is up on TPT if you'd like to check it out! Please let us know what you think!!

I'd also love to share a freebie from my book study with you!

Click here: {freebie}!

Happy Blogging!! -Jackie-

Casey Rocks!!!

Happy Tuesday!! Every month at our school, a teacher or staff member is chosen to be "Teacher of the Month". We nominate each other based on our district's 5 goals. I can recite them from memory, but won't bore you with the details. =) When our principal called us all down to the lobby for a short little impromptu meeting one morning in early December, we didn't think much of it. Since Mr. D. started at our school in September, we've had a few of them. He started the meeting saying that he didn't really want to wait until his next "official" staff meeting to announce December's teacher of the month since it was a relatively short month. Once he started talking about the teacher of the month and describing the different things that the teacher has done to earn this award and help our school, I thought to myself, "hmmm... I've done that too, or my sister did that a few weeks ago". To our very excited and extremely humbled surprise, WE, The Sister Teachers, were chosen as Co-Teachers of the Month of December!! We were so happy and honored to be chosen by such an amazing staff!! We're just a small representation of the talent in our school. A few years ago, our former Principal, Dr. B. started the tradition of giving the Teacher of the Month a huge rock with our mascot (Casey the Dragon) on it. The rock is now known as "Casey Rocks!!". Each month we pass the rock along to its newest recipient. Here's a pic of Danielle and I with our "Casey Rocks!!". It was kind of hard to get a self pic with the rock since it was pretty heavy, but it's not too bad. We have to give our rock up tomorrow, so we wanted to share it with you tonight!

Happy Blogging!

-Jackie-

Sneak Peek, Proof Readers, and a 300 follower giveaway!

I woke up totally refreshed! Maybe it's because my sweet hubby got up at 7:30 with the little one and let me sleep 'till 10:30! What ever it was, I got up today totally motivated do do things! I helped Makenzie clean and organize her play room. What a MESS!! That kid has more toys than she knows what to do with. She doesn't like to get rid of anything, so one day when she's not around, I'm going to have to do something about it. I don't think she'll notice (hopefully!).

After that, I decided to start working on my Magic Tree House Polar Bear Unit. It's quite a process that I go through. In order to really adhere to the Common Core State Standards, I like to look through all of the ELA standards and write out verbatim what each of the standards I want to touch upon say. That way it stays fresh in my mind and I can keep track of which standards I'm hitting as I write my unit. Next, I write out all of my questions on notebook paper. This way I'm able to revise and edit my questions as I write them. While I work on the content of the unit, I give my hubby a vision of what I'd like the front cover to look like. He's my photoshop whiz, so he does my background and frame for me. Once all of my questions and answers have been handwritten, I search for cute clip art. I really love and appreciate all of the graphics provided by Laura Strickland at My Cute Graphics . She is an amazing artist and she's so generous to offer her clips for free! If you haven't already, please check her out.

Once I find all of my graphics, I begin my unit. I've been using power point to make my units. I find it easy to use. The only thing I really don't like about it is the fact that I can't figure out how to make it portrait not landscape. If you have any idea if it's actually possible, please let me know. So far tonight I've done my cover page and about 7 pages of content. I have a ton to go, but I'm hoping I can get it done by mid-week. Here's a sneak peek of my cover page.

I really love the Magic Tree House books. I use them in whole group (if I have a class set) or in small groups. I also love the fact trackers. For this unit, I am going to do a combination fiction & non-fiction unit and I am going to split it up into just fiction or non-fiction. Lots of variety! =)

I am looking for some proofreaders! If you'd like a rough copy of this unit, please leave a comment with your email address below. I'd love to give it to the first two interested people. Extra eyes are always amazing!! Thanks in advance for your help!!

I can't believe we almost have 300 followers!! To celebrate, I'd like to have a HUGE giveaway!! I am hoping my bloggy friends would be willing to donate an item or two from their TPT or TN stores. If you wouldn't mind helping us out, email us at sisterteachers@gmail.com or please let me know with your email address in a comment below that you'd like to help. I will email you with the details as soon as I figure everything out.

Have a fabulous end to your weekend and enjoy your sweet kiddos on Monday! I can't wait to see mine!

-Jackie-

I've been MIA and Currently!

Happy New Year! I can't believe it's January already! This vacation has flown by. I can't believe I am starting school again in two short days. I'd love to say I had the greatest vacation ever and I did SOOO much. Unfortunately, I didn't. I was sick for the first week and a half. I didn't move off of my couch. There is a major indentation in the cushions from my rear!
The last few days have been better. When I left school on the last day before vacation, my plan was to work on some units for January. I didn't do it. :-( I had no energy or motivation. When I finally got the energy back, I just wanted to play all day! I've been spending lots of quality time with my sweet little girl, Makenzie. We've played lots of games, barbies, and some golf.

I've also snuck in some handwriting, CVC and sight word practice (shhhhh... don't tell her. She thought we were playing school!). I may start working on some new things this weekend, but I'll play that by ear. I might want to have fun. :-) Once again, Farley over at Oh Boy 4th Grade is hosting her fabulous once a month Currently Linky Party. I'm a few days late, but like the saying goes, better late than never! Right? Here goes...

Listening: I'm a news watcher. I don't know why, but I've been a news watcher as long as I can remember. The unfortunate thing about the news in Orlando is that it is extremely depressing! There is always something wrong... like a murder, or missing people, or a plane crashed into someone's house. You would think that Orlando would have happy news since it's the home of the Mouse House, but it's not. It's a train wreck, and I can't stop watching!
Loving: I'm loving baby butterscotch! Who is baby butterscotch you ask? Well, She's an animatronic pony! My daughter got her from Santa. Makenzie is in LOVE with her! I love how Mak plays with her. She's endless fun, and I'm so happy that Santa was able to fulfill her Christmas wish!

Thinking: I'm thinking about how I need a few more days off, especially since I was so sick for the majority of my vacation! It's ok though. I am glad I didn't have to use up my precious sick days.
Wanting: I want some new clothes and a haircut! Maybe that's what I'll do on my last two days off. =)
Needing: I need a dryer... still! My dryer kicked the bucket during the last week of November. We're on such a tight budget, so we really couldn't swing a new one with it being Christmas time. Maybe we can get one with the TPT money I'll get soon. Hopefully something else doesn't go in the time being. :-)
Finally... OWL (one little word): My word is ENJOY. Enjoy life, enjoy my daughter, enjoy my husband, enjoy my family, enjoy my job, enjoy my students, etc... Life is too short not to enjoy every second that God gives me.
If you haven't already, (which I'm sure most of you already have since I'm like number 379!!), link up with Farley at Oh Boy 4th Grade!
Happy New Year!! -Jackie-

Mr. Holly is Here and an Elf on the Shelf Linky Party!

Hi Friends!!

Boy oh boy were my kiddos super excited to meet our elf on the shelf! They saw the elf on the shelf box on top of my cabinet throughout the month of November, but I played dumb and acted like I had NO idea what they were talking about.

Yesterday morning, our Elf miraculously got out of his box and appeared on one of the bookshelves next to a book basket! Surprisingly, it took the kids 10 minutes to spot him. I don't know how many times they walked right by him. Finally little miss Em. saw him and the whole class erupted in utter chaos! It was good chaos though... fun excitement. They read his little poem and began to think of different names for him.

Later on in the day, our class sat down together and read the elf on the shelf book. We also brainstormed some possible names for our Elf. There were some interesting ones, but I picked my favorite, my intern picked hers, and then each child was able to do a preliminary vote for their favorite. It came down to Mr. Holly, Max, and Elfie. After a secret ballot vote and bar graph, we finally had a name! The name, Mr. Holly won by the slimmest of margins, but overall I think the class was pleased with his name.

After we voted, we had to write about it!! Our awesome elf left the kids their very own Elf Journal. I gave them a few sentence starters, and they were on their way!! They enjoyed the rest of the afternoon tweaking their first journal entries and coloring in the front covers. I think they came out adorably!

I've never seen the kids so eager to enter my room like I did today! They spotted silly Mr. Holly sitting at the bottom of the flag pole! He had a letter for them too! This elf is some writer!! I think he's got lots to say! Today we found out that Mr. Holly is 99 years old and his birthday is on Halloween... who would have thought an elf could be born on Halloween?! My kiddos were thrilled to find out this information! In fact, many of their journals today asked all different sorts of questions... maybe he'll answer some of them tomorrow. :-)

I'm sharing Mr. Holly's classroom antics with Mel D's awesome Elf on the Shelf linky party! Click {HERE} to join up too!

Happy Elfing! -Jackie-

I can't believe it's December! Time for... Currently!!

Hi Bloggy Friends!! I can't believe it's December already!! Didn't November just seem to fly by? I'm hoping the next few weeks of school kinda flies by too, but I also hope our Vacation goes ridiculously slow... I'm in need of some Mommy/Makenzie time!!!

Well, since it's the beginning of the month, that means Farley over at "Oh Boy 4th Grade" is having her super fun "currently" linky party.

Stop on by Farley's blog and link up!

Happy Saturday Night!! -Jackie-