Currently & CCSS Resources

Time for Currently with Farley over at "Oh Boy Fourth Grade." 

Have you checked out the Engage NY common core site?? This site was highly recommended by my district! Developed and maintained by the New York State Education Department; this site is loaded with common core aligned educational resources, instructional content, performance tasks, videos, and other great materials for grades K - 12. There are complete curriculum modules for ELA and Math, including aligned homework resources. It is a gold mine for the common core classroom! 

It took me some time to navigate through and finally locate the modules and downloadable resources, so to save you some time, here is the path to guide you there. From their homepage, on the left sidebar click on......

>curriculum modules for ELA and Math
>Common Core Curriculum (choose ELA or Math)
>Choose grade
>Then, you will need to scroll down to bottom of page and click on the module link that will be located on the RIGHT side. 

Bam, you're in! 

I have gotten so far behind at school working with my student teacher this year, but on the upside.....the Engage NY site has compensated for some of the lost time! 

A couple of other great sites I stumbled upon today while delving further into common core are "Teaching Channel" and the "Georgia Standards" Common Core site. You will want to check both of these out if you're looking for common core support!

Now for a YUMMY PIN! 

APPLE FRITTER CAKE......YUM!!!!

Recipe from "Nerdy Baker"

And one last thing...........an invitation to review an online program!

K5 Learning has an online reading and math program for KG to grade 5 students. I've been given a 6-week free trial to test and write a review of their program. If you are a blogger, you may want to check out their open invitation for a free trial and chance to write a review for them. You can access the open invitation {here}.

Have a great weekend!

Buddy Program & Some Halloween Fun

My BUDDY PROGRAM is off and running! I have been working on setting up a buddy program to allow the 5th graders at my school to assist my special needs students during lunch, recess, and in the classroom. I was amazed with the number of signups......27 students signed up!!! And they have been so wonderful with my students. My students are soooooo excited too to have a BUDDY! They couldn't wait to see them today! Here are a few priceless captures I was able to get today!

I met with each of the 5th graders for about 20 minutes prior and explained how to interact and work with my students.....how to encourage them to use their words and how to encourage their independence and help ONLY WHEN NECESSARY! Too many times, people try to do everything for these individuals, when they need to be taught how to do things on their own and can do more than many realize! 

I also provided each student a bio summary of the buddy they would be paired with. The bio included things about my students like their favorite color, their interests, their grade, their pets, etc. This helped the buddies to spark conversation with my students. 

If you'd like to start up a buddy program at your school and don't know where to begin, I'd be happy to help! Below is a sample of the letter that was given to the 5th grade classes introducing the program to help get you started. Feel free to download it and edit, or use the letterhead! 

 Tomorrow night is our school's Fall Fest and this year we are having a door decorating contest! I had just read "Aargh, Spider" with my students and completed some really fun activities from Miss Kindergarten's Mini Spider Unit, so I decided to use this for our door decorating! 

I really love how well my girl turned out that I duplicated from the front cover of this book! You can get Miss Kindergarten's mini spider unit to go with this book {here}. And it's free!!! 

I've also been breaking in the new Cameo finally! I made these for my aides and student teacher.

Inside each bag is..............

A notepad & pen

 A candle holder

And their favorite chocolates

I also cut these from my cameo and will put some goodies in these for my students! Loving this machine and its capabilities!!! The possibilities are endless!!! 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

ClassJump.com

Do you have a classroom website? Are you thinking about creating one? Then, you will love Class Jump! My school district offers a platform that allows us to create free class websites, but it's.....well I must say, cheesy. It's plain and not very user friendly. 

I knew what I wanted! I wanted to design a class website where I could add my class photos for parent viewing, post calendar events, include "one click" links to educational websites my students can access from home, links to parent resources, an email link, and a subscription link where parents could subscribe to receive notifications via email. 

After much shopping around, I found it!! Class Jump allows me to do all of these things. It's user-friendly, reader-friendly, and it's FREE! My favorite thing is that I can upload all of my class photos so parents can see what's happening in our classroom! Very few sites offer this! Parents can also right click and save the images of their children to their files for long lasting memories. 

Another great feature is that parents and students can access resources and links with one click. No copying or pasting web addresses. They just click on my links and they are directed straight to the site they have chosen. 

Here is a snippet of my homepage. 

 I chose blue, but you can choose from various background and font colors! You can also customize your sidebar, events, and layout! It's super easy to work through the site!! 

Here's a snippet of my links page........(with more to come)

.............And a snippet of my class photo album.

The pictures will normally display upright. This is my fault that I forgot to rotate them before uploading them! 

If you're looking to create a class website, you'll want to check it out!

www.classjump.com

You can visit my class website at:

www.classjump.com/MrsBender 

A class website is a just another great way to communicate and keep parents up-to-date and involved in what is happening at school! I'm super excited about my new site with Class Jump and feel confident that you will like it too!!! :)

My Truth Monday

I'm linking up this evening with Denise from "Sunny Days in Second Grade" for her new 12 part linky series!! My Truth Monday! Each Monday a new topic will be featured. This week the topic is fitness and here is my truth about fitness!

Click on Denise's linky button below to head over and and read what others have posted or link up your own truth about fitness!!

Happy Fitness,

Halloween Pizza

Here's a fun and easy activity your students can do for Halloween!

Halloween Pizza!!!

TIP: Save this activity for the end of the day, so you can send your kiddos straight home after eating all this sugar!! heehee!

I also have a pumpkin observation FREEBIE for you!

Click to download

Enjoy your weekend! Thanks for stopping by!