Parent Teacher Conference FREEBIE!

Hi everyone! Alisha from Missing Tooth Grins here! If you were to see me right now, you would probably see me sporting some ROYALS gear ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Well, except today and last Monday because of conferences! But, right when I get home... It's back to Royals gear! Because we are all excited about the WORLD SERIES BABY. 

Anyway, enough of that. Like I said, it's conference time and I'm here to bring you some fun freebies and such. In my previous school, our whole school implemented student led conferences. I wrote about how I did student led conferences in my classroom here. 

Today, I'm sharing a few freebies that I hope will help you with your conference prep. 

At conferences, I use this little checklist to help me keep track of conference times, along with who attended the conference and what I need to do for next steps. For example, if the parent requested that I send home sight word cards or flash cards, I would write that down on this form so that I don't forget to actually do that. Goodbye post-its all over my conference folders and table! Hellllllooooo organization at it's finest. 

We needed to set up a table for parents to take a school survey outside our room. In addition to the survey, I left a big bowl of mints and a notepad for them to leave a sweet little note for their firstie. My kids whose parents had a conference Monday night were oh so excited to come in on Tuesday morning to these sweet notes. 

Click on the pictures below to grab your freebies!

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy your freebies! Happy conference time, peeps!

5 Tips For Organizing Your Classroom With Washi Tape

Hi everyone! Happy Fall to all of you! It's me, Alisha, from Missing Tooth Grins to chat with you today. I have recently fell in a deep, deep love with washi tape. I've always been quite fond of it and I'm sure you have too! I am here to share some easy, quick tips with you on what I did in my classroom to help organize myself better with just washi tape!

What's so great about washi tape anyway?

My favorite part about washi tape is that you can take it off and it doesn't do anything to what it was on! It is a clean rip. No tears, no rips, nothing. Nada. Plus, you can write on washi tape. If I wanted to use normal labels or stickers, sure I could write on them, but I wouldn't be able to remove them very easily.

1. Organize Your Filing Cabinet

My filing cabinet is behind my guided reading table. I actually have two filing cabinets in my new school and I'm used to only having one. Plus, I have a ton or cabinets and drawers and closet space that I'm not used to having... So therefore, one of my filing cabinets was completely empty! What a blessing, right? So, it turned into my area where I keep all the small group materials I need. I kept opening up the wrong drawer during the wrong time though. Seriously, every day I would open the math drawer during reading and the reading drawer during math. It was so annoying. My kids just laughed because it was every.single.day. Anyway, enter washi tape!

2. Labeling Folders

In most my center folders, there's a "Must Do" activity and a "Might Do" activity. The "Must Do" is what they must do (weird, right?) and the "Might Do" is what they might do if they finish early. Not all my babies can read the Must Do and Might Do, so I color-coded it with washi tape. They know that whichever pocket has the washi tape is the pocket they must do. The one without the washi tape is what they might do. I know some of you are wondering why I didn't just tell them the left or right and that's because not all first graders can remember their left and right and also... I don't want to repeat that every day while I'm in small group.

3. Reusing Manila Folders

As you can see, this folder has been used... But, I can use it again and again and again if I want to if I just use washi tape. Like I said earlier, it doesn't tear so might as well make it so you can reuse stuff and not have to keep buying certain things!

4. Labeling Your Supplies

There's nothing I hate more than when people walk away with my supplies. I've finally learned my lesson with my flair pens and have flagged them with washi tape so no one walks away with them! I even do this at home :) I have washi tape on my scissors, pens, sharpies, etc.

5. Creating Binder Clip Labels

I can always label my binder clips for whatever I need! I love how I can switch it out too. Labeling my binder clips helps so much when I'm trying to find something that I really, really need. You can use binder clips for so many things.

And that's all! I hope these tips were useful for you! What do you like to use washi tape for?

Leadership Roles In The Primary Classroom

The end of June is approaching rapidly. This terrifies me a tiny bit because that means I need to start seriously thinking about moving my stuff into my new classroom and set it all up. I want to soak up summer as long as I can though. For those of you that are getting ready for the upcoming school year, I thought I would share a post that I originally posted on my own blog a few months ago. You can find it here. Or, you can just read it below :)

***

Hi friends! I'm happy you're here to join me today. I'm sharing with you how I hold leadership roles in the classroom and how my firsties apply for these roles.

So, I posted this picture on Instagram last Friday and it got some attention! So, I thought I better blog about it and share the application for FREE of course!

If you have been following my blog for awhile, then you know already that I teach at a Leader In Me school. You probably also know how important I feel it is to teach my students to be leaders for themselves and for others. You see, we have leadership roles in the classroom. These are similar to classroom jobs, but we don't call them jobs. We don't want our kids to think of them as something they are required to do, but yet something that they can be leaders of. Something they can set an example to others when they perform this role. 

This past Friday was the first time I have had my kids apply for a role. They will hold the role for a month and then apply again. They may choose to apply for the same role or they can pick a different one. If you look closely at the pictures, you'll see my students highlighted their number one choice, and then wrote a 2 and a 3 by their second and third choice. I noticed many wanted the more popular choices, such as Line Leader and Pencil Leader, so I asked them to add their second and third choice as well. 

We will definitely be working on how to write about our strengths. I didn't include on the application for them to write why they want the role or why they should have it, but yet to explain the strengths they have that may help them excel in this role. I think that's really important for kids to acknowledge as early as we can get them to- their strengths. There's so many times where I feel like they are completely aware of what they "can't" do (but that's a whole different post and I need to get off my soapbox before I start a long rant!), so we need to make them aware of what they succeed in. Anyway, then they draw a picture of them performing their role that they want. 

Anyway, if you want to pick up this application, click the picture below!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5qbxVJbDhb-RThwQ0lXUjlESTQ/view?usp=sharing

The roles are mostly pretty self-explanatory, but I'm going to include the picture from my clip chart product that explains the leadership roles:

{Thank you Cara Carroll, Melonheadz Illustrating, MTF Fonts and Teaching In A Small Town for the fonts and graphics}

Here's how I display my my leadership roles in the classroom:

I use this as a clip chart and clip the students on their given leadership role. If you're interested in this editable clip chart, you can grab it in my store by clicking on the pictures below. I have a bubblegum one and an beach-themed one. 

Thanks for reading my post! I hope it was helpful to those of you creating leadership roles in your classroom!

Homework Leader Of The Week Club!

 Let's go clubbin'! 

Ha, just kidding. 

Alisha here from Missing Tooth Grins! I'm happy to share with you something new I implemented in my classroom. You see, I noticed I had a large problem with homework being returned. I send home homework packets every Monday and they are due back the following Friday. I would share with you what I send home, but they are from Common Core workbooks. They aren't fancy, but they are aligned to the CCSS, which of course is important, but I find these extra helpful because it states the standard and I Can statement at the bottom of every page. In my packet, I send home spelling words, a math page, and a communication arts page.

Anyway, I saw a real problem with homework never coming back on Fridays. I really noticed one week when less than half of my class returned their homework. So, I quickly devised a plan to start that day. I am fortunate enough to have a wonderful student teacher this semester and so therefore, I've also been given the gift of time and was able to create these fun little incentives that day. If you follow me on Instagram, then you may remember this picture:

I remember it got a lot of likes which made me feel really cool... Because let's face it, I'm a loser and love my likes on Instagram. But anyway, based on the likes I received, I figured that I better share my creation with you all!

So, every Friday afternoon, each student that brings back his/her homework gets to be Homework Leader of the Week and gets a certificate and a Blowpop. Then, every student that brings back his/her homework every week of the month gets to be Homework Leader of the MONTH! They get certificates, a sucker, AND GET TO EAT LUNCH IN THE ROOM WITH THE TEACHER. What?! Pretty big deal in the first grade world! They also get to sign a paper that we hang in the hallway to show everyone who the Homework Leaders of the Month were.

Ya'll, they love it. Plus, it has really solved my homework problem. The week I started this... Only 9 kids had brought their homework back. Out of 22 kids. It was completely devastating to me. Today, a total of 17 kids did. That number nearly doubled so I can definitely see that it is helping! Plus, the homework leaders of the month were pumped when they got to even watch a movie during lunch. They talked about it all morning and just couldn't wait for lunch to come.

"Miss Sanders, when is lunch?"

Me- "Oh, you know... Same time as every other day."

They were so excited.

If you want to implement the Homework Leader of the Week/Month Club, click any of the pictures below to download!

I hope you enjoy! Thanks for reading!

A Few Simple Steps To Differentiate Writing (AND A FREEBIE!!)

Hi everyone!!

Alisha from Missing Tooth Grins here! Do you love to teach writing? I will be honest, I used to loathe writing. Actually, just in November, I asked my instructional coach and principal for some advice on my writer's workshop time. Then, I did a ton of self reflection on my own over that following weekend of asking them and figured it out on my own like a big girl. Hehe, just kidding.

First, I wanted to figure out exactly what the problems in my classroom were. Just a quick note, I teach first grade and was feeling this way from the beginning of the year until November. 

1. They can't write.

2. They talk the whole time.

3. Stamina... Where is their stamina?

4. This kid is basically a published author and this kid over here needs help with sentences. Help. Me. 

5. This makes no sense. 

Anyway, I'm no expert on anything honestly, but I do feel pretty strongly about the ways I teach writing. If you feel like you are in the same boat I was, then I hope you find this post useful to you! So... Introducing... EASY STEPS TO DIFFERENTIATE YOUR WRITING! The most important thing for me to remember while teaching writing is that my kids are literally all at different areas in their writing and THAT'S OKAY! I hope these few easy steps can help you like they've helped me!

When teaching opinion writing, it was very obvious to me that some kids would be able to write three or four reasons to support their opinion, while a few of my friends would only be able to write one or two reasons. Rather than stressing my friends out that they all had to write the same amount of reasons, I gave each friend a post-it with a number. The number stated how many reasons they would have to have to support their opinion. This could work for any type of story, not just opinion stories. I could see myself using this for informative writing and narrative writing as well. 

This friend decided to color on her post-it, but as you see... Easy Peasy. I just walked around with my post-its and sharpie and wrote and stuck! Wrote and stuck. Wrote and stuck. That reminds me of Legally Blonde... Bend and Snap (anyone?)!

One way that my friend Katie from Simply Creative In Kentucky shared with me is another super simple way. The kids use a post it to track their writing in their organizers or rough drafts to their stories. That way they don't lose track of where they are in their writing... Something that my kids used to do all the time, which made rough drafts and final copies extremely difficult. Look at this super simple trick!

Another way is to make sure you're conferring with your students. I was so wishy-washy about this before, but I totally believe in having meaningful conferences with your students. Each day, I sit down with about 3 or 4 students, if it's realistic that day (you know how that goes) and we discuss their previous goal, whether they've been working on that goal, and a new goal for them to work on in their writing. Remembering to remind them to look back at their goal daily is a challenge, but making those goals has definitely shown a difference. I mean to get this picture for you all, but I promise I will do a separate post on conferring one day! Blogger fail on my part. Sorry!

This last one has more to do with teaching topic sentences, but my students had a really difficult time with identifying a topic sentence and creating their own topic sentences. We used my Tackling Topic Sentences pack and highlighted the topic sentence in different stories. This really helped them see a visual for identifying the topic sentence (and generally the main idea) of a text, which in turn helped them create their own.

 In fact, they created this one together as a class when we read A Pig Parade Is A Bad Idea. You can read more about how I taught opinion writing in this post right here. Sentence starters are something else I always make sure to have for my friends that need them. Some of my firstie friends need sentence starters, while others don't.

Here's the pack I used to teach topic sentences. 

So, there it is! Some simple easy steps to differentiate your writing and hopefully help you and your kiddos! It helped me and my firsties a whole bunch!

And, because I love all our followers here on The Primary Pack so much, I created a freebie of this pack because of this post! You can find it in my TPT store or by clicking on the picture below! Enjoy!!

 

Teachers, You Should Be Out Shopping Today!

You may be thinking, "Who is this crazy teacher chick who thinks I should be shopping today?! Christmas was only yesterday!" I know I'm crazy. I'm fairly certain I've mentioned it in previous posts on here and at my own blog. However, I can back up this craziness with some valuable evidence on why you should be shopping today.

Seriously... Only keep reading if you like to save money. Because that's what I am here to do... Save ya'll some money, honey.

Here's the deal. Next December, you will be stressed. You will need to think (in random order) about your family, presents, decorations, holiday concerts, Polar Express Day, Christmas dinner, pie, Grinch Day, presents, wrapping paper, Christmas trees, your Elf on the Shelf, your sanity. The list goes on and I know you know that it goes on.

Here's what I like to do... I like to think about next year's Christmas today. At least, student-wise. Most stores have all Christmas stuff for 50% off today. If you are super crazy like me, you'll probably revisit these stores numerous times through the rest of your winter break and buy some more because the discount keeps going up. However, I like to go today to get all the goods before everyone else gets the same idea as me and takes all of the best stuff. 

Here are some things that I've gotten in the past:

Elf On The Shelf- He was not discounted 50% off. However, he was 20% off at Barnes and Noble and I figured that was a pretty good deal.

 Wrapping paper- Don't mind the chicken and such in the background. Just a typical kitchen picture at the Missing Tooth Grins Headquarters. Anyway, I wrapped all my students' gifts in my discounted wrapping paper from the previous year. This year, I gave them all Scholastic books that I picked up with my points.

 Coloring Books- I picked these little books up at Target. They were with all the stocking stuffer stuff back in the Christmas section. They were originally a pack of four for $1. The day after Christmas though, they were 50 cents. I bought 6 packs and left them as "morning work" one day during the last week before break and you would've thought I left the kids gold. They flipped for these tiny little books! Books that I paid like 12 cents a piece for. You really can't beat that.

Crafts- These were originally just a buck! Got them half off! These are perfect for Polar Express Day or the last day before break.

Target Dollar Spot- The glory of the ever-so-popular dollar spot is that everything is just $1. Well, unless you fancy the $3 items in the dollar spot. You have to be tricky with those. Many times, I've picked up $3 items thinking they were just $1 items. Sad day. Anyway, after Christmas... They get discounted! Think of all the Christmas pencils, socks, erasers, tiny pails, etc. that you can get for even cheaper!

Christmas Tattoos- Originally $4 for a box, but of course picked them up for $2 a box! Or maybe less... For some reason, I feel like these were a later purchase :)

Parent Gifts- For the past four years, I've always bought the student gifts at Target the year before. I buy the Christmas craft kits that kids can easily put together with some adult assistance. Plus, kids put their school picture inside (I buy the ones where there's room for a picture). Unfortunately, I don't have a picture (boo on me), but they always turn out adorable. They're normally $5 for a box of 20, but you can get them for $2.50 the day after. Here's an example of what I buy:

You can find these here.

I also picked up our Christmas tree ornaments and star for half off last year too.

I know that some of these savings may not seem like a lot, but when you add up how much you spend on Christmas for your students, it can really add up! Why not take the stress off and save some money while you're at it while you can?

Plus, if you're anything like me... You'll forget that you did this wonderful thing of planning ahead. I store my goodies with my Christmas stuff at home. So, on the day after Thanksgiving when we are decorating, I pull out all these wonderful goodies and get so excited to remember that I am stocked up with Christmas goodies for my students. Truly, a wonderful thing!

I'll be out shopping today, but I will be blogging at my blog later to share with you the deals that I've found today! Feel free to stop by at Missing Tooth Grins to check out my deals :)

Leave a comment to let me know some deals you've found as well! I would love to hear about it and maybe go on the hunt for the same deal as well :)