Adventures with Mrs. Key

Showing posts with label Freebies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freebies. Show all posts

Friday, August 1, 2014

Tracking Student Success with Accelerated Reader


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Hello all! It has been months since I have been a part of the blogging world. It has been so long that something crazy happened to all of my pictures on my little 'ol blog. I think it is something to do with Picasa or Google+. It's something that I didn't even realize I was using. I'm not going to sweat the small stuff. I'm going to pick up the pieces that are left and move on! :) My goal is to try to blog a little more now that I have finished getting my masters degree. I love reading everyone's ideas, and I enjoy sharing.

I have been working to get things ready for my classroom. I have a small little issue...I keep changing things. I can't seem to help myself. As I learn more and more about making things cuter, I become a bit obsessed with making new stuff.

Anyway, I wanted to share something I made this week. In my classroom, I like to keep track of Accelerated Reader points. My students get very motivated to move their jeep as they earn more points. It is so much fun to watch my students get excited about reading. I hand drew the jeeps, colored them, and cut them out. They are laminated with a magnet on the back, so they will stick to the board. At the beginning of the school year, I will take pictures of my students and print them small enough to tape them to the jeep. If you'd like to use this, I posted it to TpT for free.

Click either picture to check out this freebie! 

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Saturday, November 23, 2013

Turkey Paintings


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We had a nice long uninterrupted afternoon one day last week, so I broke out the paint. Yippee! The kids had a blast. 

I found these directions on Pinterest. Instead of drawing our turkeys, we painted them. We used a sponge brush for the turkey body and q-tips for everything else. 


 My example

Here are a few student paintings. They all turned out so different and so cute!

We still have two more school days before we get out for Thanksgiving Break. I decided I would let them write about what they would do if they had their own turkey. 
Would they keep it as a pet? Would they cook it? I think it will be fun to hear what they have to say. 


I {think} you can click on the picture to snag them from Google Docs. If not, I need more practice working with Google Drive! :)


I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Gobble! Gooble!

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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

WELCOME Poster Freebie








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Hi all! It's been forever since I've blogged. I'm sure you all know how life takes over. If you've followed me or read my blog, you know how much I hated driving an hour to work and an hour home everyday. I did that for 3 years, and my husband had done it for a year. Well, guess what? No more!! Yayy! It all happened very quickly, but with His grace, we rented our home and found a rental that happens to be very close to our jobs. We literally found out in a day and a half that we were moving. I told ya it was fast! Between packing, unpacking, my grad class, and other life stuff, I stayed pretty busy! 
Now that I have everything settled into our rental, I figure I better get back into school mode. I think I might go work in my room some next week since we're so close! Oh! That's exciting! :)

To get some decoration ideas going, I've been searching Pinterest. I found a saying painted on a wall that I loved. It didn't link to anything but a picture, so I don't know where it came from. If you know, please let me know, and I will give proper credit. Anyway, I made a few cute posters with the saying. I absolutely love it! You can click on any picture and download them for FREE if you'd like to use them!








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Friday, June 14, 2013

Finish the Sentence Freebie

I enjoy seeing my kiddos use their creativity to complete their work. In the beginning of first grade, we work hard on being able to make a complete sentence that makes sense. I'm going to use this center as an introduction to writing complete sentences. It will also help me see who comprehends what they see since their sentence has to match what they see or know about each picture. I thought I'd share it with you all, so I posted it to TpT. Depending on student ability, this center can be used from K-2. I hope you find it useful! 

Click the picture if you'd like check it out. 


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Saturday, June 1, 2013

Clip Chart Management System, Word Wall Letters, and a Freebie

Summer has started out to be pretty good if I do say so myself. I've been busy! That's pretty much how I like it to be. I can't seem to shut my teacher brain off. 

I've been creating some new things to use next year. I've also started my first graduate class. I'm pretty excited about it, but I'm very nervous because it's an online class. I enjoy interaction with people in the same field as me, so let's hope it works out and that I have the self motivation to complete all of my work correctly! I tend to get off track very easily. I was actually reading some in my book when I started this blog post. Oops! 

In the past three years, I used 2 different forms of a management system. I was using a banana clip system and a ticket system {at the same time}. My students were only allowed to move their clip down on the bananas..focusing on their negative choices. In order to focus on their positive choices, I would catch them being good and give them a ticket. When they got ten green dots for good days in their folder, they could visit the treasure box. When they earned 5 tickets, they got to choose 10 minutes of an activity of their choice (puzzles, big books, computer time, games, etc.). At the beginning of the year, I asked my students what extra activities they would like to do, so that's where the list came from. It worked fine, but I wanted to combine it into one management system. 
My teacher friend, who teaches first grade with me, used a clip chart in her room, and she loved it. I've decided to do the same. I created a Zebra Themed Clip Chart and a Chevron Themed Clip Chart. I only made the Chevron themed because I would decorate my room in chevron if it weren't already Safari. Zebra print is my first love. Chevron is a very close second, so it was fun to see what it would look like. 

This is the chart put together. I love it, and I'm looking forward to only using one management system. :)


 Students will start each day with a 90/A. They will have to earn a higher conduct grade. At the end of each week, I will average their daily scores together. Students will start fresh each day. If they have one bad day out of the week, it won't kill their conduct grade for the whole week. Does this seem fair? I haven't used this form of management yet, but I want to fully wrap my brain around the concept of grading student conduct before I use it next year. 

I also made some passes for the restroom, office, and library. They're in zebra, chevron, and polka dots. I printed them, laminated them, and stuck them in an id holder and put it on a lanyard. Doing it this way prevents students from laying the pass down and leaving it behind when they come back to the classroom. They're FREE if you'd like to use them. 





Just in case you want a matching product, I have the Word Wall Letter cards in Zebra and Chevron as well. They are square or round. Also, they are black and white, black and green, or black and pink.



Click on any of the pictures to check out a product!

Now, I'm going to get back to reading about Research in Education! Happy Saturday! 




Check out this great giveaway from Gwen at Learning with Mrs. Brinn

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Sunday, May 26, 2013

The Start of a Sweet Summer~Updated, New, and a Freebie

Hello Sweet Summer! :)
I hope my students are having a great start to their summer vacation! I know I am! 

I have spent the last couple of days organizing, creating some new things, and updating my Word Work Mega Pack. It was one of the very first products I loaded to my TpT store. I used it all year, and it was great! My students absolutely loved all the choices they could pick from each day. However, it needed to be updated and differentiated a little more to meet the needs of more students. It went from 32 pages to 63 pages. 

The old cover...poor thing..I've learned a lot! 

The new cover...what a difference! I <3 it!! :) 


Krista from Creative Clips is so generously giving away some fabulous puzzle pieces. That one product inspired me to create 7 products. One of them is a freebie! 


Every year, my students have loved puzzles. Sometimes, puzzle pieces get lost. When that happens, I'm just out of luck with the missing piece unless I spend the money to buy another one. Hopefully, I've solved that problem. If I create my own puzzles, I can reprint the missing piece if necessary. 

With each of these puzzles, my new little kiddos next year will get to match the short vowel word families together and record them onto the recording sheet. This will be a Word Work choice as we review all the short vowels and word families during the first few weeks. 

Each Short Vowel Word Family Puzzle is $1.50. You can buy the bundled set for only $5.50 which is $2.00 off the price of buying them individually. 

Now for the FREEBIE! 
It's 0-20 Number Puzzles. All you have to do is print, laminate, and cut to have a fun math center for your little learners! I will put it in a math center at the beginning of the school year. 

Click on any picture to check out a product! 




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Friday, April 19, 2013

Ocean Adventure Paintings with a freebie

This has been a long week. My kiddos have been great all year long. Almost all of them have an A in conduct. They're just that sweet. For some reason, they've gone a little coo-coo the past two days. I think they have spring fever. Well, I sprang it on them that we have 5 weeks left of learning! ha 
On top of them being a little coo-coo this week, ALL 10 of our tadpoles died. The kids and I left school on Tuesday, and they were all alive and swimming just fine. We came in Wednesday morning, and ALL 10 were dead. I don't know what happened. FAIL :( It happens...right? 
As if that wasn't enough for the week, when we got home yesterday, we realized that everything in our large stand-up freezer was defrosted. We were able to save a few things, but a lot had to be thrown out. Needless to say, I went to bed at the same time the kids did last night. 

On to better news...
Can I tell you how much I love doing this ocean painting and writing activity? This is the second year I've done it, and it is fabulous. The kids loved it!! After talking about oceans and ocean animals for several days, I had my kids draw ocean animals on a long piece of construction paper that was been folded in half. They drew their pictures with a pencil and then colored them in very very dark with their crayons. Some colored so hard that their crayons broke...oops! Once they were colored in, I had them paint over the ocean scene with watered-down blue paint. Then I had them complete a descriptive writing about their ocean adventure. Once their writing was done, they glued it to the top half of the long construction paper. 








I love how they all turned out so pretty! The darker they color, the more vibrant they turn out. 

You can snag the Ocean Adventure paper for free by clicking on the picture if you'd like to do this activity with your class. 

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