Winter Fun Blog Hop & Giveaway

Helllooo friends!! Happy winter!! Hopefully you have stayed warm this winter :) What a fun blog hop, giveaway and free e-book we have in store for you!! First of all, I have to give a HUGE shout out to my girl Stephanie from Mrs. D's Corner for all her hard work she put into this blog hop and putting together the e-book. She is seriously AHHHH-MAZING!!!

So we've made it. More than half way through the year! Give yourself a pat on the back because we have come into the downward stretch! I love teaching in February because of all the fun things that can be incorporated! Beginning of February is Groundhogs Day. Graphing and opinion writing can easily be incorporated into this holiday! I wrote a blog post about incorporating Groundhogs Day into opinion writing, you can find it here. My kiddos really loved it! I will be doing it this year as well.

Did you get hit with the snowstorm Jonas? My area did (I teach in Maryland) and we missed the entire week of school January 25th through January 29th! If your students have access to technology and the internet at home, you could assign them with a writing prompt on kidblog or if you have them set up for google classroom you could have sent out an assignment. Unfortunately, most of my kiddos don't have access to technology or the internet at home so that wouldn't have worked :) However, when we return to school on Monday February 1st, we will be working on narrative writing and writing about our VACAY away from school during snow storm Jonas.

So because I have been cooped up for an entire week (which in a way I don't mind because I love spending time with my own children) I have had the time to create some fun new creations for my TpT store! YAY :) Here are some new freebies I've created, hopefully you can use them in your own classroom! Opinion Writing and Valentines Day Writing Flipbook.

So, as things go, I was to have my FINAL observation on Tuesday January 26th, before reaching tenure. In the state of Maryland, you have to have 3 years (4 observations PER year) of satisfactory teaching experience (as deemed by the administration through observations), and then you reach tenure status. So it snows. and snows. and snows. And now my observation will be sometime in February. I was super excited to get it over with, but now I'll have to wait :) I'm one of those people that when the e-mail goes out, from our principal to all the teachers that have to be observed, offering days and times she can observe us, I e-mail back first and snatch up the very 1st day/time available (just to get it outta the way!)

But I wanted to share with you what I had planned for my observation. All students in the school where I teach are grouped with like level learners. My class is below level 1st graders. So for an hour each morning, I take my 12 kiddos down to the KG room. This KG teacher has the below level KG students. There is also an instructional assistant and a special ed teacher in the room with us, as well as a high school volunteer. So that's 5 adults to 27(ish) kids. We do small group rotations with about 6 kids in each rotation. In my group, we are working on comprehension.

NOW, as you can imagine, these young students can not read yet. So we are working on sequencing of daily events or known things. Such as, what do you do when you wake up first? next? then? We have only got to work on this one day before the snow storm hit. But my plans were to have some groups of students working on the puzzles I created to sequence daily events, and to also give them the opportunity to sequence events digitally on google classroom. So we still will be doing this, but it probably won't work out that it will happen when my observation is going to happen. So is life right :)

Drumroll please....now for the completely awesome giveaway!!!

So we have so much fun and goodies for you!! First, here is a winter fun e-book!! Click on the picture below for a link to the book!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Click this button below to hop to the next blog!!

 
Wishing you all the best in the 2nd part of the school year!! Or for those of you that just started school, have a great year!!