WACky Party:) :)

Tonight we had our second WACky party of the year! The kids loooooooved it!

What is a WACky party you ask? Our 4th grade TEAM has been doing them forever to help push good behavior.  They rock! Essentially, a WACky party is like golf....you want the lower score!

W=Work
A=Agenda
C=Citizenship

If a student does not follow the work rules, agendas rules, or citizenship rules they will receive a point. (Remember points are bad!)

Each nine weeks we have a party for the students that make the point goal. Point goals can look different for each class. As a teacher, you know your students best, and it is important not to not start too low in the beginning or too high  You want an obtainable for your class. The second nine weeks the point goal lowers, and continues to lower each nine weeks as students become more and more familiar with your expectations. For the first nine weeks, our 4th graders could receive 12 or less points.....if they received more they did not get invited to our WACky party. Throughout the year the teachers really talk up the WACky parties.  They truly are a big deal!

The four parties are planned at the beginning of the year by all the 4th grade teachers...this is what they look like in our school this year (sometimes they change depending on our mood or what is popular):
First 9 weeks: Movie Party!! Students bring pillows and blankets and lay on the gym floor to watch a movie on the big screen projector! The teachers provide movie theater popcorn (seriously, it really is movie theater! Our local theater gave us a donation!) and drinks.
Second 9 weeks: A party that is 'snow much fun!'. We have relays in the gym and a milk and cookie snack after! This year's relays included: build your own snowman, winter clothes relay (students put on layer after layer and race!), snowball toss, P.E. skooter 'sledding', sock and wax paper ice skating in the halls.
Third 9 weeks: A bowling party at our local bowling alley! This is the only party where students need to pay a little. Our local lane, Kingspin Bowl, is really, really awesome and makes our shoe rental cheap for students....They also stock the snack bar so students can purchase goodies-the popcorn and Mountain Dew are always big sellers!
Fourth 9 weeks: Ice Cream Sunday Field Day! Teachers provide the ice cream and allllllllll the toppings a sweet, little (maybe not so little by the end of the year) 4th grader could ever need. We also play field games. There is a giant parachute involved, spray paint twister, the game ships and sailors (google it! your kids will love it!) and any other games we come up with. Don't forget the playground equipment!

 

How do you help students meet behavior and work expections?  How do you motivate students?? This has been working well for us for as long as I can remember.  It is such a big "fourth grade deal" that students in second and third grade start talking about it and asking us questions for when they are in fourth grade. It is a very big motivator for our students and oh, so much for us to see them look forward to it!

Teacher Valentine's!

When we were little, Valentine's Day seemed like a bigger deal than it is today. We remember making mailboxes out of construction paper, glitter, and cereal boxes. Today, it seems a little different in our classrooms (We blame testing!). Granted-we do teacher fourth grade, so I am sure that is part of it.
Do you celebrate this holiday in your classroom?

We decided to make a product to allow teachers to have fun on this cute little holiday. Trust us, these Teacher Valentines are fun! There are 12 different Valentines for you to choose from. These Valentine's are promised to be stress-free and require little prep time, unlike other Valentine's we have passed out before. Print~Cut~Sign~and Attach to a goody (if you do that kind of thing). 

Some of the ideas we have included are Pencils, Candy, Goldfish, Swedish Fish, Lucky Charms, Pretzels, anything with the word Pop in it (Soda Pop~Ring Pop~Pop Rocks~Popcorn), honestly, the possibilities are endless!

These Valentine's include something fun: the option of QR Codes. What student doesn't love QR Codes?! There are9 different 'goodies' to give with the QR Codes including....

Here are the 'goodies' you can give if you use the QR code Valentine's

 As a teacher, we know how expensive little holidays can be! Hopefully, these QR Code Valentines will help out your wallet.

Look at the other fun things we have included:

Each Valentine has a tip page so you can have an idea of what time of treat to attach. Like I said before, little holidays really add up fast! Don't feel obligated to give something out to your students. Sometimes, a small note on a cute tag can mean more! 

This product will be $1 (that means you save $1.50!!!!)  January 11, 12, and 13th to help you prepare for the day of love.  Don't miss out! 
Be sure to follow Teacher Deals and Dollar Steals blog to see what other fabulous things will be $1 this month! You can also follow them on Facebook!

Let the Second Nine Weeks Begin!

Our first nine weeks has come to an end, and we are ready for what the second nine weeks will bring.  We have tried something new this year.  We decided to group our students and to switch groups for both math and language arts.  We were a little nervous about it because it was something new for both of us, but it has been a HUGE success!  We are able to give students what they need and better individualize instruction.  We are going to tweak a few things for the second nine week period and keep moving forward.  Now that we have tried it, I wouldn't want to do it any other way.  

We had our parent teacher conferences and discussed switching with our parents as well and they were all on board and said the students were all very positive about it.  Don't you love it when good ideas come together full circle?  Speaking of good ideas...check out these adorable photos.  For our conferences this year, we had our students make a replica of themselves and we taped them to their chair at conferences.  They were absolutely adorable and were a surprise for each parent walking in!

I hope your year has been as successful as ours has been!   Keep up the good work and remember to help your fellow teachers.  New studies are showing our profession is the third most stressful.  Be sure to lift one another up and don't forget ALWAYS to take care of yourself!

Fall Learning Fun

It is finally fall! Can you feel it? Are your students excited/crazy/wild/hyper due to the change in the weather?  Do you love having recess duty (only when it's nice outside!), have you tasted or smelled the pumpkin flavored anything that seems to be everywhere you turn?  Well, we have answered answered yes to all of the questions.

It isn't fall without cute decorations, right?!

In honor of this beautiful season we have created print-and-go pages to assess your students in both Math and ELA. There is a packet perfect for grades 1-2 and another great for 3-4. Each is on SALE for $1 for the next three days! 



The Fall Learning Fun packet for grades 1 & 2 includes skills sheets with a cutesy fall and Thanksgiving theme. Students will work on sight words, word families, vowel sounds, nouns, alphabetical order, parts of speech, contractions, fact/opinion, main idea, sequencing, even/odd, fact families, calendar math, expanded form, ten more/ten less, making ten, identifying coins,
adding, and number ordering.

The Fall Learning Fun packet for grades 3 & 4 includes skill sheets with the same fall and Thanksgiving theme. Skills include vowel sounds, alphabetical order, parts of speech, types of literature, silent letters, addition, subtraction with regrouping, five multiplication bump games, rounding, syllables, reading a recipe, synonyms, antonyms, writing, number values, and place value. No wasted pages! The skills are great for third and fourth grade students and can even be used for I-Read 3 practice!

We hope you have lovely fall weather every time you have recess duty! We also hope you love our Fall Learning Fun Packets! Head to our TPT store (Two Teacher Friends) to get them while they are only $1! Be sure to check the Teacher Deals and Dollar Steals page for more great products from some of our teacher friends!





    

   Happy Fall!     Love,
        Your Two Teacher Friends

It is a month into school and we are still loving the way we pass out pencils. In past school years there has been a problem with students' pencils always breaking, or being los,t or not having any sharp pencils---at all!! (We are still trying to figure out how there are just no pencils in a desk...really, guys?!)

Over the summer, Memaw, Mrs. Patterson's Grandma, helped us sew 68 pencils bags. All the bags were made out of a thick fabric~we used duck cloth. It was very inexpensive at Jo-Anne's Fabric. We even got it on sale! We used ribbon from Walmart to keep the pencils from falling out, and to make it look a little cuter! Students simply tuck the top into the ribbon to shut the bag. No buttons, no snaps, easy to use!

Memaw sewing the bags!

Each child received their own bag with their cubby number on it (we used a black paint pen to paint the numbers on). Each bag holds 8 sharpened pencils. On Friday students turn in their pencil bags. The dull/broken pencils get replaced with new, freshly sharpened pencils. On Monday the bags are returned to students ready to go.

(Don't worry, this is no more 'extra' for the teacher! We have students sharpen pencils all week long, in the morning, and after school before they head to the bus. Student helpers fill and replace the pencils in the bag too.)

Sharp pencils, ready to be bagged!

Our student helpers can easily grab pencils that need to be sharpened

Students are not allowed to take these bags home. They stay at school All. The. Time. When our student helpers check pencils Friday afternoon they are making sure each bag has 8 pencils. If it does not, the owner of the bag gets an X by their name. If it does have all 8 pencils (even if it is just a small bit or broken) the owner gets a check mark by their name. After one month of checking pencils all students with all check marks will get a pencil/piece of candy/free time at computer lab/stickers/homework pass or anything the teachers want to pass out!






Here is how our bags look. We love them. Our students love them. It's a beautiful thing. In all, we spent $33 on fabric and ribbon. Since there are 2 of us that means $16.50 each!  #thrifty

Pencil bags in use

A Sequencing Review

It is day #2!

We are loving our newly decorated classrooms, and our students! We have decided to change things up this year and rotate students according to level to better accommodate our ESL students. To go along with reviewing, reviewing, reviewing during the start of school we are offering our Sequencing Review pages for $1 for the next 3 days. (that is a savings of $2.50!)


This Sequencing Review is perfect for primary grades. It includes sequencing posters, hidden words, cut/pasting in order, reading passages to sequence, picture sorting, and sequencing short films.

The first story in our Reading Street books is an excerpt from Because of Winn Dixie. This sequencing review has a reading passage to go along with the story. In our classrooms this week we will be using this to review. Even though your Two Teacher Friends teach 4th grade, this is a great review to start the year off. It is excellent to use as a teaching tool to see where each child stands. The sheets included can be taken as a formal or informal assessments and students have fun completing them.

Another part of this Sequencing Review packet our students loooove (they think it is so fun) is the short film sequencing pages. We have included 2 different Pixar short films for students to watch and put into sequence order. The best part of it is they are short and sweet. Long enough to assess your students, yet short enough to keep all students interested.
Hop on over to our TPT store to grab our Sequencing Review packet for primary grades.

Happy Back To School!