This summer I tried  Mystery Questions to change things up a bit. The kids really got into it!   Here's how we did it. I wrote some questions about a read aloud book on index cards and placed each in an envelope. I had a small group (no more then 5 students) so there was an envelope/question for each of them. All the envelopes went into a paper sack. I enticed them by telling them about the Mystery sack before reading the book. Immediately after reading the book, we talked a little about what happened in the story, then passed around the sack. Each student pulled out an envelo ..read more

My favorite theme for summer school/Extended School Year is CAMPING.  There's nothing better, it is a natural for incorporating outdoor activities when the weather allows and it's just plain fun!  I have done it in the past with more flair and you can see that here. This summer I didn't try to do tents. We had quite a few kids with wheelchairs, gait walkers and so forth and didn't want to have tents unless ALL could enjoy and participate. I saw a cool idea that would have worked for us at Our Small-Town Idaho Life.  I didn't get around to getting it together THIS time, maybe n ..read more

I have really dropped the ball on this blog! Each weekend I consider writing a post and always find something else to do. I haven't posted since September!  But I have something new to talk about.....I am teaching ESY (AKA summer school). It has been pretty fun, my class has a variety of disabilities and therefore, a variety of skill levels. It makes life interesting. This week we focused on the 4th of July. We did a fun and easy art project. The materials you will need: Paints- red, white and blue Toilet Paper rolls (one for each color of paint) Scissors Glue Glitter Paper plat ..read more

Time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching! ONE I'll begin with our September bulletin board. The month letters are from Doodle Bugs herself! You can find them in her TPT store here. TWO We also used Doodle Bug's "I love Pete" packet. The students all love Pete the Cat and they did a great job. THREE One more activity by Kacey from the Pete packet. More colors are there, we were having a "missing letters" issue. FOUR The week was finished off with the first play of the season at Valley Performing Arts.  Great story! The actors did a wonderful job as usual. T ..read more

We have been in school four weeks....FOUR! It's hard to get into a routine and THE SCHEDULE (evil, evil, evil thing) keeps changing. There is also the required TESTING. But now it seems to be settling and I spent today preparing for next week and feeling like those lessons might really happen. I also am considering rearranging parts of the room. So I better share my tour BEFORE that happens! Once upon a time I had a self contained classroom, my students were not part of their peer group often, they were happy enough and didn't know what they were missing. My schedule was pretty straight for ..read more

OH NO! Vacation is almost over.... I picked up my school keys yesterday.... felt a little panic creep into my thoughts..... It's time to link with Doodle Bugs Teaching! The place where the curriculum is organized and every teacher knows what they are doing, I need to live in that dream world for a little while. Here we go! My five for Friday consists mostly of things I did when I visited family in the lower 48. ONE While in Oklahoma we visited the Tiger Safari Park in Tuttle! It is an awesome place! I highly recommend it to anyone loving animal parks. We were allowe ..read more

Summer is going way too fast! The weeks are just flying by, I really thought I would have lots of those "do nothing" days...but nope. ONE My daughter and I are going "outside" next week! In Alaskan speak this means we are leaving the state. It took me awhile to figure out what people were talking about when they would say that. It always cracked me up. Another way to refer to leaving is "going to the lower 48". I'm happy to not be traveling alone this time. My daughter hasn't seen our family for a few years. The trip there and back will be more fun with company. TWO I am ..read more

Let's face it....I am "old School" about many things. Inventive spelling has  always had a "wrongness" to me until.... I watched my 5 year old grandson writing up a storm using inventive spelling. I knew he wouldn't be writing that much if he was worrying about how to spell each word, so I decided to take a closer look at it. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ "I love you mommy and Elizabeth" I am a visual speller...words look "right" or they don't!  None of those spelling rules with their exceptions. There are too many exceptions for me to believe in using those rules. I work ..read more

I'm actually linking on Monday for the Five for Friday...it took me awhile to come out of the zone my brain was in last week! So join us and link with Doodle Bugs Teaching. First, our school district provides a week of classes for us after school is out and before we begin each year. It is pretty awesome! We can attend classes without making sub plans, gain knowledge and earn university credits (for a fee of course). I took a class about behavior management the first 2 days. We received our own copy of  The Tough Kid Book, wrote our classroom behavior plan with help from ..read more

This week we put our classrooms to bed. I had it pretty easy because I DIDN'T HAVE TO MOVE! Which is so awesome. I spent some extra time cleaning and reorganizing my "task" library. It needed it, everything was out of order, many pieces were missing and there were some folder tasks that I didn't know why we had, so they were tossed. It felt GOOD. I would like to set up a way to label each item. This way a teacher assistant could help put them away and it would be clear where they should go. I have them filed into skills with all the math folders together, the reading tog ..read more