$2 for B2S!

Well, summer has flown by and we are getting ready to go Back to School!!!!  Our teacher workshops begin this Wednesday and Thursday and our kiddos join us next Tuesday, September 8th!!  And to share our excitement with all our teacher friends, we have made EVERYTHING in our store $2!!!! $2 to celebrate back 2 school!! visit our TPT Store to check out all our resources!! TODAY ONLY!!!  Have you gone back to school yet? 

Summer PD Book Report: "How to Teach Thinking Skills Within the Common Core"

Let's be honest--is there any better way to stick some PD in this summer than by laying in the sand and reading a book of your choice? Probably not. Although I attained a less than admirable sun burn that covered 85% of my body the other day, the real winner was still me for discovering, reading, and finding good use for a new favorite book of mine--How to Teach Thinking Skills With the Common Core.

Toward the end of the school year, I began to ask myself those age-old educator's reflection questions in order to help me choose some books to read over the summer. The goal, of course, was to be able to gain more knowledge to drive my instruction and planning for the following year. While I feel as though I have a firm grip on reader's workshop (newly implemented this year), math workshop, management, the inclusion model, etc. there are still things I am willing to admit I need to know. I have lost count of the number of days I have driven home from work beating myself up over one child not "getting it" or an 80 second disconnect I had with others during small group instruction. It was not until I found this book that I could even pinpoint one major area I was not exploring enough of with my students--critical thinking.

I am well aware all of our students are supposed to have a solid foundation of higher-order thinking skills in order to meet the rigorous demands of changing state curriculums and assessments. Assessments that will one day (as of now) determine their college and career opportunities. What I was not entirely convinced of was just how much brain-training would need to go into attaining these critical thinking skills. In other words, yes, in schools teachers must explicitly teach students how to think before expecting them to think. Add that to high ESL populations, Title I, Special Needs, Basic Skills, teacher collaboration, demands of your district, curriculum changes, PARCC....suddenly you are asking yourself things like, "Hmm..If I only eat canned soup for x years, will I have enough money to move and never work again?"

Until you read this book. Authors Bellanca, Fogarty, and Pete have made it so simple for teachers to hit the ground running with teaching thinking skills to students. I actually read all 186 pages thoroughly in about 2 hours (sans sunscreen...woops) giving me enough time to post-it, highlight, and annotate. The book is organized very effectively--one unit for each thinking area educators should teach to their students, otherwise known as the 7 Cs (they sure know their way into our hearts).

1) Critical Thinking--Analyze, Evaluate, Problem Solve
2) Creative Thinking--Generate, Associate, Hypothesize
3) Complex Thinking--Clarify, Interpret, Determine
4) Comprehensive Thinking--Understand, Infer, Compare and Contrast
5) Collaborate Thinking--Explain, Develop, Decide
6) Communicative Thinking--Reason, Connect, Represent
7) Cognitive Transfer--Synthesize, Generalize, Apply

It seems like a lot, but let me tell you. This is a short, quick, easy read and very beneficial. The authors organize the information and teaching strategies so clearly. Haven't you seen all of those words before, anyway?! Problem Solving. Oh! Problem Solving! We do that in math! Yup...but you coouuullllddd explicitly teach it through acronyms, song, and concrete objects first to ensure students acquire the skill with accuracy and finesse. It's pretty simple--the more you talk to them with familiar words, objects, and situations, the more successfully you train a part of their brain that they'll need to use later.

My favorite part of this book is definitely the road map given for each skill. There are variations of explicit teaching lessons, a walk through of integrating the skill into a content lesson, and a CCSS performance task lesson. I especially adore these "Look-Fors and Sound Bites" tables:

Wow, I did not expect to write this much at all--sorry everyone. Long story short, this book was probably one of the best I've read since I began teaching. I  am so excited to incorporate a short "Thinking Skills" period into my classroom schedule in September (I have a few open blocks). I'm going to attempt to use this book to drive instruction and truly teach my students how they are going to need to use their brains throughout the year.

So after a long day at the beach....My skin- 0, My students- 100!

Post any questions or share your favorite PD reads below!

KNJ Hits Wheel of Fortune *Teacher's Week* !

About a month ago, KNJ participated in Two Truths and a Lie hosted by Teach Talk Inspire. It was hard to come up with a lie to trick you all, but we did it! We had so much fun getting to know our fellow bloggers, and we hope you had fun getting to know us! Listed in our three facts there was indeed a lie. But while many of our followers thought it was this...

2. One of us will be auditioning for Wheel of Fortune.

...that was actually true! In fact, I was even selected after the audition process and got the chance to fly out to L.A. and be on the show last week! What.a.surreal.experience. One I could never forget. Let me tell you a bit about it...

The Audition

I will go on the nerd record here, and say that being on Wheel of Fortune has been a lifelong (26 year) dream of mine. I dreamed about Wheel of Fortune like most young girls dreamed about their wedding day. Since the original Nintendo, I became fascinated by the game, and how I could put letters together and create words. It also gave me a leg up when kids started playing Hangman at school. And I'm there all like, "Is this a prize puzzle?!" Anyway...

I applied online about once a year and even followed the Wheelmobile to Atlantic City, NJ about two years ago. At the Wheelmobile events, there are over 1,000 people and you have to just hope, pray, and cross your fingers and toes that your name will be called. Long story short, that was not my time to shine. Then, in early June I received an e-mail to attend an invite-only audition in New York City. Naturally, I freaked out with excitement, but I didn't want to get my hopes up. For all I knew there would be 1,000 people there again. Until there wasn't. There were only FIFTY. I could see my chances of actually being chosen as a contestant getting stronger and stronger.

The audition process was pretty simple. There was a large electronic puzzle board hanging in the front of the ballroom of the Marriot Hotel and when your name was called you had to jump up and quickly guess a letter. If you wanted, you could even solve. My competitiveness and excitement were rapidly rising until I finally was chosen. I guessed a letter, and solved-- PACIFIC ISLAND PARADISE. I was nearly drenched in my own sweat at this point. A perfect concoction of joy and nervousness was mixing up and literally coming out of my pores.

Next, there was a 5 minute paper quiz of unfinished puzzles to complete. After they were graded, 25 people were asked to leave and 25 people had the opportunity to stay and play some more. Guess who got to stay?! After the audition we were told that if we were chosen for the contestant pool we would receive a letter in two weeks.

On the FOURTEENTH DAY I received a letter in the mailbox with the Wheel of Fortune logo on it from Culver City ,California. You could only imagine what I looked like...

TAPING DAY!

Once you are chosen to be in the contestant pool, you could be on the list for up to 18 months. Lucky for me, I got my taping date one week after the initial letter. I was so relieved I did not have to wait in anticipation for over a year. I had to be in LA on July 16th to tape for Teacher's Week which was just the icing on top of the cake. This was the version of the game I truly did want to play, although I wouldn't have been picky.

When I tell you this is a once-in-a-lifetime, completely surreal experience, I truly mean it. It was the most exhilarating 22 minutes of my life, and entirely different from playing at home. They had told us that repeatedly since the early audition process, but I didn't truly believe it until I was there. You have to pay attention to so many things (unused letter board, scoreboard, timer, wheel, etc.) that you almost forget the purpose is to solve puzzles. I was also in the red spot directly next to Pat Sajak which added some gruesome pressure--but lots of camera time ;) .

The producers select the three people who will be playing together. There are 6 tapings in a day. Each group of three randomly selects a ball with your taping number on it--we were 4, which happened to be my lucky number AND the number of the overhead bin where I stored my carry-on luggage. I was golden. Then, each contestant randomly chooses another numbered dice which determines your spot in the game (red, yellow, or blue). Then, hours are dedicated to practice spinning, filming promos for your local news stations, makeup, going over rules, and more! We even got to meet Vanna behind the scenes--what a beauty! Let me tell you, the hours spent to practice spinning were without a doubt NECESSARY. My arms aren't made out of spaghetti or anything, but this thing was HEAVY. Like 2,400 pounds heavy. No simple flick-of-the-wrist was getting this wheel to spin.

The game FLEW by, but was absolutely incredible. One of the most unexpected surprises was how quickly all 18 of us contestants became instant friends. Since we spent so many hours together before taping, we all got to know each other so quickly. Being that we were taping for Teacher's Week, we were also all educators from all over the country sharing a love for our jobs, and also a love for this silly game we had all been playing since we were children. Also, as everyone knows, teachers are the best Wheel players. We all knew we were going to do fantastic, and I could not get over the outpouring of love and cheer we all had for each other. Every single person genuinely wanted everyone to do well. We got to sit in the audience and cheer on all of our new friends before it was our turn, which doubled as last minute practice.

While I'm in a sort of social media confidentiality agreement and can't spill the beans about how I did, I can tell you that my show will air on Thursday, September 17th during Teacher's Week. Every game from Monday-Friday is going to be fantastic and worth watching so make sure you tune in! I was even able to give a little shout out to my Robert Gordon School of Roselle Park, NJ and a little KNJ/TeachersPayTeachers semi-shout-out (we couldn't use business names).

I highly suggested applying and going through the audition process one day. It was an unbelievable experience and WHEEL LOVES TEACHERS!

My beautiful momma and I having celebratory dinner and vino. (I had a nametag and everything!)

 

 

 

 

Two Truths and a Lie part II

Well, it is time for the grand reveal!!! We had so much fun reading everyone's comments with their guesses for us!! And getting to know so many blogging colleagues was just awesome.  Incredibly, no one guessed correctly!  However, we appreciate all the participation and have randomly selected a winner to choose something from our TPT store!  But first...

#3 ~ K, N, & J in fact grew up in the same area.  But we didn't meet each other until we had the luck to work together in the same school!  We have clearly become great friends and we love working together every day.  We also hang out on weekends and celebrate everything in our lives together - we're making up for all that lost time from when we were growing up!!

#2 ~ N actually auditioned for Wheel of Fortune just YESTERDAY!!!! [more on that in a future blog post!!!]

#1 ~ Sadly, between the 3 of us we have not made it to 10 European countries.  I think we've covered about 3 or 4!!!


Thank you guys so much for participating! Check back again and please make sure to follow us on Instagram! (it's much more instant than blogging and we seem to keep up with that a bit better!)

Liveloveserveteach please email us at knjkreations@gmail.com with an item of your choice from our KNJ tpt Store and we will email it to you! :) 

Happy Friday, everyone!! After today, we have 5 days left of school here in HOT New Jersey before summer officially begins!!!

<3
KNJ

Tell all Tuesday

We are linking up with Teach Talk Inspire and joining her summer linky party on this Tell all Tuesday to bring you Two Truths and a Lie!!! We've been busy today as we've also joined up with other bloggers on summer reading ~ Check out what professional reading we've been doing over on our instagram @knjkreations

This is such an awesome way to get to know our fellow bloggers! I'm going to tell you 2 facts about us and 1 lie.  If any of our followers can guess the lie - we will choose a winner to win an item from our TPT Store!!!

Here goes!!!

1. Between the three of us, we've hit 10 countries in Europe.
2. One of us will be auditioning for Wheel of Fortune.
3. We all grew up in the same area but didn't meet until we taught together!

So excited to blog hop to learn about all our fellow teachers!! 

Five for Friday!

We are joining up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Friday Linky Party!! 

First of all….can you believe - 

Well…it already is May.  We just have to get thru May and June and then we are outttttt for summerrrrrrrrrr!!!! And actually April 30th is one of my favorite dates because I can use the cutie JT to say it's gonna be MAY! ha!!!!

I loved sharing #teachersshare 10 things about on us on our Instagram page (@knjkreations) earlier this week!  And I found the cutest picture of the 3 of us from Lisa's wedding over at Sparkling in Self Contained.  

Here we have the fabulous Natalie of KNJ in action teaching Improper Fractions --> Mixed Numbers!  I was lucky enough today to jump in and teach them Mixed Numbers --> Improper Fractions as she and her coteacher got called down for a meeting.  And no, I did NOT get a snapshot of myself today!

The entire school participated in a Mission: Possible kindness project and we made a bulletin board with every student's hand with a message of kindness.  Here is a student from Kristen's of KNJ fourth grade class.  They really do know!! 

Totally not teacher related but while I'm here at work my baby is with his amazing godmother at the park enjoying this FINALLY oh so beautiful day.  I just had to share him with all our teacher friends!!!

Why don't you head on over to Sparkling in Self Contained and visit Lisa & Becka…i know they couldn't wait to blog their Five for Friday, either!!! 

Hope everyone has a Fabulous Friday!!!!

#iteach345 Stress Free Giveaway!

We are joining #iteach345 to give you some helpful end of year, stress free tips…and a GIVEAWAY to make the EOY a bit stress free too with an end of year activity that can be used in just about any grade!!! We all know how hectic and exhausting the end of the school year can be!  Heck, we are already counting down the days and it's only still April!!! (We go until JUNE!!!!!). 

Here are a few tips that help us survive!!! 

K doesn't really drink coffee but N and J - well…we basically survive on iced coffee!!!! to make it just a wee bit healthier i've weaned from half and half to skim milk and the transition hasn't been too bad!!! (Remember, almost summer!!!!)

BE. PREPARED. 
it is soooo easy to start to slack and let lessons go towards the end of the year.  We are just as burnt out as the students are! But being prepared helps keep you stress-free.  I try to leave a nice, neat pile in the middle of my desk with the materials needed for the next day. This way, if it's a surprisingly warm day it's easier to call out and go to the beach since everything is ready!!! I can come in a few minutes later since everything is prepared for the day and ready to go!! 
*Also, watching fun classic Disney movies (like The Lion King) is always a way to destress!!!

and finally, simply: 

We do what we do because we love it.  Sometimes it is really hard. Sometimes really stressful. Some days you cry…most we laugh.  But in the end we do it for the passion and love for our "kids"…

And here to relieve some stress!! Enter to win this Classroom Decor pack to have you just one step closer to being prepared for the BEGINNING of the school year!!!! Just share our link to your twitter, Facebook, or Instagram (@knjkreations) with the hashtag #iteach345…copy it in the comments below…and give us your email for a chance to win!!!!

Classroom Decor Pack

Keep on Teachin'!

we're baaaaack!!!

Hello friends!!
Can you say, "It's been a while"?!!!! I just realized that our last blog post was back in FEBRUARY!!! Well, needless to say the school year was super hectic for all of us.  Changes in evaluations and teaching standards had us revamping so many of our lessons and kept us super busy.  Things are still crazy and expectations are HIGH! for both teachers AND students!   Here in NJ, teachers are trying to prep for the PARCC exam and meet all the common core standards in classrooms to really prepare the kiddos.  Sometimes we've found that our math textbooks don't quite reach the goals of the standard.  So while we are continuing to give the "chapter tests", we are also trying assessments directed at the standard.  This way, we can see if the students really do understand the standard and if THEY know what they are expected to know.  It's a quick, to the point assessment with a writing to explain, too!! Here is an assessment for 5th grade OA.A.1.

5.OA.A.1

Check it out, let us know what you think. (it's FREE!!!!) and please give us some feedback?  Would you use something like this for each standard in your classroom?  Would you like to see this for other grades?


In the meantime, its back to lesson planning for K & N…for J - I'm back to working on assessments and working on being a new mommy!! Just look at this peanut!

Snow? What snow?! **GIVEAWAY**

Well, hello there! Boy, has it been a while!  Today is President's Day and our 4 day weekend turned into a 5 day weekend because of……can you guess???…..SNOW!  

We are covered in many inches of snow and have used up 5 of our snow days already.  I feel like we haven't had a full week of teaching in all of 2014!! Here we are wanting to teach and needing to get our little crew ready for state testing in MAY (so much closer than you think!) and it seems like we can't get started.  Of course, we start working hard in September but once January comes around we're asking ourselves: What have we not gotten to yet?  But we just haven't been able to get there! Even our beaches are snow covered - check out me and Mr. B going for a stroll on the beach - what made me think it could be warmer there?! (aaah wishful thinking)

even our furry friends are seeking comfort and warmth in our jackets!!!!

Anyway!!! with all our snow days we've been able to create our latest: SNOW DAY MULTIPLICATION for 4th grade!

You'll find word problems and task cards that ask students to estimate, use arrays, use area models, and solve using both the expanded algorithm and the standard algorithm!!! perfect for when we get back to school after snow!! Can you believe we are supposed to get MORE SNOW tomorrow?! If we have another snow day, the KNJ teachers are going to go CRAZYYYYY!!!!

Are you interested in winning our Snow Day Multiplication pack?  There are 80 problems in the whole pack!  If we have at least 10 entries, we will give it away to a lucky winner.  But please share with us - have YOU had snow? or are you somewhere warm…and sunny…with palm trees…driving with open windows…oh, summer - where art thou?!

A Peek Into My Classroom & A Sale!

Well now that we have been back at school for a month (exactly a month today!) I finally got around to taking some pictures of things in my classroom to share. I also have lots of cute project pictures to put up in upcoming blog posts, so be sure to check back soon :) 

Here is one view of my classroom! This was the day before the kids started, pretty late in the afternoon after setting it all up. It's pretty shadowy, but what I love about my room is its bright yellow color. it's so cheery! 

Here are some other things I love in my classroom. This is our Goal Board. I created this myself! We come up with a goal, and each time we accomplish it, the football moves 10 yards. When we reach the goal, we earn the reward. As you can see, we are almost at our goal of a no homework night for everyone bringing in all parts of their homework! 

Keeping with the football theme, this is a Writing Goals chart I made. These are some goals we are starting off with, and I have about 20 other sheets of interchangeable goals.  Each child has a football clip to attach to their goal. They have a sheet they color in when they show me progress towards their goal also. 

One last thing to share is our behavior board. We have a classroom number that we move up for excellent class behavior and listening, and that can move down for not following directions, being too noisy, etc. It starts at 10 each day. We move 1 space for being above an 8 and 2 spaces for being above a 10. They can also earn bonus spaces for good behavior during drills or assemblies.  There are different milestones to earn rewards! 

I have more pictures I will post soon! Thanks for taking a look around :) 

Also, check out our Teachers Pay Teachers store for our Novel Unit Sale. All of our novel units are on sale for $6.00. Click on the link to visit our store! 

KNJ Kreations TPT Store

Full Swing and a Giveaway!

Fall is officially here (although in Jersey we are experiencing Aug-tober with this heat!!!) and school is officially in full swing!  The KNJ team has just been Educating, Educating, Educating, - OH! AND...working around crazy schedules like Back to School Night, Picture Day, the Zumba assembly (super fun!), the book fair.....etc.  It's always something at school, isn't it?  We haven't blogged in a while because of the back to school routine but now that everything is back in routine we'll be back to blogging!! Look out in the next few weeks as we blog pics of our classrooms and about some things going on in our rooms!  And since fall is here, check out this cute 3rd/4th grade activity to practice multiplication and division fact families!!  Comment below and one lucky winner will win our Candy Corn Fact Families product!!! 

Candy Corn Fact Families

Have a great weekend!!

last minute...

Well, it is Labor Day today but it doesn't really feel like a holiday! Tomorrow we have our last chance to make sure our classrooms are ready for B2S next Monday and i got NO sleep thinking of all the last minute details.  

• Shoot! I never numbered their baskets!...
• Should I re-make my VOICES (from 6+1 Traits of Writing) mini posters to match my "ice cream colors" theme?....
• OH NO! i need to get recipe cards for our "Recipe to Success" bulletin board....
• BULLETIN BOARD! WE STILL DIDN'T DO OUR 4TH GRADE BULLETIN BOARD!!!!...
• i have two horseshoe tables - and i still haven't decided which one i'm going to use as my "spot" (read THIS about how we got rid of our desks....what the @*&# were we thinking????)
• must finish painting the bookshelf (i'll post before & after pics after i the husband finishes it!)
• WHEN can i do this awesome Picture of the Day that Jen Jones from Hello Literacy does? i really think it'll help students with so many reading skills!
• i still have nowhere to put my calendar!!....is that realllllllly necessary?!

yikes...my list is a liiiiitle longer than i realized and i am about to go into panic mode!

but before i go, i'm hoping i'm not the only one that still has a "TO-DO" list before going back to school. (or are you back and realized you STILL have a list!?) so to maybe give you a little help, here is a FREEBIE of the numbers i will be using for each student's basket.  I will have 22 4th graders in my class this year but i numbered up to 36 - i really hope you don't have more than 36 students! You can also use the numbers for calendar or for whatever you choose.  but PLEASEEEEE tell me i'm not the only one struggling wiht last minute back to school stuff!! 

Click Here for numbers!

AND NOW....off to make pancakes then go to the outlets to maybe buy some shoes!!! 

^Who said i'm procrastinating.....^