New Blogging Friends

I got to travel to California for my spring break and had such a fabulous time taking my two little kids to Disneyland for the first time! It was an incredible trip and I'm so sad that it's already over. 

While in Anaheim, I got to meet up with one of our sweet blog followers, Stacey from Ray of Kindergarten Sunshine. 

Stacey lives in Anaheim and teaches kindergarten at one of the inner city schools in LA. When she heard I was visiting the area, she invited me out to get some ice cream. We went to Joe's Italian Ice and had a wonderful time and ate some yummy galati. We spent the night talking about teaching, blogging, and Teachers Pay Teachers. We also found out we have a lot in common and continued talking about babies, church, and even fun things like cute iPhone covers. 

(This cute girl let us try a bunch of the yummy flavors and then came out to take our picture.)

I just love the blogging world and love how it connects teachers from different parts of the country. Learning about different teaching styles, sharing curriculum ideas, and talking about student success is such a wonderful part of this teacher-blogging world and I'm so happy that I can be a part of it!! 

(This picture is just too cute for me not to share. This is my adorable, almost-3-year-old, Camden. He LOVED Disneyland... can you tell?!)

Now... where should I vacation next?

;)

Writing Conferences

So, my sweet friend Carmen asked if I had blogged about my writing conferences and I realized that I NEEDED to do that! So, this one is for you, Carmen!


Because I do Daily 5, I like to check their writing folders once a week and have a writing conference with my students. You might do something like this for writer's workshop.  I'm doing guided reading during Daily 5, so I don't have writing conferences right then. I have writing conferences during their morning work (which is journals in my classroom), I meet with 5 students each day (2 minutes each).  I like to do it QUICK and make their writing conference more about celebrating their writing than telling them what to work on.

I use this form {click the picture to download}:

And I keep them in {this} binder:

Here's a pretend example of what the sheet looks like:

So.. basically my students write during work on writing and when they are finished, they put their finished page in the side of their 2-pocket folder that says "finished" (then they start a new one).  If the bell rings before they finish, they stick it in the side pocket that says "unfinished".  

Easy-Peasy-Lemon-Squeezy! When I'm ready to have a writing conference with them, I call them to my back table during morning work and I quickly read their pages.  I remind them what goal they should have been working on and I make a new goal with them. I ALWAYS celebrate lots and lots. I really want to build confident writers!

Field Trip {Writing}

Yep! This is happening.... tomorrow! We are going on a field trip to a children's museum here in Salt Lake.

Yep. That's our schedule tomorrow!  :)

My students are *BEYOND* excited. :)  I know that when we get back to school tomorrow afternoon, they will want to tell me all about their favorite part... so I made this little writing activity.

This writing activity will be in the shape of a bus when you're all done!

There are 6 different writing inserts and each come with primary (handwriting) lines and regular lines.

Head over to my TpT store and snag this up for your next field trip! :)

iPad Tip - Guided Access

One of my co-workers taught me an iPad trick that has been SUPER helpful! It's called 'Guided Access' and prevents your students from exiting the educational app you want them to work on and going into other non-education apps. 

Here's how it works:

This has been extreeeeemely helpful when letting my toddler play on my iPad and will also be very helpful for my students. My personal iPad is my classroom iPad, so I really don't want my students going into all my things or trying to buy something from my Amazon Wishlist (...or do I?!). 

Did you already know about Guided Access or is this new information for you too?

{Check out our other iPad posts: here and here.}