Teacher Talk

New Year’s Writing Devotion

tcbooth — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 02:31:03 +0000

The Balanced Classroom

tcbooth — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 19:56:47 +0000

Hello Friends. I have started a new teaching blog title The Balanced Classroom. I will be posting and sharing my teaching ideas there. I will keep my writing blog with Word Press and leave Teacher Talk published without adding anything new to this site. Thank you to all who are following me and frequent Teacher Talk. I hope to see you at The Balanced Classroom. I am having a book give away for my first ten followers there.

Tagged: balanced classroom, book give away, new blog, third grade

My Cute Little iPods

tcbooth — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 20:34:20 +0000

I had a great first week of school. I’m tired of course, but really enjoyed my new third graders. As you know, my welcome bulletin board is decorated with iPods that have the children’s names displayed as my playlist. I stuck with this theme for one of my activities last week. We read the poem My Teacher Took My iPod by Ken Nesbitt. Then, the children colored their own iPods and glued their pictures on the screen. I displayed their iPods on the wall beside my welcome board. I have to say, they’re the cutest little iPods I’ve ever seen.

Tagged: first week of school, ipod theme, poems for kids, poetry in the classroom, third grade, welcome board

5 Stars

tcbooth — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:28:19 +0000

Click the Picture for Discussion Cards that are Common Core Aligned.

Tagged: children's book, common core third grade, freebie, reader's favortie, teaching with literature, time travel

And the Award Goes to…

tcbooth — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 22:40:01 +0000

Thank you to Holly at Krazyfunteaching for nominating me for The Versatile Blogger Award. I am so excited. This is my first award nomination. (Two posts in one day is another first.)

To accept this award I have to:

1. Thank the person(s) who nominated me. Done

2. Include a link back to who nominated me. Done

3. Include the award image in my blog post. Done

4. Tell 7 random facts about myself. Done

5. Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award. Done

6. When nominating, include a link to their page. Done

7. Let the nominees know by leaving a comment on their pages. Done

Seven Random Facts About Myself

1. I have two beautiful daughters. My older daughter is a second year college student majoring in sports medicine. My younger daughter is sports crazy. She will be an 8th grader this year.

2. I’m an avid reader of young adult novels. I have read several this summer.

3. I love to write stories. Along with reading young adult material, I write in that genre. I’m currently working on a young adult novel dedicated to my younger daughter.

4. I have two spoiled cats named Sasha and Sheldon. I have one very spoiled dog named Sammy. All three of my animals match in color. White with gold/orange.

5. Like Holly at krazyfunteaching, I watch the Real Housewives shows. Jersey Housewives are my favorites.

6. I am Pinterest obsessed. My favorite boards are the teaching ( of course) and recipes.

7. My favorite food is lasagna.

Here are the 15 Bloggers I am nominating:

Lessons with Laughter

Ginger Snaps

Yearn to Learn

My Life as a Third Grade Teacher

The Good Life

Groovy in 3rd Grade

Confessions of a Teachaholic

My Life as a Third Grade Teacher

Teaching with Hope

Science, Spelling & Skinny Iced Lattes

Third Grade Tidbits

The Kennedy Korral Blog

Teaching Third

Reading. Writing. Thinking. Sharing

Hoot Hoot Hooray!

Tagged: Versatile Blogger Award

Pinspired!

tcbooth — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 21:04:38 +0000

You gotta love Pinterest! The amount of pins on my teaching board far out number all of my others. So many of you talented creative teachers sharing ideas makes it difficult for me not to pin every teaching idea that I see. Your ideas have inspired me to be ultra creative in preparing to go back to school this year. Pins from kcrewkidsrock.blogspot and anotherdayinfirstgrade.blogspot inspired my back to school bulletin board and classroom decor ideas. Check out my pinspirations! I actually made the pom poms myself!

Genre Label Freebie

Tagged: back to school, genre label freebie, pinterest

Mission Organization

tcbooth — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 20:28:00 +0000

Thanks to The Clutter Free Classroom, my mission this year is to stay organized and neatly display items. My classroom has a blue wall, blue carpet, and green counter. So my theme will be those colors.

I found ribbon with my theme colors at Pat Catan’s, and strung it across the bulletin board to display my anchor charts. I got blue clothes pins at Wal-Mart and felt flower stickers to dress up the pins at The Dollar Tree .

I started a message center with materials found at the places above. The Dollar Tree had loads of materials in my colors. So, thanks Clutter Free Classroom, for all of the good ideas.

Along with my mission to get my classroom in order, I have started a binder system to organize professional materials. I am sharing the labels I’ve created for my binders. Click below to download.

Hop over to The Bomb-Diggity for Back to School Ideas.

Tagged: back to school, binder labels, classroom organization, freebie

Where Does the Time Go?

tcbooth — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:45:24 +0000

The count down is on. A little over three weeks until the new school year begins. The back to school time capsule activity that I am sharing is actually fresh in my mind.

It was just a few weeks ago that my children opened their envelopes, sealed from the first week of school, to reveal how they’ve changed.They held up their strings to see how much taller ( or not), they were. Marveled at how their cursive had improved, and giggled at how their tastes have changed. After seventeen years, this remains one of my all time favorite first week of school activities.

Tagged: back to school, first week activity, freebies, time capsule

Wonderful Marvelous Names

tcbooth — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 20:27:33 +0000

One of my summer tasks is to clean up my computer files and organize folders. I have two main categories of files, school stuff and writing stuff. Browsing through my beginning of the school year folder, I decided to it was time (July already) to share things that I have created for the start of the school year.

Reading Chrysanthemum to my children the first week of school has become a tradition. After the story, I will lead the children in making words activities using the letters in Chrysanthemum. The remainder of the week , the children get a chance to have their name in the spotlight. I am sharing the form I created for their time in the spotlight.

You can click on the image to download.

Tagged: beginning of year, chrysanthemum, first week of school, name activity

Read Your Way to the 1800′s!

tcbooth — Fri, 11 May 2012 23:55:54 +0000

This was the most amazing week at school. My passion as a teacher and a writer is to get children excited about books.

The reading committee chose to plan this year’s Right to Read Week theme around my book The Time Travel Storm.

I felt tremendously honored. I was the kick off for the week of Read Your Way to the 1800′s. I read my book to each grade level and displayed the pictures on the screen using a power point. I also talked to the children about writing. I can’t even express the feeling of seeing the children so excited. The school wide goal was to read 5,000 books by the end of Friday. As of Thursday, the total was over 7,000!.

We also had two guest readers dressed like women in the 1800′s. They read stories set in that time period as well. The children heard musicians play music on instruments used in the 1800′s. The high school drama club performed a skit of my book. I had tears in my eyes watching one of my former third grade students play the part of the schoolmaster from my story.

The children had fun and read lots of books! What an awesome week!

Compare school then and now.


: One room school house created by our talented art teacher to keep track of the books read.

Tagged: 1800's theme, children's book, Right to Read, third grade