Happy 4th and Lucky Me!

Happy 4th Everyone!!

This morning, some of my work friends were participating in the local 4th of July 5k.  I have been MAJORLY slacking on my running, so I knew that I just had to sign up and go out there.  I haven't really run anything above a mile in about a year - which meant that I was going to huff and puff my way through this run.

Huff and puff indeed!  I realized that I forgot my knee wrap, so my knee was a little achy as I ran.  I also made sure, since it was warm, to go nice and easy so I didn't end up half dead.  (Like the really big guy that took off at the start of the race... that I later passed as he was passed out on the ground being attended to by paramedics.  Nice and easy finishes the race!)

So, here's proof that I did this thing.  This isn't as I crossed the finish line (those are pictures no one should see) but about 20 minutes later? 

I finished...  I'm still alive.  I'm in blue, btw.  Ms. OCD will be happy that I cropped her out of this pic. However, Ms. OCD deserves major kudos for doing her first 5k with her bad foot.  I'm so proud!  {{sniff!}} Even though, I'm 100% sure that she did not want to be uploaded to the internet, hence the cropping.  The other pic is the start line before it filled with 700 million people that raced this morning.

Okay - to bring this post around to something SCHOOL related because I'm sure that you're waiting for that...  on my way back to my car, someone had an entire recycle crate FULL OF BOOKS that they were getting rid of.  Mr. Life in Middle School graciously hunted down the owner of the books and helped carry them to my car.

Here are some of the books:

Those You Can Draw Books are amazing, plus 5 more copies of various Harry Potter books and a TON of Junie B Jones.  Those are perfect books for my struggling 7th grade readers.  There's a bunch of non-fiction mixed in there too.  My son was super excited to find a book about Sharks and some Pokemon books that he quickly claimed.

I think this was my reward for running this morning!  I'm off to make labels for all my new books now!

July Currently!

Hey hey!  A currently finished on July 1st!

I'm rocking!  Maybe it's because it's summer, my son is sleeping and my husband is entertained playing video games...  But here's my July Currently!!

My reading selections: (one) I had to choose the Llama Llama books for my FAVORITE books to read aloud to my son, because I just love the rhyming and saying "No More Llama Drama!"  I'm sure as he gets older, my favorite will change to the Harry Potter books because I've always envisioned reading those to him.  

(two) I bought Flip Your Classroom by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams.  It looks really good, but I haven't read more than five pages.  I like the idea of having my students watch the video and then react to the content, I think it will work nicely in a computer lab!

And THANK YOU to everyone who liked my Beach Math Formula set!  The first three commenters will be receiving their files shortly! 

Go to Books Linky Party!

Stephanie over at Teaching in Room 6 is running a really great linky party - "Go to Teaching Books" which is a great idea. I know that a lot of teachers have a variety of books in their bag of tricks, so to speak.

I have three books that I simply adore and are my "Go to" whenever I feel like something is just not working in my classroom. Honestly, this year I've had to pull out all three and start over from scratch. Switching schools in October is a difficult job.

Instruction for All Students - by Paula Rutherford

Instruction for All Students is a great book that has easy ideas that you can quickly implement into the classroom. The idea for having the students complete a daily learning log is in there, also a great list of products that you can have your students produce. It's also cross referenced with the standards, so you can always correlate your lessons to the National, State, Core (whatever it's moving to these days) Standards.

Teach Like A Champion - Doug Lemov

What I adore about Teach Like a Champion is that you don't have to do an entire overhaul to your classroom, lessons, etc. It has 49 strategies that you can implement to make your classroom run smoother. It's as simple as saying that you're going to focus on the strategy of "No Opt Out" for that day with your students. It's a great read and I highly recommend picking it up.

Tools for Teachers - Fred Jones

Finally, the classroom management guru other than Harry Wong (who I love too... but he's been widely represented in this linky party!) that I stick to. What I like about Dr. Jones is that he's a stickler for the classroom set up portion of the classroom management idea. How you arrange your desks determines classroom successes. (I was ready to pull out his book if people were going to give me a difficult time getting rid of my classroom single desks.) Also, his ideas revolving around PAT (preferred activity time) are genius and something that I'm going to have to do with my very unruly classes this year.