2 Year Blog Anniversary

Two years ago - I started this blog because I had been transferred to a new school and I missed all my work friends.  I never thought that I would still be blogging two years later and would have made so many new blogging friends and followers!

I wanted to celebrate two years of stories, linky parties, pinterest boards, lessons, TPT products with all my friends and followers.

I have some great blogging friends and bloggers that I simply aspire to be like lined up to celebrate with me!

To celebrate, I am giving away some fabulous prizes! There will be an individual winner for each prize.

• $25 Amazon or TPT Gift Card (Winner's Choice)
• My entire 35 item TPT Store
• Prize donated by Middle School OCD
• Prize donated by Joy in 6th Grade
• Common Core Task Cards from Carson Dellosa Publishing
• Winner's Choice of 2 Items from Teaching Tales Along the Yellow Brick Road's TPT Store
• Graphics Set from I'm Lovin' Lit
• Paragraph of the Week Kit from Teaching in Room 6
• Number of the Day Task Cards from Laffin's Learnings
• 12 Genre Book Reports from 2 Peas and a Dog 
• Winner's Choice of a Math Unit from Ideas by Jivey

That's a total of 11 awesome prizes for 11 awesome winners!

To earn entires you can follow each blog and their TPT stores.  You can earn additional entries by tweeting about the contest and writing a blog post on your own blog!  Earn your entries by claiming them in the Rafflecopter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here are the wonderful bloggers that are joining up with me for the party!  Each blogger has graciously donated an item to celebrate!

Thank you again for following me!  I hope to keep up my blogging about Life in Middle School :)

A Peek at my Week - Week #6

I'm excited to be back for another installment for a Peek at my Week linky!  It's funny, I have stuff to blog about during the week, but it's been hard to get going after a long day a work.  I have pictures from my Interactive Student Notebooks, a lesson called "Hooks from Books" and my common assessment woes.  (Woes!)

The posts I write in my head are pretty awesome people.  If only I had my clone available to write them.

It's another full week for me:

1.  Blog Anniversary!

This week marks the 2 year anniversary of my blog!  I've been working to gather together some fantastic bloggers to join my celebration and I'm so very happy with the people that are participating!  When I decided to have my little internet party, I wanted the bloggers that I enjoy reading their blogs and buying their products to join up. 

The bloggers that are joining me are:

• Susan from Middle School OCD
• Kim from Joy in 6th Grade
• Christy from Teaching Tales Along the Yellow Brick Road
• Erin from I'm Lovin' Lit
• Stephanie from Teaching in Room 6
• Jennifer from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings
• Jessica from Ideas by Jivey
• Kristy from 2 Peas and a Dog

Come back on Wednesday, September 18th to see what you have to do to win all the fantastic prizes available!

2.  Re-teach, Re-teach, Re-teach!

My students totally bombed their common assessment this week.  It's pretty embarrassing, but I know that it's time to put a full stop to any new material and to go back to what they need to have mastered.

Have you guys read Instruction for all Students by Paula Rutherford?  (Amazon Link)

I love this book.  It has a lot of good ideas.  One idea listed is called "Chris' Test" - you put the students into groups of 2 and then they have to correct a fictional student called "Chris" and his/her test.  They don't know which answers are marked correct or incorrect - they have to go through and determine how to make their test better.  

I'm going to be using this on Tuesday to help my students review the common assessment and determine their mistakes.

3.  The Hunger Games (insert the music here)

Finally, finally, finally - my class is starting on the Hunger Games.  I think they are excited and starting to enjoy the first few pages we read on Thursday.  I had a few dissenters, but you can't make everyone happy.  I did purchase the famous Hunger Games TPT Lesson by Tracee Orman and it's as fabulous as you would think!

4.  Maintain Everything and Maintain my Sanity

Yep!  It's tough handling everyone, everything and to keep smiling.  Does anyone else feel the same way?

A Peek at My Week Linky!

Thanks to Middle School OCD, I discovered this fun linky!  It's hosted by Jennifer of Mrs. Laffin's Laughings and encourages you to share your plans for this upcoming week.

This week marks the end of our third week of school.  It feels like four because we had a mini week to start the year.  Am I insane that I feel like I'm behind ALREADY?!  Is it possible?  I'm trying to train these guys and move through plans and activities but I feel like I'm moving at a snail's pace.

1.  Finish the Fall of Ancient Rome

I have to finish up this chapter if I want to hit the Renaissance at the end of the year!  Sometimes, I drag on the first real social studies unit and this year I promised myself that I would take it easy.  Practice learning the note taking routines, doing actual work, etc.  Keep any "Projects" to a minimum.

2.  Finish Rikki Tikki Tavi and create a comic strip!

Again, I have to start closing out my smaller stories if I want to hit The Hunger Games in a week.  We have to finish reading Rikki Tikki together, discuss Plot Elements and then we are creating a comic book strip to help everyone retell the most important plot points.  For middle schoolers, they want to retell EVERYTHING and I have to train them to give me the highlights only!!

I use my Story Map/Plot Chart for teaching them Plot Elements.  I really like it because it hits all the important ideas in one page AND gives them their plot chart and summary section on the back.

3.  Create Sub Plans

I hate hate hate writing the first sub plans of the year.  You never know how it's going to go and how fast they will finish the work.

4.  Nurse my hubby back to health!

My husband will be going into get his deviated septum fixed on Wednesday and I'm taking off two days as his official "caregiver."  I'm more nervous about the surgery than he is!!  He has had his deviated septum forever from breaking his nose as a kid and seriously, the guy can hardly breathe.  He can't even get a decent nights sleep anymore.  I hope that everything goes well and... well... at least I can get 5-7 hours of quiet grading time in at the hospital, right?  (So horrible of me!)

Wish me luck!  Apparently, Kaiser has free wi-fi so maybe I'll even get in a blog post about my ISN's or my Roman Tweets activity.  We shall see!

Teacher Week 2013!

I'm so excited to be a part of the Teacher Week 2013 link up week!!

I just found out about it yesterday, but here's the scoop!  Each day there is a different topic for you to blog about and then link up over at Blog Hoppin!  Today is "Let's Talk About Me!"

Here we go!

1.  This is the start of my 8th year teaching!  They are starting to blend together a little bit.  I have to mentally count upward from my first year assignment to remember how many years I've taught!  I'm back to teaching 7th grade Language Arts and Social Studies again!!

2.  I met my husband playing roller hockey when I was 17 years old.  He was originally this jerk that bothered me.  Sometimes, he still is that jerk that bothers me, except now I live with the jerk.  We both grew up playing hockey and now we're happy to pass that along to our son.

3.  I was born and raised in Southern California.  My parents moved here from New York in the 1970's.  I can't imagine myself living in NY.

4.  This is a Disney Household.  Disney Channel is usually on some TV in the house, we usually have Disneyland Annual Passes and this winter we are going to DisneyWorld!  (Whooooooooooo)  I have Belle statues spread throughout my office too.

5. I am afraid of the Smurfs.  When I was 7, I watched an episode where they ate bad ham and became zombies.  They transmitted their zombiness by biting each other.  I still shudder to this day and pretty much refuse to eat ham.

6.  I also have mild OCD when it comes to pens.  I HATE HATE HATE pens that have lost their caps.  If the cap is gone, just throw the rest of the pen away because it just bugs me.

7.  Even though teaching has become increasingly stressful with testing, Common Core, etc - I still love my job and I cannot imagine doing anything else.  

8.  I am probably the clumsiest person in California.  I walk into walls, trip over my own feet, drop things...  My husband is just used to it and says I passed it on to our son.  Oops!

9.  I'm a techie/Mac geek.  I love all things Mac and I've been addicted to the computer since I was 10.  My poor husband gets neglected sometimes because I'm too busy online.  I even built my first webpage that I hand coded the HTML when I was 14.  It was lime green and was about the Beatles.  Yes, I was dorky even then ;)

10.  And finally, I'm approaching my 2nd blogging anniversary and I'm amazed that I'm still in this thing.  Thanks for reading and sticking with me!

2013-2014 Goals

I {heart} Recess is having a great 2013-2014 Back to School Goal Linky going on over at her blog!

It's focusing on your personal, professional goals for the upcoming school year.  Since I go back next Thursday, it's time to take a look!

Personal:  I've been trying to keep up a level of fitness... I've been better at working out, but over the summer, I've been trying to get back into the working out groove.  Hopefully, now that I'm going back and playing hockey once a week - it will help my fitness.  I am also trying to eat healthier!

Organization:  I want to try and stay on top of my grading and paperwork this year.  I'm decent at keeping up on my grading, but you know those days when you have a HUGE stack that takes 3 hours to complete.  No more!

Planning:  Our lesson plans are checked every Thursday afternoon for the past week.  (It would be smart if they checked the week ahead, but I'm not the boss.)  I'm going to admit that there were some days that I wrote the lesson plans during my prep on Thursday for that afternoon.  Now that I'm back in the LA/SS groove, I gotta be more on top of my planning to make sure my students are engaged and learning!

Professional:  Ignoring what I can't change is my number 1 goal this year.  I can't make people want to be better at my site.  No matter how much I give, it's not going to make the school-wide changes that I think should be started.  If I can't fix it, I can't worry about it!

Students:  Stay positive!!!  I know that I have some tough kids coming in, but if I start the year down - there's no where else to go!  I'm going to stay positive and love my students whether they like it or not!!  We can do it and we're just going to get there one way or another!!

Motto:  So - it all adds into my MOTTO: Be the Rockstar that I know I am!  My admin probably doesn't know I can teach and manage a classroom like a champ.  Somedays I wonder if they know what subject I'm teaching this year, but I just want to prove that I'm awesome and I can handle all the stuff they throw at me!!

Pinterest Friday

...

Wait?

....

It's Friday already?!  And it's July 12th?

My summer is practically over!  {{sobs}}  I can't believe that it flew by this quickly!  You know what happens - when summer starts you have all these good intentions - then suddenly summer is almost over and you look back at your list and realize all those good intentions went out the window.

Oops?!

Anyway.  It's Friday, so that means it's time to link up with Doodle Bug and the 5 for Friday!

The 5 for Friday will be back in August!  However, Doodle Bug did link up to the Favorite Pins Friday linky and lord knows, I spend a lot of time on Pinterest.

Favorite Teaching Pin

I'm a HUGE Harry Potter fan!  I'm sorted on Pottermore, (Ravenclaw) love the books, even got a piece of writing into a compilation book 10 years ago.  So, to see this cool pin about how this teacher did a Harry Potter classroom is just the coolest thing EVER.  See the house color ribbons?

Here is her link:  http://chamberofmagic.blogspot.com/2012/08/harry-potter-classroom-theme.html

Favorite Cooking/Baking Pin (for Ms. OCD to make for me? haha!)

I am a choco-holic.  No lie.  I basically roam the Earth looking for chocolate.  My friends at work know that they save me the dark chocolate bars in the random chocolate bags.  I come to parties and bring some type of chocolate (brownies, chocolate chip cookies, cake... mmmmmmmm).

So, I found this pin.

Visit how to make it - http://chocolatechocolateandmore.com/2013/03/smores-cookie-bars/

Say it with me... Yum yum yum yum YUM!

Favorite Geek Pin

Another not-so-surprising fact is that I love geeky stuff.  My husband is Mr. Star Wars/Walking Dead/Marvel Comic book guy and I always loved it too.  (Geek Romance Match!)

I can't remember when I pinned this, but I love it all the same.

Favorite Miscellaneous Pin

Uh... you're welcome blogging friends.  In fact, after I moved this over, the hotness simply crashed my Pinterest tab.  Hahaha.  Yay for Channing Tatum!

My Pin of the Week 

This is my pin about how I put together my own lesson plan book.  Check it out here! :)

If you thought this was fun, go and check out the First Grade Parade and join up!

Quick Middle School Link Up

I promised myself that I would stay off blogger today... but I stumbled across this link up specifically for Middle School blogs and I had to join up!

(There's usually a big black hole for middle school things... so I can't help myself!)

Sixth Grade Tales is having a Middle Grade Bloglovin' Hop - so all my Middle School readers, head over and check out the other Middle School blogs.

In other news, I'm busy finishing my Lesson Plan book for 2013-2014.  I built it mostly from scratch and I CAN NOT WAIT to bind it to present to everyone.  Ms. OCD got a sneak preview of it yesterday at our work afternoon meet up.  

Here's a peek of the cover!

I'm including two - just in case anyone wants to pin it.... It has my logo!  Pin that picture please! :)

It's silly how the little things make me happy, but it really does!

Now, I have to break myself from blogging to finish some school work ideas.  Then, we are meeting up with some friends for dinner and Despicable Me 2!

Bloglovin' Blog Hop!

Only 5 days left until the end of Google reader and the end of all our lovely Follower number totals! (sniff!)

I'm joining up with Tori over at Tori's Teacher Tips in her Bloglovin' Blog Hop!  She set up this linky to get people moving over to Bloglovin' AND to start to re-build our follower counts!

I'm linked up - you need to head over and rebuild your reading lists!  The trick to this linky is that you are linking your Bloglovin' account, so you can quickly go through each blog and add them to your Bloglovin' list.

Also, I noticed that you can add categories - I can split all my blogs into groups.  (Like Primary, Middle and High school blogs.  I follow them all... you can find good ideas anywhere! :) )

5 for Friday!

This week has simultaneously gone by super fast and really slow for me.  I always hit a point during the summer when I am sick of being at home and I start to go stir-crazy.  I think I hit it yesterday - my husband just looked at me and I knew.  Stir-crazy!

I just need to be busy!

But since it's Friday - I can link up with Doodle Bugs 5 for Friday!  Hooray!

1.  Legoland!

Tomorrow we are going to Legoland to celebrate Father's Day for my husband.  It's Star Wars day and if you knew Mr. Life in Middle School, well... it's a good present.  This is the man who pouted that we missed the life sized replica of an X-Wing in Times Square when we visited NY in March.  They unveiled it in May.  He was quite upset.  We've never been to Legoland so it will be interesting!

2.  A Boy and his Dog

I also spent the majority of my week watching my son and our new rescue dog, Natalie, play in our backyard.  My mom runs a rescue group in our area and both of our dogs are rescues from her.  Bailey is a small dog and my son really can't play with her too much.  When Natalie came in the house, it was perfect because they play all day.  Until...  my son tries to ride Natalie like a pony, or when she knocks him over.

"Mommy, Natalie is mean!"  or "Natalie kicked me!"  

Oh yeah, you obviously hate each other.

3.  Goal Pennant

I made this on Wednesday.  Was it Wednesday?  I never know what day it is when I'm not at work.  All I know is that it's June.  It's free at TPT!  Download it!  Follow me!

4.  Interactive Student Notebook

I'm still working at making some foldables that will go into my Interactive Student Notebook.  I've got Parts of Speech and Types of Sentences so far.  If only I could stay off of Pinterest long enough to really get work done, but I figure anything I do in June puts me ahead of the game!

5.  Hunger Games

So, I might have re-read the Hunger Games trilogy this week.

Technically, it was for work... but not really!  I just really enjoy that first book the most, then can't help myself from reading the rest.  The third book though...  Mockingjay...  should have been split into two books because I felt like the author tried to cram too much into her third "act."

That was my week!  How was yours?!  Don't forget to link up over at Doodle Bugs Teaching!

Optimum Organization - Teacher Binder

Another post in the same day, but I came across Ladybug and Fun in Room 4b Optimum Organization Linky and I wanted to join!

One of the things I created over the year and I'm setting up for next year is my Teacher Organization Binder. 

I love having my teacher organization binder for planning!  It saves a lot of time, because I just print out everything I need from our District's website ahead of time.  Our district resource website is a bit of a maze, so I know that I save time not having to back and search for those instructions, plans, etc.

Long term planner template using tables in MS Word.

I also keep my long term plans, monthly calendars, common assessment and student data all in my binder.  Again, I hate having to search for my papers, so having them in one convenient location saves me time when I want to plan, check student results, etc!

I talk about how to put together your OWN teacher planner in this link if you're interested!  

 There are a lot of teacher planner kits out on the TPT market too.  However, making your planner is something that depends a lot on your needs and what makes sense for you in the binder.  For example, I don't have my weekly plans in my binder because I have to leave my plans out for my Admin during the week.  It's easier if I have a separate binder for those. 

California Blogger!

Today, I'm linking up with Fifth in the Middle and her fantastic Bloggers by State linky!

I'm proud to be a ...

It's pretty exciting that there are so many California Bloggers out there! 

Eating, Drinking and Linking!

... are three of my favorite things!

I've had the ingredients for my Crab-Cream Cheese Wontons in my fridge for two days now, so I thought I'd share them with you.  (And make Mr. Life in Middle School ridiculously happy.)  Thanks to Middle School OCD for introducing me to this linky at Teaching Tales Along the Yellow Brick Road! :)

The story behind these Crab Cream Cheese Wontons is that my friend Jess came up with them at her apartment a loooong time ago.  She decided that Crab + Cream Cheese + a wonton wrapper = deliciousness.  All of our friends agreed and she shared her secret with me.  It's funny now if you taste her's and mine - they're different!  But still oh so good.

Crab Cream Cheese Wontons

1 pack of wonton wrappers  (find where your grocer sells their tofu... it's usually next to that.)
1 pack of cream cheese
1 pack of pre-made crab
vegetable oil

 

Start off by prepping all your ingredients. I always take the cream cheese out first, you want it to soften a little bit.   I chop up the crab into small pieces.  How small you want - that's up to you.  I tried using a food processor, but I found that it mushed the crab into a paste and that it didn't taste as good.

Mix the crab and cream cheese.  This is what mine looks like when I know it's ready.

 

Time to get your hands dirty!  You need to take scoops of the crab/cream cheese mixture, get it in a ball and place it on your wonton wrapper.  How big of scoops depends on you.  

To seal a wonton wrapper, dip your fingers in water and lightly wet the edges you want to close.  I have no clue how a wonton is "properly wrapped" so I just made up my own pattern.

 

Now, you have to drop the wontons into your hot oil. I recommend starting your oil in a pot before you start wrapping the wontons.  That way it's nice and hot when you're ready to drop them in.  It helps if you have some type of tongs to grab the wontons when they're finished, or a metal slotted spoon works okay too.  

Obviously... hot oil is HOT!  Be careful!

 

Depending on how hot the oil is... these guys could brown really fast!  So get ready.  If the tips look tan, pull them out!

And then....

 

Yum yum yum! It's been agreed in my house that they taste just as good the next day when you refrigerate them.

Five for Friday

I always want to participate in DoodleBug's Five for Friday - but I always forget!  So, I'm proud of myself that I actually remembered this week!

1.  10 Days Left 

Thank god.  I'm so done with this year.  It's not like my kids are bad (they're sweet, mostly) - it's just all the drama with our school that I'm totally O.V.E.R.  I am completely drained of always having to deal with everything.  Does anyone else think it's a little terrible that our Principal never told us Happy Teacher Appreciation Week?  I'm pretty sure he either (a) hates us or (b) can't be bothered?  Kinda a sad feeling, or maybe it's a man thing and he doesn't realize?  Anyway.  Summer vacation can't come fast enough!

2.  C02 Cars

My class finishes its elective year by making C02 cars.  I'm usually covered in sawdust from using woodshop tools and I make a lot of cars that are affectionally known as "doorstops."  So, it's soooo wonderful when someone is creative enough to make this:

Turkey Leg!  Too funny, right?

3.  Up-cycling my Ugly Cabinet

I have one of those white plastic organizational crate that probably every teacher has.  Mine was a hand-me-down when I moved into my class back in 2006.  It's old and kinda trashed.  I've debated about just throwing it away, but then I remembered this pin on Pinterest.

 and the one where you paper the inside of your plastic crate.

I couldn't paper the crate because mine had this weird handle lip thingy.  So... I decided to paint the inside instead!

My original.  This is ugly.

I had some acrylic paint in cute colors to use!

Improvement!

(almost) Final product!  The yellow needs another coat of paint, but I'm quite happy with my little 40 minute in class project!

4.  Saturday School

I have to go tomorrow.  I absolutely DO NOT WANT TO GO.  But I will.  Miss OCD Teach will be there suffering too.  I have a list that I have 23 kids tomorrow, which is a major improvement over the... 45 I had in April.

5.  GO KINGS GO!

Game 6 tonight, baby!  I will plant myself on my couch, make my next I Have... Who Has cards and watch my boys.

(PS:  That's Bob Miller the LA Kings long-time play-by-play announcer.  We love Bob!)