WBT PowerPix with Common Core Standards

I have been able to finish the ELA PowerPix for Kindergarten - Fifth Grade and Math for Kindergarten and First Grade and wanted one post to hold them all. This post will hold pins to all the PowerPix posts. As I finish the Math PowerPix with Common Core I will add the links here.
Please let me know if these are helpful and if you see any errors :)

Ready to teach Common Core with Power Pix!

Hop over to my WBT blog for Kindergarten and First Grade ELA PowerPix that are matches up to the Common Core Standards. These have really been my main WBT project over the last 2 yrs and I am so excited to have these ready to share with Teacher Notes based on the original PowerPix from wholebrainteaching.com.

And the winners are.......

I am so excited that just over 50 people have entered this week's giveaway! That means 20 winners of the Tropical Dot Editable labels to go with the winner of the copy of My Memories Suites. The winner of My Memories Suites is...... Rachel Evans Evers! Listed below Rachel's name are the winners of the Tropical Dots Editable labels. Winners look for emails today with download instructions :)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Now for everyone else you are also winners, even if you are just checking in today :) My Memories Suites has 3 heart freebies that you can print out and make even without the software. Just click on the pictures below to grab them.

Remember you can also all buy a copy of My Memories Suites and use the DISCOUNT CODE  STMMMS99167 at checkout  and receive $10 off the software purchase and a $10 gift certificate to the online store! With a copy of My Memories Suites you can edit the heart freebies to use any digital paper or include words. I am thinking of using them for sight word practice slips :)

Congratulations to everyone and thanks for entering!

Teacher Tech Tuesday - My Memories Suite V 4

I really wanted to share a video post today but I ran out of time to finish my own video review of My Memories Suite Version 4.  The following video features the wonderful Lisa with My Memories Suites reviewing the main features of Version 4. Be sure to visit yesterday's post to enter to win a copy of My Memories Suite!

I Teach K But I'm not in Vegas

Is everyone else super jealous of all your kinder teacher friends that are at I Teach K in Vegas this week? Well you can stalk, I mean join in the fun  by visiting the conference app.  You can grab some presentation handouts and see what is going on with the twitter feed from the conference and even see the photos from their photo contest. Just click the pic below to jump over to the app but some back or keep reading first :)

Well I have decided that this is a great week to do some giveaways and have some fun celebrating that I teach kindergarten. I teach Transitional Kindergarten and love it! Celebrate with me and let's have some online fun :) 

First today you can all grab my Facebook voted freebie,  Lime Green Editable labels!

These are the green labels that are included in my Tropical Dots Editable Labels set on TpT. 

I created the labels in My Memories Suite, the most amazing digital scrapbooking software. This week you can win your own copy of My Memories Suite Version 4! I am also giving away one copy of my editable labels for every 5 people that enter the giveaway so you will have a 1 in 5 chance of winning something, better than Vegas right? 

Be sure to keep visiting this week for more freebies and more about why you want to win My Memories Suite. 

  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Throwback Thursday- Confer

I am excited to do my first link up with The First Grade Parade for

This is actually going to be a throwback and an update to a guest post I did last year that is no longer showing on the other blog :(  and a follow up post I do on the Confer app. First the throwback post :)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Original posted at LMTree June 30, 2012 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Hi! Welcome to the Blog Swap and Hop! I am excited to be here at Arlene's blog today. This is my first ever guest post so I hope you forgive any typos :)  I'm Melissa O.  from Transitional Kinder with Mrs. O. I will be teaching Transitional Kindergarten this fall in California after 11 years teaching in elementary technology, first grade and kindergarten. In every grade I have taught I have always been amazed at how much differentiation is needed and how much growth is possible in one year. It is awesome when that struggling student becomes a top student. Today I wanted to share with you a tool that has helped me the last 2 years keep track of differentiation, the Confer app.

The Confer app has helped me so much in my planning, conferencing with students and meeting with parents because I can take notes quickly during Reading and Writing Workshop on individual students, small groups or even whole class lessons. I even track behavior with Confer. The Confer app is for iPods, iPhones and iPads and can be found at http://www.conferapp.com/. I have no affiliation with the app or its maker but love that he is a teacher sharing something that he created for his classroom.
Here's what you can do with Confer:

• take notes on individual students and small groups

• view your students by the "tag", "strength", "teaching point", or "next step" in your note

• view your students by date, level, group or flag

• search through student notes

• create flexible small groups 

• upload your data to your gmail account as a spreadsheet

• export and import your data on any iOS device via email

I started with the free Lite version then upgraded to the paid after I saw what I could do with the app. With the Lite version you are limited to 2 subjects, 10 students per subject and 5 notes per student.  You can export data through email but not import so it really is just to see what the app can do. When I used the Lite version I found 2 ways to make it work since I had 20 students. The first way was to track 10 students in subject 1, the other 10 students with subject 2 and export the data each Friday. I would then copy and paste the data into a new excel sheet to look at all the data of all the students. This gave me the data with a few extra steps. The second way I used the Lite version was to track small groups and whole class lessons. 

After a few months cutting and pasting I decided to upgrade and it is much easier :) I have all my students and can take as many notes as I like. I use the CAFE approach to notes based on The Sisters' work you can find at http://www.thedailycafe.com/. My Tags are Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Vocab. For Strength I list what the student is doing well on and the Teaching Point is the CAFE Strategy the student is working on. I often fill out Next Step after conferencing with students as I sort the data. With the paid app I usually sort data during lunch or in the evening during commercials because all I need is my iPhone :) I can quickly see who needs to work on the same skill, who I haven't met with in a while, who is ready for a new skill, which groups are working, which groups need something new and what needs to be taught whole class again. It is also great during parent conference week because I can show parents the notes for their student.
If you want a visual of all that Confer can do here is the video about the app :)


I hope that some of you can see that Confer is an easy and fast way to track during and after Reading and Writing Workshop and give it a try. If you do decide to purchase the paid version please stop by my blog at

Be sure to post a comment with your email and I will email you my Confer spreadsheet to help get you set up :) I hope you will visit even if you decide Confer is not for you for Teacher Tech Tuesdays and Whole Brain Teaching Wednesdays. Thanks for hopping with Arlene and me! Enjoy hopping to all the other great blogs!



NOW the update for July 2013!

It is now much easier to share files, all I need is your Confer id and I can send you my Confer file with my Tags, Next Steps, ext based mostly on The CAFE by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser.  I also have included my Behavior file based on a clip chart system and Whole Brain Teaching rules. You can import this file on Confer Lite or Confer :)
When you have downloaded Confer you will see one of these screens when you open it  

 

If you see the screen on the right click on the little gear at the bottom of the screen and you will get this screen. 

When you click on Enable Syncing you will get the Cloud screen and from there you can create an account. Once you have your account name come back here and leave a comment with it and I can add you to the list  of people that can download the file and message you that you have been added. Once added you will see the Behavior and Reading CAFE subjects when you open Confer. Remember you can only have 2 subjects with Confer Lite but you should be able to take a look at both files if you haven't created your own subjects in Confer Lite.

 If sharing works well I well share my current files for the other CAFE menus and more WBT goodies :)

Book Clubs and WBT Wednesday

For the third summer I have decided to be a part of summer book studies but this year I am working on 3!
I know that is crazy but I think they are all so worth it.
First is just a review of The Sisters' books on our Daily CAFE yahoo group and Facebook group. I thought it would be good to have a  refresher on these books that are the base of my literacy block.

 

Second is this year's must have teaching book

Some wonderful teacher bloggers started this book study in June and I am trying to at least keep up with the reading. Check them out by clicking their super cute book study button below.

Third is actually an ongoing book club instead of a summer book study on Chris Biffle's Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids. Of course this is also a MUST have.

I finally got the courage to type up my response to the WBT book club assignment for Chapter 1 & 2. Check it out and see links for the main book club by clicking the image below.

What are your must reads this summer? Are these on your teacher bookshelf too?

Teacher Tech Tuesday - Organizing your Facebook Newsfeed

So it might be blocked at my school but Facebook still has become a huge teaching tool for me this past year. Most of my friends are fellow teachers, most of the pages I like are related to teaching, and my time is spent mostly on teacher groups and chatting with teachers. That said I do have a life outside teaching, hard to believe I know, and when I want to check out what is up with my cousins or how my friend with the new baby is doing I really don't want to search through all the teacher related posts to find the posts from them. I needed Facebook to show me teaching stuff sometimes and family and friends stuff other times, I needed a way to organize my Facebook! After a little Google and a lot of playing around I finally have a pretty organized page and want to share what I have found. Here goes:

1. Top Stories or Most Recent

This might be old news to all of you but I thought for the longest time that my newsfeed was automatically in chronological order of newest to oldest but it is not. The default setting is Top Stories.  "Top stories" means you're letting Facebook's algorithms decide what's most important. Facebook says this is decided by "lots of factors," including your relationship to the person who posted the story, how many comments and likes it got, what type of story it is, etc.The "Most Recent" option will return to your news feed to a more chronological order. The quickest and easiest edit to your news feed is switching between these and it is found at the top of your home page.
Click on "Sort" and you get the option to see just "Top stories" or "Most recent."

2. Hide News Ticker

This also may be an old trick but I love how my facebook page looks with this gone! To hide the "News Ticker," go to your home page, mouse down to the very bottom right hand corner of your screen and find the icon that looks like an open box with an arrow. 

Clicking this will make the sidebar (and therefore the ticker) disappear.

3. Set Up Lists

Now these takes more time than #1 or #2 but is sooooo worth it because this is the way to really get an organized newsfeed. I use Facebook's "Lists" functionality to set up a dedicated news feed. Once you set up a list, you can click on that list from your home page to see content from only those selected folk. So when I am in teacher mode and want to see what my favorite teacher bloggers are doing I click my Kinderland list and when I am in family mode I simply click my family list and I get only the content I want in my newsfeed!   Click Here to start your own list Once on the page you can search other lists or create your own. You can subscribe to my Kinderland list of my favorite kindergarten and first grade teacher pages by clicking here and click the subscribe button at the top right of the list page.

To create your own Interest List, go Here again and you’ll see the button for “+ Create List” at the top of the Interests page (visible in the top right of the screenshot above). Lists can have any combination of Friends, Subscriptions and Pages! To start with, Facebook displays a list of all the Pages you’ve already liked, all your Subscriptions (personal profiles to which you’ve subscribed) and Friends.

Select the choices you wish and click Next.

You can probably guess what is in my Vacation list :)

Now, another cool aspect of Facebook Interest Lists – similar to Twitter Lists – is you can choose to make the list visible to Public, your Friends, or Only Me (completely private). My Kinderland list is public so I can share it with you all but most of my other lists are private because they are only for me :)

Now that you have your lists you want to do the next step to make it fast to switch between your lists.  I found this is all from http://www.marismith.com/how-take-back-control-of-your-facebook-news-feed/

Add your Lists to your Favorites

This part can get a bit tricky to maneuver but once you’ve done it once, it’s easy! First, go back to your list of Lists (bookmarks page), you’ll see the little pencil icon next to each list. Click the icon and select Add to Favorites as shown in the screenshot below. (By the way, the little blue Interest List icon is for Lists you created; the green icon is for Lists to which you subscribe).

Add an Interest List to your Favorites

Next, now go look at the list of favorites at the top left of your home page. Hover over any item and then click the little pencil icon. From there, click Rearrange. Now you can drag and drop the order of anything you have in your Favorites. You can have Interest Lists, Friend Lists, Groups, Apps, and Pages as Favorites by going through this same process. If this is new to you, you’ll soon wonder how you ever managed Facebook without Lists and Favorites! Your Favorites are visible on mobile, too.

So there are my favorite 3 ways to have a more organized Facebook feed! I can like all the pages I want and have lots of friends and still have an uncluttered feed :) Please let me know if this was helpful and how you organize your feed.

Suite Saturday and Freebie Hop Success!

I am so excited at how well the Freebies on the Fourth Facebook hop went! Over 2,000 people went through the hop, liking pages and grabbing freebies! Were you able to grab them all? Was is such a blur that you are not sure you went to all of the AWESOME kindergarten and first grade pages? Well the hop is over but you do not want to miss out on what these fabulous teachers have to offer! Many of us have put up new freebies for our fans and great discussions and blog posts to share. Here is the full list of Facebook pages from the hop, including mine :) Hop through and make sure you like them all :)

                             

                                  

                          

          


You can grab my Daily 5 freebie from the hop by click the pic BELOW :)

I create most of my classroom items in My Memories Suite and I will be giving away a copy of version 4 this week to celebrate the success of the Freebie Hop!  My Memories Suite Version 4 has some AWESOME new features including export to SVG to use with electronic die cutters like the Silhouette! You can download a trial of My Memories Suite for free by clicking the words  My Memories Suite   This will take you to the  My Memories Suite  store where you can get the trial or buy the program. When you are ready to buy My Memories Suite put in my Share the Memories code for a $10 discount off the purchase of the My Memories Suite Scrapbook software and a $10 coupon for the MyMemories.com store - $20 value! The code is STMMMS99167