Conferences, Early Release Days, and Halloween...OH MY!

Raise your hand if you are so super happy today is OVER! 

We just finished Fall Parent Teacher Conferences at my school. Yesterday was the last day! I had all but two families show up, my team mate had 100% attendance... so as a team, we did pretty great!

I want to share one of the main documents we used during our conferences.  And let me tell you, this booklet was quite the hit with parents, I think because we involved students and had them write a letter to their parents.

 I loved the assessment page we included!! Everything in one place instead of flipping between multiple papers! Such a time saver! And a great reference for parents to have at home, too!

We folded all of the pages in half and stapled them together along the open side of the paper to create the booklets. 

The focus skills we listed are the skills we have focused on so far this year.  I highlighted the skills individual students were struggling with at this point in the year.

Our district gives us a wonderful Elementary Curriculum and Assessment Guide that highlights the skills we will work on throughout the year. We also had a CCSS informational sheet targeted at 2nd grade to help us better explain what the CCSS are and how we are transitioning to these new standards in our school and across our district.

Overall, the booklet was by far the biggest hit! It was quite the time saver, too  

I could say...

"These are all of the skills we have worked on so far in 2nd grade. Keep in mind we have only had about 35 days together so far!"

Then I could say...

"This highlighted skill is something we need to work on with (your student)" 

Then we would discuss what I see in the classroom, what they see at home, and what we can do to better support their student with that specific skill.

Perfect!  Our 20-short-minutes together were fast and well used!

Now, for your Halloween Treat!!!

I am putting my Halloween Themed-ELA Workshop packet on sale! 50% off!!!!  

Included are five easy to prepare Halloween-Themed ELA Workshop ideas!

These brightly colored activities include tons of fun clipart that will help put everyone in the Halloween-mood :)

Slide 1: Cover
Slides 2 - 8: Teacher Page; ABC and ZYX order activity (with recording pages and activity cards)
Slides 9 - 11: Teacher Page; Halloween-Themed Noun sort
Slides 12 - 14: Teacher Page; Color By Sound coloring pages (devil and frankenstein)
Slides 15 - 21: Teacher Page; Fact or Opinion activity cards
Slides 22 - 27: Teacher Page; Writing activities (story starters and personal narrative)

Slide 28: Thank You page! 

Here are some pictures of my students working through the stations today. They LOVED them! I was actually surprised and excited to see how quickly they were working, they wanted to badly to get to the next station!

Noun Sort

color-by-sound (long a and long i sounds)

I brought in skeleton and "My Body" books to add a Read to Someone Station

I wanted to add in technology (and some math) so here my students are playing a match/memory game.

I found this game on Interactive Education's blog. If you haven't heard of their blog, definitely check it out! Every day they share a fun educational game and website that can be easily added into your classroom when you have a few extra minutes, or if you are looking for an easy way to integrate technology into your stations!