Celebrating 100 Followers on TpT

I have been a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers since 2012 but only recently became more serious. I finally hit 100 followers on TpT and have decided to celebrate by having my first giveaway! The winner will get to choose an item of their choice from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Good luck! a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Book Study

I am currently taking a class dealing with ADHD in the classroom and Neurodiversity in the classroom. It looks at strength-based strategies to help students with special needs succeed in school and life. We are using the book Neurodiversity in the Classroom by Thomas Armstrong and I thought I would share some of the highlights with you as I go along. I have a lot of students in my classroom who need help and strategies to help them succeed. 

Here are some highlights from chapter 1.

* Neurodiversity: is a shift in how we think about our students in special education or with special needs. It suggests that we focus on the strengths of students and not on their deficits, disease or dysfunction.

* While the term neurodiversity has been around since the 90’s it is growing in the autistic community as well as including groups such as those with learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, ADHD and mood disorders.

* The book reminds us to think of Calvin and his ADHD behavior in the coming strip Calvin & Hobbs or the behaviors of Monk that show his obsessive compulsive disorder.

*Neurodiversity offers educators the opportunity to step outside the box and embrace a new thinking about human diversity. It calls for us to stop putting students into separate disability categories and using old tools and language. Instead of seeking to “fix, cure, or help” a student’s disability we need to seek to discover the student’s unique requirements for growth and then use differentiated instruction and strategies to help them grow.

*The book reminds us that there is no “NORMAL” brain sitting somewhere in a museum or hospital waiting to be seen and to which all other brains are compared to. There are a variety of brains out there and each one is different.

Positive Role Models

Children can be influenced by the adults they see in their lives and we can use behavior modeling to help provide children with guidance and an example of what to be doing. Students with disabilities may also benefit from learning about people who have succeeded in their careers who have had learning disabilities.

Some famous people with ADHD or had ADHD:

Michael Phelps (Olympic athlete)

Jim Carey (actor)

Stephen Spielberg (film director)

Thomas Edison (inventor)

Classroom Reveal...well some of it anyways.

Here it is! My classroom! I have been working on getting it ready to show off but it has taken quite some time to get it close to picture ready as well. I have some work to do on it still so I won't show off those parts. I'll try and mention some of the neat TpT products I have as well :) I hope you enjoy.

Along the front of my room I have a giant chalkboard (I mean who has those anymore?). I decided to just put up some little borders on it because my school will no longer exist next year and I will be moving. This is our daily schedule and also where I put the behavior chart for my second class of English Language Arts that I teach in the day. I have a sports theme so you can see my sports themed number line which I got from a TpT seller here.

This is my dry erase board and Mimio also at the front of my room.

This is our reading area and the wonderful carpet. This area is a work in progress, as I need to label my AR books but my other books are labeled :)

I am lucky enough to have a sink. It is awesome! I keep my palm tree plant here and will eventually post our classroom jobs on this bulletin board. It also houses our breakfast materials.

My calendar (which came from Lakeshore) my numbers came from my cooperating teacher when I was student teaching. She gave me numbers for the calendar and they are well loved. I also have our specials schedule created by me, which you can check out here.

The last part I have ready to share is my back wall which is a giant bulletin board (which although it took time to deal with and cover is amazing and I'm thinking I will really miss next year). Close up pictures after this...

Here is the writing center part of the back bulletin board (which is part of the orange table area). The writing center came from here and I love it!

This is my word wall area (the words came from the Dollar Store - awesome find!). You can also see my alphabet which came from here

This is the main part of my room worth mentioning and showing so far. There will be more to share when I've got it ready and clean (after a long week). Thanks for checking it out :)

Classroom Reveal...still coming.

I have been trying to get my room ready to show off my awesome theme (sports) on an awesome reveal. However...the heat has made things nearly impossible to stick and my oldest has been super busy with football (three nights a week). Hopefully I can start sharing bits and pieces coming soon. I hope you enjoy! 

The first 3 days are over.

The first three days of school are over. It has been crazy! We decided after gaining a second grade teacher (last minute - one week before school started) to departmentalize. I am excited to be paired up with one of my teaching friends but NERVOUS to be in charge of reading, writing and handwriting for TWO classes (with a brand new reading series). We are just getting Houghten-Mifflin's Journeys!

I have loved my three days of school so far (minute the fact that my room is the HOTTEST room in the whole school) and the fact that it has been like 90 degrees each day OR 100 in my classroom. The departmentalizing seems nice in the fact that it makes my morning go pretty quick.

We have open house on Tuesday night and of course my room still is not PARENT ready so I hope to convince my kids (with the use of donuts) to go there tomorrow. If not I guess it will be a late Monday night.

I hope to have a classroom reveal for y'all here soon (once I get the rest of the border I ordered)...and accidentally sent to my mom's house (sigh).

I love bags!

Hi! My name is Natalie and I love bags...

Haha. I really do love bags. Vera Bradley bags are my favorite. One of the games we played at my bridal shower was guess how many Vera Bradley bags Natalie has...it was 43. I am ashamed to say it is now actually closer to 50. I also love 31 bags and Kate Spade and Coach (my husband does not).

Anyways... I ran into this little gem for $3.00 at Target and just hard to share how much I love it. It holds folders and it zips up and can be stored complete flat.

A Little Bit of Info About Me

I love to tell people stories. If you ask my husband or any of my friends I often love to tell stories so much that I tell them more than once. However, this one is a good one. My favorite place in the whole world is probably Cedar Point (in Sandusky, Ohio). I grew up in Sandusky, Ohio and probably would have stayed there forever until my now husband transferred for his work. I mean who wouldn't love this place (especially on the beach). Here is is from the beach at night. I also work here (now very part-time) but used to full-time in the summer. I work for the finance department (the bank of Cedar Point) and that's all I can tell you about that but I love it. The people I work with there are my family and this is my 12th season working there. I went there Friday night to see the beach party they do with the hubs, my momma and my 2 kiddos. We were in town because my beautiful best friend Kim was getting married. Now, back to the grind and getting my classroom ready. One week left!!

Cedar Point at night (Wicked Twister)

My beautiful best friend since second grade :)