Counting Strips

I finally finished my counting strips I had started quite awhile ago.  Such a nice feeling having something marked off my to do list!

These are a great tool to help practice counting to 10 and can be modified for skip counting and addition practice as well.

Addition

Skip Counting

Number Counting

Feel free to check it out in my TpT store if you like what you see. It comes with easy-to-follow directions for your students.

A New Adventure?

Well, it's the end of the year and although school isn't quite out, I am.  Life happens and things change unexpectedly.  So my current adventure is subbing.  And it is definitely an adventure!

Even though I'm starting a new adventure, my goal is to do more blogging.  I am such a fan of all those awesome blogs out there (my blog envy is getting a little ridiculous) and it's been MONTHS since I started this.  Whoops. 

On the upside this time off has given me some time to try to finish up some projects I have had on the back burner.  Coming soon you'll be able to check out my space unit on TpT and hopefully some of my genre units I used with my gifted students.

Here's a sneak peek the space unit in progress:

My goal is to have it in my TpT store by next week. eventually.

Vocabulary

I've been racking my brain to come up with a good way to teach vocabulary to my gifted students.  My district uses this old video series called Wordsmith which teaches wordcells.  I want my students to recognize prefixes, suffixes, and root words since this is what they are tested on.

How do I make the vocabulary relevant to them?  They didn't remember most of what last year's teacher taught.  If you have any ideas, I would love to hear about them!

Welcome to Teaching Doodles!

The last several months I have fallen in love with reading teacher blogs.  I have been astounded at the creativity of my fellow colleagues and inspired to take my teaching to the next level.  Recently I have changed school districts and went from teaching first grade to teaching fourth and fifth grade gifted students.  Somedays I miss my first graders but most days I am astonished at the level my current students are grasping concepts and digging deeper to explore what I put in front of them.

Meet Harlie, the inspiration for my blog name.  My sister loves to call her Harliedoodles. 

I loved the sound of it and thought there wasn't a better name for my blog.  Looking at pictures of classrooms and anchor charts is one of my favorite things.  Although I don't plan on being completely random with my pictures, I like to think of them as doodles throughout my blog.

Join me as I write about teaching, my love of Mountain Dew, life with a crazy dog, and learning to transition.  But mostly about teaching and what is capturing my focus at the moment.

Let's become inspired together!