I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful Martin Luther King Day!!  I can't believe I haven't said hi in over a month. Life has just taken over and wow time is flying. At school we are hitting procedures and delving into mid year assessments. YUCK!  :) I'm trying to evaluate what I have covered and what I haven't. It feels like summer will be here before you know it and I'm feeling the pressure.

I have my personal evaluation next week. YIKES!! I get so stinkin nervous! Next Friday in will walk my princiPAL along with the lower elem. princiPAL. :) They will sit for an hour and observe my little ol self preforming. I plan to introduce my littles to non fiction summarization. I think I'm set but I just get soooo nervous!!!

So, I'm sitting here at training this morning. Yep, that's right. I'm not all comfy at home in my pjs. I'm at training learning about technology in the 21st century. Not as good as pjs but it will do.

I thought I would take the next several days to show you the cool sites we talked about today.

Are any of you up for re certification any time soon? I have to renew this June so I'm giving this shout out to all of you to check out your personal time frame for renewal. I got a little confused about the dates of my masters and the date of my last renewal and was in a bit of a panic about sb-ceus. Turns out I have credits from my masters that have me sitting pretty. Big sigh!!!
Go here to check your time frame for renewal.

 Michigan Department of Education

This site is very helpful if you are a teacher in Michigan and you need sb-ceu's. If you don't live in Michigan I'm sure there is a site in your state that could help.
You can take these courses from your kitchen in your pjs.  :)

I'm sorry I've been gone so long and I promise to be much more on the ball with my posts! :)

Has anyone else noticed that Pinterest seems to be frozen?? I've been pinning a little less but my followers # hasn't gone up in a couple weeks. I find that odd. I've been stuck at 1691 forever! Weird! Has anyone else noticed this?

Hey blogger buddies!!

I hope all is well out in chaotic holiday blogger land!! In school we have been BUSY!!! We just had our first round of conferences and the holiday craze is soooo here!! 

I read a cute book about bugs that focused on adjectives. I decided that I would grab out the fun stuff (paper, glitter, buttons, etc.) and we would make unique bugs of our own. They then made lists of words that described their bugs. I typed the lists out in a sassy font and they cut them with fun scissors. The bugs turned out a little more disorganized than I had envisioned but I must remind myself that they are only 3rd graders and they really did have soooo much fun making them.


Things are rockin busy at the Lutton house! I enjoyed some way super fun shopping after Thanksgiving. My "team" and I were in and out by 1:30ish. We have sooo much fun each and every year. My long time friend Jill and her supper sassy cousin Lexi and I usually stand in the cold a couple hours but man do we grab up bargains and laugh a ton! We kept calling ourselves shopping ninjas. :) Good time!
That is me in the WHITE coat. :)  At this time we had been waiting outside of Toys R Us for over an hour and it dawned on me that in all the years we do this I had never snapped a photo.

We have been having some verb fun the past week. The kids really love the Youtube videos!! I have one I do for nouns and a couple I use for verbs. I use them as brain breaks before or after I teach the grammar lesson. 
They all get stuck in our heads and the students and I tend to hum them all day. Too funny! Play them and you will see. 


I also created a sassy irregular verbs chart! I say sassy because as I was teaching today a co-worker came in and complimented the chart. One of my girls pipped up that Mrs. Lutton likes to make her charts "sassy", ha!


We did nouns last week. I've shown this noun song for a couple years now and I really like it!! The kids practically memorize it. Beware!! This one will sooo get stuck in your head!! ;)

I had mentioned yesterday that I was diving into a new summarizing strategy called 3-2-1. I'm really liking this method for focusing student thinking during reading! It goes right along with my tracking your thinking lessons. I have a little pic of a kinda sassy chart I whipped up today. The flash was a little defiant so this is the best I have. :(
I admit it is a little top heavy but I really like to add color to draw interest. We are focusing our school wide writing prompt towards a nonfiction summary. Any thoughts or suggestions on this girls?!?!

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around 3-2-1 as a summarizing tool. I see it more for focusing student thoughts during reading by giving them specific things to look for/think about during reading.  I'm still working out the kinks!!  :)

Right now we are studying nonfiction text features. FUN!! I use the Comprehension Toolkit by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis. I have never taught out of the 2-3 grade version but I would love to own it!! Maybe I'll suggest that to Santa!! Ha!





For interventions right now I'm in charge of the on grade level to just above grade level students and we are doing a hodge podge of the toolkit intervention and a cool 3-2-1 summarizing technique that we just learned. We are using the super cool National Geographic kids magazines that come in two different levels. If any of you have experience/opinions about the 3-2-1 summarizing technique I would LOVE to hear about it!!




You all know of my Pinterest obsession!! I pinned this super cool 3-2-1 summarizing graphic organizer and you should so check it out!! It is from none other than Lesson Plan SOS!! They rock!!



Come on over and check out my Pinterest wonderland!! I may have a bit of a pinning problem!! :) Don't tell my hubby!! :)

We have this wonderful (insert sarcastic voice/face) new evaluation at our school and one of the categories we have to get ranked on is lesson plans. We provide them when asked and we get a score between 1-4. Now, to get the fat 4 you have to include Common Core within. I have been looking around at online sites that make adding in the core a little bit easier. I haven't found "the one" just yet but I have a couple I'm trying out. I'm linking up with A Teacher's Treasure. She is hosting a Lesson Plan Linky party. Fun huh?! (more proof of my nerdness)


As far a online lesson sites I'm currently going to stick with Planbookedu.com. I like the layout better and you have options for layouts when you print. It is super easy to forward plans or attach files. I included  youtube videos in my plans and they show right up for the admin. to click and see. It is set up much like Blogger with the HTML and all. 
The other site that a few of my co-workers use is called Planbook.com. (easy to confuse huh?) I hated the way these looked when I printed them. The CC was a little easier to add but ugh I hate the way they print.