Classroom Reveal 2016

     My classroom is ready and done for now. I always move things around throughout the year. It may look completely different in a couple of weeks.

     My room is tiny, and we are packed in tight. It does help me stay organized because there is absolutely no room for piles or messes. 

      I keep my decorations to minimum, and only keep up current anchor charts. This helps students focus in on what is important and current. 

     The bulletin boards are new this year. They also hung a bulletin board for each teacher out in the hallway this summer. It has been five years since I had a bulletin board or a guided reading table. I was so happy to walk in my room on the first day back and see these things.

                                           
   
       They also bought me a rug, a teacher's desk, and two rolling shelves. I now have a decent amount of storage for my room.
                                             

     I'm thankful for my cozy, little room and all the learning that will take place in it this school year!

And So It Begins

     Wednesday was our first official day of school. I love that we start on Wednesday, it gives me time to ease back into our school routine. For the first time in two years, I have a brand new to me class, so we spent a lot of time practicing routines and procedures. We used the conversation starters from Amy Lemons and Hope King's Back 2 School Engagement Made Easy unit to get to know each other and practice our partner talk procedures. These students were really good listeners; they could always tell what their partner said when asked.

     Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes is one of my favorite back to school read alouds. Before we read, I told the students I wanted them to pay attention to how Lilly feels as different events happen in the story. As we read, I stopped at a couple of places to have them predict how Lilly was feeling after different events. Then we brainstormed Lilly's different feelings and added them to our chart. 

     We also started our self portraits. I love to do self portraits at the beginning and end of the year to see how much their abilities grow.  The students were pretty impressed with their drawing skills. On Thursday and Friday, we finished our portraits, created our all about me flap books, and then mounted our finished products on construction paper to display in the hallway. Both activities are from  Amy and Hope's Back 2 School Engagement unit. I'm so proud of how they turned out. 

      We review and practiced our rules using activities from my Classroom Rules Pack. 

     We also read Edward the Emu and used the predictions activities from Amy Lemons and Katie King's Rooted in Reading August unit. The students were excited to set up and begin using their reading notebooks. I can already tell I have a deep thinkers like this sweetie.

     My own boys started 1st and 5th grade this week. My step-son starts his sophomore year on Monday. Time seems to be moving so very quickly. 

                                      

    

     

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Classroom Rules

     We spent our Social Studies time the first week of school focusing on our classroom rules. On the first day, we introduced the rules. We talked about the rules contract they would discuss with their parents and sign for homework that night. We also sorted situations by whether or not students were following the rules and began working on our classroom rules book.

     On Thursday we sorted situations by the rule students were following. They were really into this! They got a little heated when they were explaining their reasoning. We continued working on our classroom rules book.

      On Friday we had a fill in the blank quiz about our rules. Then we finished up rules book. 

     These activities are from my Classroom Rules Pack. 

Back to School with Pirates

     During the first week of school, our reading and writing activities centered around the book, Pirates Go To School by Corinne Demas. All of my students were super pumped about the pirate book!

     On the first day, we read the story and focused on the Pirates' character traits. I modeled identifying the traits and using evidence from the text to confirm the character traits. Then we charted  their character traits and the students had to support their answers with evidence from the text. I teach two classes, so I recorded one set of answers on one color sticky notes and the other classes' answers on different color sticky notes.

     

     Then we sorted some pirate and school words by the number of syllables in each word. 

     On Thursday, we read Pirates Go To School again. This time we focused on the characters and setting. As we read, we identified the characters and the setting. Then we created an anchor chart and sorted pictures as an example of characters or setting.

     We also put pirate and school words in alphabetical order. 

The syllable sort and abc order activities will be added to a literacy station once we begin stations.

     We also worked on writing stories about what would happen if pirates were in our class. On Friday, we made pirates to go with our writing. The pirate patterns are from Rachel Lamb. You can get them here. 

      You can get my pirate activities in my store. 

      It was a successful first week of school!

Peek At My Week 8-24-15

     It's my first full week of school this week, so we're hitting the ground running. This week I'll begin introducing station activities-one a day until I feel we have enough to begin stations. I'm also going to begin DRA testing this week, so I can create my reading groups.

     It's such a blessing to have had both of these classes last year. We did a quick review of procedures, and things are running smoothly.

      You can download the pdf here.

Resources I'm using this week:

Writing Through The Year Unit 1

School is Cool! Literacy Stations

Head over to DeeDee's link up and view other lesson plans.

Peek at my Week-Back to School

     The first week of school has finally arrived! We have teacher inservice and meet the teacher on Monday. Then on Tuesday we have the day to use at our discretion. We can stay home or come in and work. Finally on Wednesday, the little darlings arrive! I am super excited because I will have two of my classes from last year.

     I teacher second grade English Language Arts and Social Studies in a university model of education school. We are a K-11th grade school this year. Next year, we will add 12th. We have two classes in each grade level. This year first though fourth grades will have all four core classes each day, so I'm going back to teaching five days a week after three years of teaching a Tuesday/Thursday only schedule. It's going to be an adjustment for our family, but I am so excited! I will teach 2nd grade ELA and SS in the morning to the B class, and then repeat the lessons in the afternoon for the A class. When the other class is not with me, they are with the math/science teacher. Our elementary students have PE two days a week, music two days a week, and art one day a week. We have a shorter school day; our students have classes from 8:30am until 1:50pm. Once I get my schedule worked out in practice and not just theory, I'll share that with you too.

      On to my plans. You can download the PDF here.

Resources for this week:

Pirates Go To School

Classroom Rules Pack


     Head over to DeeDee's to check out more lesson plans!

Back to School Resources and Sale

      Today begins the Teachers Pay Teachers two day Back to School sale! Here are some resources in my shop that are perfect for back to school.

     My classroom rules pack has rules posters in two sizes. It also have a couple of sorts to help your students understand what following these rules practically looks like. There is a rules contract to be taken home and signed by the teacher, student, and parent. There are also two versions (younger and older) of the Classroom Rules book for students to complete.

     My Pirates Go To School unit has reading, writing, and word work activities that are perfect for the first few days of school. The reading activities focus character traits, setting, and feelings. The word work activities include abc order and syllables. The word work activities are perfect to move into a literacy station. The writing is If pirates were in my class. These activities go with the book Pirates Go To School by Corinne Demas.

     Finally my School is Cool! literacy stations is filled with activities perfect for the beginning of the year and are a review of skills from first grade, but also address second grade TEKS. These stations come in a full color, partial color, and black and white version.

     You can save up to 28% off in my store with the code BTS15. 

Happy Shopping!!!

School is Cool! Literacy Stations

     I am so excited about these literacy workstations. I have been working on them for about a month now. There are a total of seven stations:

• Complete or Incomplete Sentences?
• Back to School Blends-th, cr, gl
• Ouch! Sight Word Game-review of first grade word list, includes two ways to play
• Nouns at School
• Easy as A-B-C-abc order
• School Routines-sequencing three events
• Packin' My Bag-spelling

     The sentences station has a color and a black and white version. All of the other stations have a full color, a partial color, and a black and white version. An answer key is included for each station so students can check their work when completed. There is also a recording sheet for each station. I'm going to print two or three copies of each recording sheet, laminate, and put in the station with a dry erase marker or crayon. I'll have students show me or their partner their work before they erase it. 

If you use the black and white version, I suggest printing them off on bright colored paper. 

     Now I just need my Mister to buy some printer ink, so I can get busy prepping these. School is Cool! Literacy Stations is on sale until July 1st. 

Classroom Rules Pack

     I just added my Classroom Rules Pack to my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Included in the pack are full and half page size rules poster as well as all the rules on one page.

     There are two different rule situation sorts. The first sort requires students to identify if students are following the rules. The second sort has students identify which of the class rules the situation card is describing.

     There is also a classroom rules book for students to make. The older student version includes a fill in the missing word with space to draw and write about the rule. The younger student version includes the rule and space for students to draw the rule.

     Also included is a fill in the blank worksheet that I use as an assessment at the end of the week, plus a contract to send home for students to review the rules with their parent. The contract has space to be signed by the student, parent, and teacher.

     You can purchase my Classroom Rules Pack here. It is on sale until tomorrow night at 8:00.

Pirates Go To School Literacy Unit

     We have been out of school for two weeks, and I'm already working on projects for next school year. After teaching science or math/science for three years, I'll now be teaching ELA and social studies. I've been working on my first week plans, and put together a unit to go with the book Pirates Go To School by Corinne Demas.

     There are reading lessons, anchor chart labels, and student response sheets for character traits, characters and settings, and character feelings. There are suggested stop to model points for character traits and feelings.

     There are word work lessons for syllable sorting and abc order. These activities can be done whole group, and then moved into a workstation.

     Finally there are writing plans for the prompt, If pirates were in my class. There are graphic organizers for prewriting and drafting, and example pages for the modeling I do. There are two different writing pages included as well.

     You can purchase my unit here in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. It will be on sale through tomorrow night.

CUBES, Mathematicians, & Place Value, Oh My!

     On the first day of math class, we began by making our promise about how we would behave and treat each other. You can read about that in the previous post. Then we read The Boy Who Loved Math and talked about mathematicians. Then as a whole class, we created a tree map about mathematicians. I see two classes for math, so I wrote their answers on stickies with different color marker and stacked overlapping responses on top of each other. As we were discussing and creating our tree map, the students were guided to the fact that we are all mathematicians. Then students came up with a real life example of when they use their mathematician skills to share in their table groups.

     Then I introduced my students to the CUBES problem solving strategy. I modeled using it for them. Then as a class we worked through three review problems together. I gave each student a little card with the strategy steps on it, so they'll remember what steps to go through as they work homework. We made this anchor chart to leave up in our room as well. 

     We began working with place value of whole numbers through the 999,999,999. We also began working on comparing and ordering whole numbers as well. We created this anchor chart for our classroom. The anchor chart matched the notes the students were filling in. 

     Whew! I know that looks like a lot and it is. My 4th mathematics students only see me on Tuesdays and Thursdays for two hours each day. We take advantage of every second we have together.