Please consider donating!

I am really wanting to have a listening center this year! I really think that my students would benefit from it. In order to get the books on CD I need help. I am already paying for the CD player, the headphone splitter, and the 5 sets of headphones out of my own pocket. The money donated will go to purchasing one book on CD and 4 additional copies of each book so that students can follow along in their own books and not have to share. I would like to have many different books so that students will have to repeat books throughout the year. Please consider donating to my classroom project!


My Adopt A Classroom page


When I reach my goal and have my listening center set up I will take a picture of the finished product!

Time to catch up...and an apology!

Last year was my first year of teaching first grade. It was a crazy, hectic, and eventful year. I apologize for not keeping my blog updated and I am really going to try to catch you up on all of the things I did in my class last year. I will be teaching first grade again this year! I will do my best to keep you updated this year on all the things we do. I am SO excited about some of the fun things I am thinking of doing this year! Through trial and error I have learned a lot about what works and what didn't!

I have been working over the summer with one of my grade level teachers. We worked very well together last year and decided to continue our partnership this year. Don't you love it when you get to work with someone you can truly collaborate with? Anyway, I had some things I really enjoyed doing last year and some great anchor charts! Here are just a few examples:

This first one is not my classroom (I can't find the picture of mine) but I did the same thing. I found this on Pinterest.

I had kids work in groups. Each group was responsible for making a chain and then they had to come up the addition number sentence that is represented by the chain. There are 10 black links on each chain and then there are between 0 and 10 pink links. 

The next few anchor charts are from my room. Some are inspired from Pinterest others are my own thought process.

Nick Noun, Abby Adjective, and Vicky Verb. The first thing we did was discuss adjectives nouns and verbs. The kids were then given 3 sticky notes (with one adj, one noun, and one verb) when they walked into class. They had to read the word (or have it read to them) then decide if it was an adjective, noun, or verb. During ELA the students were reminded of what adjectives, nouns, and verbs were and each sticky note was discussed and was put in the right category (I may have missed something with all the sticky notes). The anchor charts were then hung up and used as a reference.

These are two of my favorite anchor charts! I use these in both ELA and science. My students use these as references for a variety of things!

How do we add? How do we subtract?

These anchor charts gave students a variety of ways to look at adding and subtracting as well as gave them important vocabulary that they needed to know.

Story structure. This is an important concept in first grade. 1st graders need to understand that there are three parts to story structure. Characters, Plot, Setting. Within plot they need to be able to identify the beginning, middle, and end. This anchor chart helps them remember when we discuss story structure.

On the left is my science plant unit vocabulary chart. On the right is my FAVORITE part of my room! My science corner not only holds all of our experiments (you can see our plants) but it also gives a space for student work when it comes to science. The work that is in the picture is student flower diagrams and parts of a plant (with vegetables - root, leaves, flower, stem). 

I have a few other anchor charts - a map, reading. I will post when I can get into my classroom. These are some of my favorite anchor charts.

6 Days and Counting!

Classroom Management - UGH! That is ALWAYS a tough part of our jobs as teachers! I am FAR from an expert but one of the tools I used last year I LOVED! I did something called a Secret Student.

Every morning I would pick a name, the kids would watch me (or sometimes I let them pick with their eyes closed!). That student was our secret student. All day long the kids wouldn't be told who the student was. But I would say things like "I am going to look around and see if our secret student is following directions", "I wonder if our secret student is walking quietly in the hall?" The kids would usually get really quiet and do whatever it is they are supposed to be doing. The BEST part of the secret student is at the end of the day! I would announce who our secret student is but I would do it in a fun way - CLUE! I would have students start out guessing who they think it is. Then I would say "Our secret student is a BOY" and I would have all of the boys stand up. "Our secret student is wearing BLUE JEANS, any boy not wearing blue jeans sit down", I would continue to describe the secret student and have students not matching the description sit down. When we had just a few students left I would have them come to the front of the classroom. I would ask the students if the students still standing matched the clues that I had given them. I would continue to give clues until only one student was left standing. At that point I would ask that student if they followed directions, followed the classroom and school rules, and didn't get into trouble, usually they know if they did what they were supposed to do. If they were successful they would pick a prize, if not I would remind them that they need to follow the rules and do better next time. Whether they succeeded or not their name would go back in the running for the next day, while most of the time I would "make sure" students weren't called two days in a row, sometimes I would call them the next day so that they and the other students knew that just because their name was called one day didn't mean they could goof off the next day! I didn't use this certificate last year but I think I will this year!

The kids also had a lot of fun with this! They would always remind me to pick the secret student and that I had to reveal the secret student at the end of the day!

7 Days and Counting!

I have made my first big decision about the first day of school. Our school's open house is two days before the first day of school. I will have a packet of information that I will give to parents and one of those sheets will be an "All About Me" sheet. Here is something similar to what I will be doing.

On the first day of school they will (hopefully) bring in their All About Me sheets. I will give the students a face and they will color themselves. When they are finished they will introduce themselves to the class and their pictures and with their info sheets will go up outside the classroom.

The next thing I plan to do on the first day of school is read two books.

Two great books about being uncertain and a little scared about starting 1st grade.

On day two I will start the day by reading this book:

I hope you will consider these books when thinking about how to start your school year!

8 Days and counting!

One of my summer projects was a wreath for my classroom door. Thanks to Pinterest I found the perfect one.

There were a couple of things I found challenging about this. The first is figuring out what kind of wreath to use. I ended up using a three ring green metal wreath. The next challenge was guessing how many boxes of crayons I needed to make the wreath. I used the boxes of 24 crayons and they are the cheap Walmart crayons, it ended up taking 11 or 12 boxes but the wreath is pretty big! I also had a little trouble with attaching the crayons. I used hot glue to secure the crayons and with metal rings on the wreath being so thin I was a little worried they would come off easily. I ended up turning the wreath over and gluing the crayons from the other side as well. This wreath is also 2 layers of crayons not just 1. I chose to do it that way because I wanted some depth and I REALLY didn't want to see the metal support behind the crayons because honestly, my crayons were not spaced out completely evenly. With doing a second layer it isn't really noticeable. If I were to do this again I would not have put the bow - I think it is ugly and initial is a cheap foam letter from Walmart clearance, I would use wood next time.

9 Days and Counting!

With 9 days left before I get into my classroom to start organizing before students return my mind has been reeling with ideas of what I loved doing last year and what things I don't think I will repeat. The following are some ideas that I either loved or liked.

I thought I would post some of the things I really enjoyed doing last year in my classroom. The first thing is my doors. For Halloween and Christmas I decorated the door to my classroom I will be doing it again but man was it a lot of work!

 The one thing that I might do differently are the snowflakes. I cut out each snowflake myself and hot glued them to the wall and door...THAT was rough! Both the noses stood out from the door, which was a little complicated and I had to keep fixing, never mind kids hitting them as they walked down the hall.

I also do these monthly family projects. I LOVED doing these, the first month I did it I didn't have a lot of success, I think because parents didn't completely know what to expect. But these are the ones for December and some parents and kids got VERY creative. I gave the parents 2-3 weeks to work on the projects at home. The project for December was that the Gingerbread Man was worried he was going to be eaten during the holidays so he needed the kids help to disguise himself so that he wouldn't be eaten. A cute little poem went along with the copy of the Gingerbread Man. The day that the Men were due the kids came up and presented their boy/girl.

While everyone did a great job, some went above and beyond. The second photo shows just how creative the family's got!

 

Finally, for Mother's Day the kids made these projects for their moms. It was not that hard, while I really liked it I might look for something different this year.

Just to make sure I give proper credit, the door ideas, although my own I got the ideas from a fellow teacher down the hall who got her idea from Pinterest. The Mother's Day idea also came from Pinterest, and the family projects came from a fellow teacher who taught next door to me!

Welcome To My Blog!

Since this is my first year teaching 1st grade I wanted to document my journey as well as give others some ideas that may inspire them in their own classrooms!

Kids start back to school August 14th, it is only 3 1/2 weeks away and I can't believe how quickly this summer has FLOWN by! Right now my mind is just spinning with ideas for my classroom. Unfortunately I can't get into my classroom until August 5th to start setting up and getting organized. In the meantime I am getting ideas and craft projects together. 

The first thing I have done to get ready is organize my worksheets. When I taught 3rd grade I put my worksheets in folders and put them in a filing cabinet. The problem I had with that though was it wasn't very organized and it was hard to find things quickly. So, I decided that I was going to try a different organizational method. I bought a ton of sheet protectors and placed each worksheet into a sheet protector (If I had more than one copy and I would just put them all in the same protector). I then bought large binders and separated the worksheets into categories. ELA, Math, Science/Social Studies (I combined these two since I didn't have a lot - I need to find more! lol), Beginning of school, holidays, and themes (specific book themes or author themes). I had to buy several heavy duty binders but I will say I am excited about this idea because I can already see how much easier finding worksheets will be! Now, you can color code your binders which would be great and colorful but since I didn't want to pay a ton of money for colored binders I got plain white and then used sticky labels and labeled the binders. Eventually I hope to go to colored binders because they will look so much nicer, but right now this will do. 

I got really lucky. I subbed for a pre-k class at the end of the year last school year. I found out about my job while I was still working. I had a lot of teachers bring me things they no longer needed/wanted. I got tubs, worksheets, posters, pocket charts, you name it that I will need to teach 1st grade! 

I also have some crafts I have worked on and I will take pictures and post them as soon as I can!