Efficient Mornings

I strongly believe in routine and building efficiency in the classroom. With 21 students there has to be a form of routine as they enter the room or nothing would ever get accomplished. I love the morning routine my mentor teacher has established and I am continuing in her classroom. Students come in, hang their jackets on their hooks and place book bags in the laundry baskets (let's be real... those hooks are not enough space for backpacks and jackets so I love the laundry basket idea!). Next, they place their snack and homework folders in the labeled baskets. After this, they use the restroom or make a lunch choice (either can be first). They each have a clothes pin with their name to clip their lunch choice. She printed pictures of all the lunches so they can see and read the choices. After all of these tasks are complete students get busy on morning work/ unfinished work/ work that needs to be corrected from the day before. They are very efficient and I love having the routine!

Roller Skating!

At P.E. our students had the chance to roller skate! My mentor teacher and I decided to join them. She is the most wonderful mentor ever! I am learning so much from her and I am so fortunate to have someone so fun to work with every day. She loves teaching and is great at her job. It is fantastic to have someone so great as an example! 

Sight Word Practice

Best idea ever from my mentor teacher: to practice sight words my mentor teacher has students read them on flash cards and then read them on these strips. They place their finger on the green dot and read the words to themselves and place their finger back on the green dot when they are finished. Each strip has the words in different order so students read and pass to the right and read again. All students read at the same time but she picks one student and listens to them. It is done in small groups so eventually she listens to each student.  It is one of those things that is hard to explain but once you see it in action you understand!

Around the Clock

I just took on teaching math and got the joy of teaching time to my wonderful first graders! Some materials I found very useful were a big teacher clock with colored hands, and small individual clocks for each child. The standard states that students will be able to read time to the hour and half hour. I began by reading "What Time is It, Mr. Crocodile?" The kids really loved this book and they helped me guess what time would come next. As I read I wrote all the times shown on the clocks in the book up on the smart board. I continued the lesson by introducing different types of clocks, pointing out the hour and minute hand. We practiced learning these hands by writing the word minute and seeing it was longer than the word hour. I also said, "When I say minute hand you say long hand." "When I say long hand, you say minute hand." then, "When I say short hand you say hour hand." "When I say hour hand, you say short hand." The first day we just saw how the hands moved around the clock and learned how to read time as "o'clock" when the minute hand is pointing to the 12. After practicing reading several different hours, we did a closing called "ticket out the door." Students had to stand up one by one and tell me what time I was showing them on the clock. Each student had to read a different time before lining up for recess.

Changing Strips

We have a wonderful  color strip system that works in our classroom. Each student has a pocket with five different colored strips inside. Green is where students start. Students have the chance to go up or down all day long. If a student is misbehaving the student will receive a verbal warning or will be asked to sit out of the activity. If that student is still misbehaving the result will be changing their strip to yellow and a a note will go home to the parents and the child will stand out for five minutes of recess. If the child continues to misbehave it will result in the teacher asking the child to move their strip to red. If a child is on red then a note will go home and the child will miss ten minutes of recess. Students can also move up in their behavior pocket. If a child is doing the right thing and setting a good example for the rest of the class the child will be asked to move their strip to purple. If that child continues to set a great example then the child will move their strip to blue. At the end of the day the students all get paid based on their color strip. Blue is 25 cents, purple is 10 cents, green is 5 cents, and yellow/ red worth nothing. On Fridays the kids all get to go shopping at the school store.

Valentine's Day Treats!

I was inspired to do this from a post on pinterest so I must give credit to the original creative mind that came up with this cute idea. Students get way too much candy on Valentine's Day and I did not want to give them more sugar so I gave them glow stick bracelets instead. They loved the bracelets!

Definition Squares

My friend who is student teaching in 4th grade made these great sheets to help students remember the definition of mean, median, mode, and range. I thought this was a great idea and could be created for several different subjects to help students remember new lessons. For example I could make a first grade one with penny, nickel, dime, quarter and on the inside have how much each is worth and how many make a dollar.

Guided Reading Made Fun

A group of my students read the book, "Dictionary of Animals." I wanted to teach the students to categorize information so we first practiced categorizing our group. The students came up with some creative categories: boys and girls, people who can only speak one language and people who can speak two, everyone wearing yellow, blue, or white. After reading the book we looked back to see some facts about each animal category then I gave each student two note cards with facts. The students had to look back in the book to see the category that their fact fit.

One of my student's guided reading books was an informational book that taught how to make clay creatures. Instead of just reading the book and answering the guided reading questions we actually took the time to follow the steps of making clay creatures! This book instantly became a favorite of the student's. We were able to complete the activity and read the book in 20 minutes.

Work Stations- Writing, Pocket Charts, Big Books, Library, Buddy Read, Word Work

Writing station- all types of paper provided. Students draw a picture and write about it or write about a class photo.

Library- Students get to relax on pillows and select books of different genres to read.

Pocket charts- Students match contractions and two words.

Big book- Students point and read to each other with fun pointers.

Magnetic letters to practice spelling words!

Puppets for the book "There's a Shark in the Park" Students can act out the book while reading. The puppets were drawn by the teacher and printed on card stock. Use craft sticks to create handle and let the kids color!

Persuasive Poster/ Advertisement

After a two weeks of reading persuasive mentor texts and teaching my students the parts of a persuasive piece (O.R.E.O.-Opinion, Reasons, Examples, Opinion), we decided to make a class advertisement poster. My students voted on the place we would like to advertise and Disney World won. As a class we came up with an opinion (Disney World is the most fun place in the USA), some reasons (they have lots of princesses and characters, fun roller coasters and rides) and examples (see Mickey Mouse, you can talk to NEMO). I designed the poster and allowed the students to trace the words and color in Mickey Mouse! They LOVED this activity!!