Thursday, October 11, 2012

Its fall Ya'll

So we are busy busy in first grade getting in the fall feeling!!! I have been reading lots of books, bringing in as many crafts as I can!  One thing we recently did was read the story "The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin."  I am in love with this story and now so are my students.  After reading it I let the students pick a piece of construction paper and we made our own, oddly shaped, any color pumpkin.  We then wrote a little bit about our pumpkin.  Things like, its name, and describing it.  Here is a photo...







It is Scarecrow day tomorrow. A whole day all about scarecrows.  We do scarecrow activities, a hoedown, make a scarecrow bagel, and many more fun things that the kids really enjoy.  As well as each teacher dressing up like a scarecrow!!!  To get the kids thinking about scarecrows we made these large guys and wrote a little bit about them!


Here is my new door.  Unfortunately I am in a portable and the wind and rain ruin everything I put on my door, so it all has to be laminated and easily taken off.  So I wish it could be prettier, but I do the best I can!



Megan!

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Sewing.....Sewing....


So I made a dress and skirt today... this is the blog that I used to help with the dress (click here)... Although i didn't use the same fabric so I had to hem all my edges.  This cute fabric i found on sale for 4 dollars a yard!!! Then the skirt I just kind of guessed out to make it and it turned out ok... we will see what happens when I try to wear it.  I think I need to add belt loops to it, since its too big ha!



Love, Megan

New School....

So we are moving our school location and we had to make some posters so show parents where are our new classrooms would be located and we let the students write their names on the concrete prior to flooring being put into the buildings.  Here are some photos of that fun fun event.
Here is one of my kids names on the floor.  Yay now its like there own!  Such a cute idea that another teacher at my school came up with.
Here is our lovely poster to go on our classroom window!!!!

So to make filling a bucket easier for the first graders this year I tried this to start off instead of them writing something to the student whose bucket they would like to fill.  So there is a bucket with all sorts of encouraging words in it.  The students pick a word and fill their friends bucket.  Once they have learned all the words, then I will create a multiple choice slip, where they circle the word they would like to give to their friend, towards the end of the year I am going to let the kids write the words.  These words are just a little to above their level right now though so we are starting our more simplistic.  I saw this idea on pinterest.  What a great idea!!!!

I forgot to take pictures of guided reading stuff while I was at school, so I will be doing that hopefully next week and adding some bulletin boards soon!  Now off to make a dress that will soon be posted!!!

Love, Megan

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Guided Reading

So I have made several different guided reading lessons plans, but through all my moving of schools, they are lost bummer.  I made a new one last night to fit the needs of my teaching.  I will post some pictures of guided reading and how it works in my classroom as well.  Here is the form that I made.
Here is another Guided Reading paper that I made.  This one stays at the front of each groups binder and I list all of this things on it so I can keep track at a glance rather than having to look through all my lessons.  Enjoy!



Megan

Clean up Time!

So cleaning up for my little kiddos is a little messy.  I just made up a song tonight that I am going to teach them tomorrow, and see how it goes.  They seem to like the rhythm of the poems and things so I am sure it will work fabulous.  Its to the "Here we go around the Mulberry Bush" tune.   Its easy to change and fit to your own classroom needs!  Hopefully it works wonders tomorrow!!! :-)


Now its time to clean up, clean up, clean up, 
now its to clean up, clean up our centers

Make sure everythings put away, put away, put away
Make sure everythings put away
in the blue basket

Crayons, pencils, are off the floor, off the floor, off the floor
Crayons and pencils are off the floor
and in the blue basket

Sitting with hands in popcorn balls, popcorn ball, popcorn balls, 
sitting with hands in popcorn balls, 
Ready to listen.

Now off to bed! Yay tomorrow is Friday!  Have more to post about some home things I have made!

Megan

Sunday, September 30, 2012

More Classroom things

So wanted to add some more pictures of my classroom.  Some of the stuff I came up with myself, some of it, I stole from my favorite website pinterest!  A lot of the items people were selling, buy my thought was umm let me make it myself!  So here you go with more teaching ideas to use.


I made this so parents can just drop things off for me (permission slips, money for field trips, etc.) in the box rather than interrupting during class time!


Since my students last year loved to lose all of the bathroom passes or break them, I made these, so they stick to there clothes then come right off.  Its working out wonderfully.



So we do bucket filling, but my class is crazy talkative so I brought in a class bucket as well.  Now they get warm fuzzes (big puff balls) when they are all being good and respectful.  When the class bucket is full, we get a popcorn party and movie!  They really fight for these...

Quiet critters, great for when we are taking a test or quiet reading.  I pass them out and each student gets one.  If they talk theres is gone.  If the whole group still has theres when the time is over that team gets team points.  They also don't come out of there "home" very often so the kids think these are a very big deal.
Calming caddy for those kids who are hysterical... lots of sensory objects to calm them down.


This I love, we do this everyday.  Most classes do calendar first thing in the morning.  I do it the last hour of the day.  It actually really helps my class to calm down and they are so tired anyway its a great activity.  This is for the weather watcher.  I have special glasses they wear.  Then they come in and get to say a sentence about the weather and write it.  While the weather watcher is writing the sentence on the board, the whole class is writing on whiteboards on the carpet.  This is really helping them to learn how to spell words and work on sentence structure.  I love it!

This goes along with calendar time.  The "Cub of the Cave" or student of the week, gets to write the daily news everyday.  Here again the student writes on the board, while the rest of the kids are writing on whiteboards on the rug.  Slowly they are all learning how to write the date, months, and how to use quotation marks or as well call them "talking marks."  

This is the poem I say for transitions from the rug to desks or desks to the rug.  It works great.  Now they go much faster.  Before they used to take there sweet time walking from one place to another.

Fishing for A.R. points.  A.R. is a really big deal at my school so we keep track of it in our classroom.  For my kids to go along with our bear/forest theme, each student is in a canoe.  For every ten points they earn they get a different fish or mermaid, whale, treasure box, etc.  They don't all live in rivers, but hey.... it was hard to find that many fish haha.  If you look on the bottom left you can see I have one child with a fish already.


This has become a lifesaver for centers this year.  The kids were getting very confused with where they are supposed to go, so each center group has a color.  They colors are also listed with where they should be every 15 minutes.  Its lovely and they love to wear them.

The numbers here I use as well as a hundreds chart to count how many days in school. I put them above the board and we count by 2's, 5's, and 10's everyday.  The pattern helps the kids to know which one to count!

These I made last year so I don't have to write the schedule on the board everyday.  I just laminated and  put magnetic tape on the back.  I love these, makes my life so much easier.  There is one for everything that we do!


Hope you find some of my ideas or pinterest ideas helpful.  Happy Teaching!!!

Love, Megan

My Life as a Teacher

So its now the 5th Week of school and we are moving along.   My classroom is the Brilliant Bear Cubs and we are getting in the groove of centers, rules, how to walk in line, etc.  Here are some pictures of my classroom before the students arrived and some crafts I did to start the year!

This is how it looked before the first day of school... Survival bags placed on each desk

My Library... I made the stumps out of old buckets for the kids to sit on.



The carpet and meeting area.  




I made this chair for student of the week.  The kids get to sit on it, instead of the rug, when its there week.

These cute little apples went to the parents on Cirriculum night, or Back to School night as most schools call it.

Friday night the husband and I went to a Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan concert it was a great way to end the long week!


More to come about my classroom later. There is lots to update and to share!
Love, Megan