Habitats!

Hey ya'll!

We do a HUGE 3 week unit on habitats! We study the Savanna, the Rainforest, and the Ocean. We do one habitat each week, and we focus the first day on the habitat, the second day on the animals, the third day on the people, and the fourth day we put it all together with writing! (And on Fridays we did an art project for that habitat)

This year I chose to organize the kids' units using file folders. They just glued a piece of paper that was divided into 3 sections on to a part of the file folder, and then each day we wrote in one section. Then the next week we glued another paper in. This kept them from getting mixed up and made it easier look at to grade, PLUS I could then put their 4th day writing papers inside the file folders when we were all done! Voila!

If I was more with it I would have handy dandy pictures to show you of a completed file folder, but I sent them all home during parent/teacher conference week!

I DO have pictures of a few of the anchors we created, though! One the ocean one, everything on the anchor they also wrote in their folder over the 3 days, and the other 2 weeks looked very similar for the other habitats.

Here is us working on a guided art project to make a picture of a rainstorm at sunset in the savanna! This was actually quite ambitious for me to do during the 3rd week of school, but they LOVED it, and so did I!

The finished products! They were all so beautiful!

The kids LOVE this unit! And they all learn SO much! Parents were really excited to get to take their units home, and I heard a lot of, "Oh! They came home everyday tell me about this!" My teacher heart was SO happy!

Math!

Hey, there!

I LOVE teaching math! Looooove it! Our team has an awesome self-created curriculum that we follow too. One of our teachers went to the SUMS training a few years back, and it was all about how math should progress to make the most sense, especially in schools that serve low-income areas. So, we took the research-based progression, tweaked it here and there to make it work for us, and wrote all of our own lesson plans to go with it! It has been a serious labor of love, but when your district says they won't buy curriculum and they don't really want you using the old stuff either... You do what you gotta do! You create! It's very refreshing to be treated like the expert when it comes to educating our students. So, here are a few pictures of what we've been up to! (And, unfortunately, I do mean a FEW. It is soooo hard to remember to snap picture when you're, you know, teaching.)

Number Bracelets! We did these last week (or the week before) as the middle of our decomposing numbers unit. The recording pages are a freebie from TPT (find it here). I snag pipe cleaners whenever I see them at Target Dollar Spot, and the beads I found at Dollar Tree this year!

 Rekenreks! We made our rekenreks ourselves with window blinds, stretchy string, and beads. My team made these the same summer I got married, so they made mine for me! But we do a lot with the rekenreks to help us find different combinations of numbers.

And that's all I have... :(   It's SO hard to remember to take pictures when they are in the middle of working! I have been doing a little better by using Instagram to catch them in the moment doing math, so feel free to check that out here.

I will try to get some actual posts about actual lessons for both math and ELA because we do some awesome stuff!

Routines and Procedures

Hello!

Let's chat about how I get my room up and running! There are quite a few little pieces that all have to come together to run an effective classroom. :)

The Rules:

I use Whole Brain Teaching in my classroom. (well, parts of it, but I want to add more!) So, we go over our 5 rules every single day. Complete with hand motions! At this point in the year, my calendar person is the one who actually leads the class, and it's SUPER cute! I'll have to record it one morning.

In the beginning of the year we talk about what all the rules mean and why we follow them, and then later in the year I can just say, "Rule 2" and they know EXACTLY what I mean! I have quite a few little guys who love to blurt out, so I love having an easy way to remind them that makes them stop for a second and think about what they're doing. 

Schedule: 

I am counting my schedule because we go over it Every.Single.Day. They know what each card is, and what we are doing during that time, and they are aware of any changes in our schedule as soon as they walk in and see it. It actually gets to the point where they're practically dependent on it, and if I forget to change something, they totally freak out and call me on it! But I'm glad they know where to look to see what's happening.

Active Listening:

This one is HUGE. Our entire campus made an Active Listening anchor chart as part of our first 20 days of school. They all have the same components to them, and every child knows what it meant by active listening. We build the chart together and go over every single piece. It is referred to all year, and all you have to do after a few weeks is say, "I need Active Listening." or, "I need 100%." and they will all immediately straighten up. It has also helped our reading and math specialists, and our specials teachers because they know that all the kids know this.

Partner Talk:
I follow Whole Brain Teaching for this one too! We all built the same anchor in first grade, but each teacher has made it fit her room. So, for the "wait until teacher tells you what and when to share" I use the "Teach/Okay" from WBT. I also assign partners using WBT, so, at the beginning, they are apples and trees, and right now they are stingrays and jellyfish, and then next month they'll be a new thing! Each month they get a new partner and a new thing to be. We also worked a TON on being able to share what your partner said to you instead of just what you said to your partner. :)

Volume Meter:

We did not do this last year, and I have seen it alllll over Pinterest and always wanted to try it, so when one of the teachers on our team just went ahead and did it, we all jumped right on board! It's pretty self-explanatory and it seriously works wonders. I even have kids saying things like, "we're on yellow right now, announcements are on."

Engagement:

This piece was also new this year, but it was really helpful to teach it! My kiddos are excellent at the WHAT and the WAY, but we seriously struggle with the WHEN. So, it's our class goal to get better at that part. I am often reminding them of Rule #1: Follow directions quickly! We did one piece of this each day and gave examples of what it would be like if we didn't do it. So, for the what, we played Simon Says, for the Way we did a guided drawing and stopped partway through as if we were done, and talked about how if we don't finish it the right way we'll never know what it is. And for then when we got them all hyped about doing something fun, and then stalled until we "didn't have time" and talked about how that felt, and then did the fun thing. Super duper effective! And my kiddos are finally getting better about that last part!

Phew! That was a long one! Thanks for sticking with it! It it SO true what they say about doing it right the first time. Spending tons of time on rules and procedures with really focused lessons in the beginning of the year, saves so much frustration later on!

Behavior Management

Hey, ya'll!

I am here to tell you that I do NOT use the clip chart. I used it my first year. I used it my second year. I threw it away my third year, and I have not looked back!

I liked the clip chart. It worked GREAT with my 4th graders my first year of teaching. They could earn little jewels to put on their clips if they clipped off, after 5 jewels they retired their clip to the Wall of Fame, and I bought them candy. Then we switched to a coin system that the 5th grade team came up with, so I clipped and gave bonus coins for jewels.

My second year teaching I switched schools, but I kept it up because the entire school used it and the kids could earn sparkly bees from the office. It worked for me.

Then, last year happened, and it was not effective. At all. The kids did not respond to being on the different colors. They did not care about the sparkly bees. They just wanted to be on their favorite color, even if it was BELOW green! I had kids who WANTED to be RED because they liked red! Whaaaaat!?

So, I had to switch. HAD. TO. SWITCH. One of my teammates had been having similar issues, and she had switched her kids to Super Bucks. So, I took a leaf out of her book and switched my kids to Dino Bucks. Super Hero themed classroom=Super Bucks, so Dinosaur theme=Dino Bucks.

It changed my life! They responded. They WANTED bucks! They did not want to lose bucks. It was amazing! I do Fun Friday in my room for an hour each Friday, so now they had to buy their choices with their bucks. Didn't have enough for the iPad? Guess you have to work harder next week! And then they did. It was amazing.

So, I kept it up this year, and it has been just as wonderful! We talk about how adults get paid to do their job, so we were doing the same thing in our room. Their job was to work and to follow the rules, and my job is to teach. Then we talked about how if I break the law I have to pay, so if they were breaking rules they would have to pay. BUT. They can always earn it back for turning their behavior around, and I have been very consistent with them earning it back this year! At the end of each day, they tell me how many (out of 4) they think they earned. If I disagree because they are saying 4 when they were in trouble quite I bit I just tell them to reconsider, and they do, and they will tell me 3 or even 2. I also give bonus bucks whenever I see kids going above and beyond.

On Fridays they count their bucks, I write it down on a paper that says, "I earned ____ bucks this week." and then I check if they are doing great, making improvements, or if they are having trouble and need to set a goal. So far, I have not had anyone need to set a goal because they all loooooove earning their bucks every day!

They keep their bucks in little library pocket cards. Sometimes I have issues with kids stealing bucks, but I can usually figure out who it is because they come to me with, like, 35 bucks when the max is 16 unless they earn bonus bucks. So we chat, and they lose their bucks that week, and it never seems to happen again.

I adore this system! It works for me and for my kids. The whole 1st grade uses it, and there has been talk about maybe getting the other grades to switch over too. Maybe this is the year that you, too branch out from the clip chart! There's a whole wide world of management out there, and it actually works!

Computer is 12 and iPad is 15. I added those in later because the first few weeks we didn't use any technology.

The First 2 Weeks

Hello!

Looooong time, no blog! But here I FINALLY am again!

Don't let the title fool you, however, because we are currently in our 8th week of school. I just have not found the time to get anything posted. Like, AT ALL. So, here is a quick (poorly photographed) re-cap of our first few weeks.

First off, in my last post, I showed you guys the cute frame I make that said First Grade on it from the first day of school. Well, here are a few of the interviews we did to go along with our pictures! They came out SO cute! I also (finally) got them up in classroom where I'm going to keep them all year, and then at the end of the year we'll do the questions again to see how they compare. :)

Secondly, we started Zoo Phonics this year! Kinder kinds started it last year, and then this year K and 1 are committed all the way! Let me tell you, it's AMAZING! I have never ever seen such strong spellers this early in the year. Such an awesome program!

As part of the beginning of the year review we built our own alphabet zoos! Each group had some letters, and they had to find pictures of animals or things that started with their letter. They LOVED this! Loooooooved.

For the first two weeks of school we do Fables and Folktales. We read a Fable or Folktale each day, fill in the chart for the story elements, and then do some kind of craftivity. Here is the chart partially filled out! We also did Peter Rabbit, Anansi the Spider, The Fox and the Grapes, and one more that I can't think of off the top of my head.

Here are our Anansi the Spiders that we made! We do this story last, so this craft just becomes that Friday's art project. :)

I also tend to read Rainbow Fish pretty early in the year because it's a fun and familiar story, and making the Rainbow Fish is always fun!

So there is a tiny peek into our first two weeks! In math we are working hard on subitizing and then we move into equality, and addition, and decomposing numbers. Then we just decompose and decompose and decompose so that we get TONS of practice with seeing what combinations make which numbers. It makes addition easier and faster, and makes story problems about a gazillion times easier too!

That's all I got for right now! I'm going to work my butt off to do more! I just could not find time between the start of the school year, moving from an apartment into a house, and starting grad school But now I have a better sense of my schedule and how to balance things, so I hope I can rock it second quarter with actually blogging regularly!