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My classroom is finally finished. Yea!! My reading table has a huge wipe board behind it. I've hung my phonics sounds poster, grammar, and writing posters at the top so I still have room for students to come up and practice writing words during small group instruction. I downloaded for free these years ago on TPT. I found them on pinterest. I'm not sure if they are still available. My bear board will be a seasonal board to display student work and celebrate each new holiday and season. The clips with pencils is an idea my youngest son's school uses in the hallways. We have these peg boards all over my school so I glued clothespins for each student to the peg board. Then I taped a cute pencil on top. I'll label each pencil and use them to display student work all year. Lastly is my classroom management chalkboard. I was kind of hesitant about having a chalkboard in my classroom at first, but now I'm loving it. I have my Whole Brain Teaching posters at the top, my hand signals, I can... statements and lastly Whole Brain Teaching tally mark chart. I also plan to add student tally marks that will be used to keep track of GREAT behavior. When I see a student really doing an awesome job I have a small bell I'll ring and say "oh, I love how _____ is _______ " and give an awesomeness tally mark. I also have a prize box and a lucky duck jar I will draw a name from daily. All student names will be in the jar, but the ones with the most awesomeness points will get their name in the jar more times. Estimation, probability and great behavior all wrapped up into one awesome package. This is the reason I started my blog. I hope one day when I grow up I'll be like the fabulous teachers who create these amazing stations. Today I'm still growing so I follow so many wonderful teacher blogs, I like so many teacher fb pages and I find so many amazing ideas from gifted teachers. My gift to my followers is to share those wonderful products. This is a product I purchased. It doesn't require colored ink (which I love) and will be awesome for my math stations. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Math-Bags-for-1st-Grade-THE-COMPLETE-SET-30-Common-Core-Aligned-Math-Centers-749488. The other three products are free downloads. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Addition-and-Subtraction-Sandwich-Bag-Sliders-FREEBIE-1387860
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French toast roll ups. These are so easy, fun and delicious. They can be stored in the freezer for 2 months. This is a great way to use up old white bread. Here is the link for the recipe. http://www.allfood.recipes/french-toast-roll-ups/ This is the best frozen lasagna. It feeds 4-6 people and is only $8.00 at Walmart. I can't make it for that price and mine is not nearly as good as this one. My new favorite way to make chicken. Take FROZEN chicken breasts or fresh, but frozen are so easy. Put it in the crock pot. Add 1 can of Dr. Pepper (this is a tenderizer). Pour in one can of rotel and half a jar of your favorite salsa. Add water to cover chicken. Cook over night. Cut up chicken let it cool then put into small ziploc bags and freeze. You have a meal in 1 min of defrost in the microwave. You can make burritos, chicken enchiladas ect.. in less that 15 min. with this chicken already prepared in your freezer. Boil and prepare mashed potatoes or potato salad the night before. I don't know any teacher or mom who has time to boil potatoes before a meal when she comes home. Your family will be starving and you will be so very tired. They sell these in grocery stores too, but it's much cheaper to make your own the night before. My pulled pork recipe is so easy and so delicious. Put the pulled pork in the crock pot, add 1 can Dr. Pepper, 1 full bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's b-que sauce and water to cover pulled pork. Let it cook over night. Cut up meat, let it cool then put in small ziploc bags. You have a meal in less than 1 min of defrost in the microwave. You can make burritos or pulled pork sandwiches.
Teachers and parents love to see photos of students and classrooms. So I plan to post more photos from my classroom on my blog this year. I worked for hours yesterday on so many small projects. I've added comments about each picture for more details.
If you live in Texas our first day of school is August 25th. So that means your school's open house will probably be the week of the 18th. My school district is having open house on the 18th. This is a very exciting time for parents, students and teachers. I always get a little nervous even after 20 years of teaching. I follow so many blogs and several teachers have blogged about making their open house more hands on for parents and students. Many are having parents do rotations around the classroom or do some type of scavenger hunt. I'm really excited about this idea and can't wait to try it. In my mind I have a vision of my open house being a wonderful bonding time for the parent and child. I see the rotations giving me more freedom to interact with each parent and child. I downloaded a freebie that I'm going to use for my rotation. Here is the link to get this awesome editable resource.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Editable-Open-House-Resources-for-Back-to-School-790069. I have also made a powerpoint of photos of my family and previous students. This is my first year in my new school. I hope having photos of my family and students showing on my smartboard will help put the parents at ease that I'm a very dedicated, caring teacher. I plan to have my parents rotate around and find numbers 1-9. The first station is to sign in with their name, their child's name and email. Station number two will be to pick up required paperwork. Station number three will be to fill out required paperwork. The next stations will give the parents time to fill out the paperwork if more time is needed. Station four will be for the parent to make a kissing hand craft with their child. I will have photos of directions and all the supplies set out at this station. Station five will be for the parent to put a puzzle together with their child. Station 6 will be for the parent to read a book with their child. Station 7 will be for the parent to turn in required paperwork. Station 8 will be for the parent to stop at my photo booth and allow me to photograph their child. Station 9 will be a popcorn treat with a note saying "thank you for popping in" for the child to take home. I'm really excited about open house and this school year. :) If you teach for Lubbock Independent School District you know what CHAMP stands for and how crucial it is to classroom management. CHAMP stands for C= Conversation voice level H= How to ask for help A= Activity M= Movement P= Participation The district provided all teachers with an intensive training for this classroom management system. I was skeptical at first, but it does work. We've come a long way since our district first started this program. We started out without smartboards in the classroom. So we had posters with CHAMP and tons of pictures we had to move on and off the poster during each activity. This took a lot of teaching time and was often forgotten as the day progressed. Then came the fabulous smartboards. We all love that precious technology. Our district made us a notebook version of the CHAMP poster. Can I get an "oh yea". No more wall space used for the CHAMP poster, no more wasted time moving cards I could now just click my mouse and tada my students knew my expectations for every activity. I don't know why, but I'm all about things being colorful and matching in my classroom. The CHAMP cards are good, but they are not colorful and do not match my Whole Brain Teaching posters. So I downloaded the districts CHAMP notebook file and added my personal touches to it. I made it more first grade friendly. I added primary learning stations and classroom jobs. I also added a few recess and lunchroom cards. I'm sure I'll add more cards or delete a few as the year progresses, but it's a start. Here is my CHAMP notebook classroom management file if you want to download it to use in your classroom.
I implemented many whole brain teaching strategies in my classroom last year. I used my own rules instead of using the WBT rules. I didn't feel it was as effective. So I'm changing my rules posters and I'm going to use the WBT classroom rules this year. I found so many awesome free WBT posters on TPT. I chose this teacher's product. I like that she had 2 choices of each poster and the zebra striped posters won't use much colored ink and they are just too cha cha for words. She also had some wonderful posters for star student recognition. You can download her product for free at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Whole-Brain-Teaching-Classroom-Starter-Set-304730.
There are so many wonderful WBT videos on you tube. The only ones I can find are live classroom videos of students using WBT techniques. I love that, but I wanted something that would grab my students' attention and be a little different when we review our classroom rules. So I created a Voki for my WBT classroom rules. I won't use my Voki everytime we review our classroom rules and I won't keep it the same all year either. The cool thing about the Voki is that you can edit and change it at any time. So I can make my cute dalmation dog a pumpkin, monster, Santa, valentine heart or a bunny rabbit. The possiblities are endless. I can also type in my words and choose a computer voice (they all sound a little like robots). I chose to record my own voice. There is nothing worse than losing your voice as a first grade teacher, what a long day. When this has happened to me in the past I used the typing computer voice to ask my students to line up, class, class, clean up ect... If you haven't used the Voki please go create a free account and play with this fun website at Voki.com. You are welcome to use my Voki for WBT classroom rules. Just copy this link in a new tab or click http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=10116869&height=267&width=200 These are my students' reading boxes. These are critical to the daily 5. I can't say enough about how important these boxes are. My students have these boxes in their hands all day long. Any free moment they have they get their reading boxes and work on reading their books, word cards or math fact cards. I also put small prizes and personal notes to my students in these. It allows me to differentiate my instruction with every student. If you haven't read the Daily 5 book please download it on the amazon Kindle app and read it. You will never teach the same way again and your students will learn to take ownership for their own academic success. A teacher at Roberts Elementary posted this very simple, but awesome idea. You use your math number cards that you would have displayed anyway as your student number cards. If you have a counter like mine clear that thing off and get ready to teach your students to be responsible and organized. Each student has a number. I will tape a photograph of each student on their number. Each morning my students are responsible to place their homework folders and other important papers in front of their number. I can see in a glance who has forgotten to do their job or is absent. I can check folders and pass out papers in lightning speed with this system. If a student has an item they are playing with instead of wearing (necklace, watch ect...) those items are placed in front of the student's number and not my desk where they will probably be forgotten until the end of the school year. If I have notes from the office or lunchroom for a student I simply place the note in front of the student's number and I no longer have teacher guilt for forgetting to give out important notes. This system is wonderful and it teaches students to be responsible and keeps me organized. |
AuthorMy boys are so much fun. I wanted to share some photos of our summer fun. Archives
March 2023
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