Summer 2015

Getting ready to relax and prepare for next school year! I will be reading new books and gardening today. 

The room is ready!

I'm going with a beachy theme this year! My word wall is a "word tank", my student of the week is our "starfish", we are digging in to help and diving into first grade!! We also have a birthday beach, and my tropical behavior birds. The clip chart is something new for me this year.

Beach Theme

I'm officially hired as a first grade teacher and am super excited to share my adventures in first grade this year!

This year I will be starting out with a beach theme! "We're diving into first grade", "Digging in to Help, Tropical Behavior birds, and a Word Tank... pictures to come soon

My new room!

Here is my new room! I'm so excited I have lots of blank space. Now to try to get it looking a little more cozy and warm! Hope to have the after pictures soon!

August 1

I just found out that I will be teaching FIRST grade again this year. Long story, but I'm so excited and grateful.

I think my theme is going to be a beach theme. It's calming and I can use it to feel like summer all year. I don't think I will go all out theme, but for some key parts I'm going to start with it.
I like the idea of "Look whose digging into First Grade?" or " What a Great Catch".

Lakeshore had a cute paper plate beach scene they did at the store the other day that I think I can incorporate on one of the first days.

I need to plan the routines in my class too. We will be using PBIS, so I have rules already set up. I also add fish or shells to move up or down into the ocean.

I'll do tables and each table will start with a team name. The table with the most tally's at the end of the week, gets PBIS tickets. I also need to create a beach theme calendar page for August/September for their take home folders.

So many ideas in my head, I've got to get myself organized.

The Puddle

We ended the year with some really fun projects. We made father's day cards and a really cute scrapbook for the end of the year. I really enjoyed being in first grade this year. I am hoping to return to the classroom in the fall.

One of our last stories was "The Puddle". We made umbrella glyph's, cut and paste rain people, wrote about favorite things to do in different seasons and read many vocab filled books. It was a great story!

Cinco de Mayo and Animal Research

This week in first grade we read a story about "How To Be A Nature Detective". This story skills are finding the main idea, long o, contractions, and using am/is/are/were. The story focuses on using clues to find out about animals in nature.

The week we completed a wonderful Animal Research Book. Ill update pictures when I go through them. The children were responsible to choose an animal and find a book from the library to help complete it. We used information found on line and in a variety of available texts from the library. We also went as a whole school to go see Disney's African Cats movie. It was a perfect fit for this week's lessons. One of the points in the story is comparing finger prints to animal tracks. I made a mystery fingerprint sheet and we made animals out of fingerprints. The students then worked in partners to guess with each other. Can anyone tell me how to upload with google documents here?

This week was also Cinco de Mayo. Learning about Cinco de Mayo is in our fourth quarter curriculum guide. We discussed using a globe and finding continents. We also focused on North America and Mexican traditions. Each child wrote a homework assignment discussing their family's original heritage. We will share these next week.

We made maraca's and listened to mariacchi music. We were also able to squeeze in a game I made up called, "Ole". The child in the middle has to guess who in the outside circle shakes their maracca and says, "Ole"

We finished up the week with Family Earth Night. I brought my own boys back and held an Eggimals project in my room. It was awesome to be there at night and be part of a family night.