It's been a while...

While I have been teaching a multi-age 1-2 classroom for 1 year and 4 months now, I still feel like I should consider myself a First Year Teacher mainly because I did it last year.. and have 1/2 of the same kids this year..and can't do anything the same!!  SO, I feel like I am busy, busy, busy, busy.. all the time.. Between living life in the Caribbean (which I know seems like it cannot be even slightly difficult - it has its challenges!), having a husband in Vet School (you haven't seen hard and stressful till Vet School), have 2 puppies, planning, cooking, cleaning, dealing with broken things (thing break.. A L L THE TIME here and take weeks to get fixed...), moving (we're on move 5 in 16 months!), and sleeping (not much!).. I just don't feel like I have time!  Sometimes I wonder how people with children and jobs and 'real' lives do it!!

Anyways, the last couple months at school have been crazy, but good!  The students have been working hard, are totally rocking the Daily 5, doing great in Math (have I mentioned how tough it is to teach 2 grades of Math - at the same time - in one room!  Still trying to find the perfect solution to that one!), and have done an AMAZING job on their *finally* finished Dinosaur research project!  I have been taking the bits and pieces that we have been doing and turned it into a HUGE Dinosaur Unit to share with you!

We began this unit working through each section of what WILL be part of their requirements on the Research as a class with fun activities and continually referencing our Non-Fiction books (due to my schedule this took a while and each one was over the course of a week!).  After we made it through all of those, they began their research.  We are fortunate enough to have laptops for the classrooms, so each student had a computer and got to work!  They did a remarkable job scouring the internet for facts, reading, asking for help and writing their information!  When they all had their research done, we talked through the making of a Key Note (or powerpoint) and they each got to do their own.  They continued to find great pictures on the internet, successfully copy and paste them into their powerpoint, add animations, fun fonts and colors.. I was SO proud of them!  When we were done, we set up "A Dinosaur Museum" in the schools library with their PowerPoints (which we turned into quicktime movies that looped and looped) up on computers and their Fiction writing with it.  The stayed by their project, visitors came in, there were comment cards..and it was A BIG DEAL!  The smiles on their faces were amazing, and they were SO proud!  What a great experience!

Check it out here in pictures  -  also, please check out my entire Unit on TPT!

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style 

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Here is the link to the unit on TPT -

And in closing - my thoughts are with all of those involved in the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting.  My heart is broken for all of you..

Thankful Thanksgiving

Today, as it is Thanksgiving, and most people in America are home with their family and friends, I am at work.. I am struggling to be as thankful as I could be, but really want to push those feelings aside and let the small bit of blogging world that I am connected to at this point via my blog, know how much I appreciate them and their support.

Last year when I started teaching a 1st/2nd grade multi-age, my first elementary experience since student teaching, I was overwhelmed, scared and not really sure what to do next!  I somehow came across the blogging world and the TPT world in my frantic internet searches for ideas and could not be more thankful for the PROFOUND impact it has had on me as a teacher!  I have found so many amazing resources, and blogs..People who I don't know, but I feel like I know from reading their blog, who I feel have been a stronger 'co-worker' than any I could ask for!  I also feel so blessed to s l o w l y be able to take what I do on a daily basis and share it with the world via my blog and TPT store.  

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving Holiday and counts all their blessings - not just today, but everyday!

*Students will be arriving in 8 minutes - Must get prepared!*

Thanksgiving already?!?!

I realize that  I have not updated this blog since the beginning of October..and I wish I had a good excuse.. But I don't!  It's really just finding time, energy and ambition to do anything aside from make dinner, take the dogs out, work on lesson plans, laundry and cleaning at the end of the night!!

Did I mention that we only have 18 more school days till our FIRST break of the school year!  Currently we have had ONE Wednesday off ( for St Kitts Independence Day) and ONE Monday off for Mid-Semester break... Other than that, its been 11 - 5 day weeks from 7:30 - 3:15 every day!  I am so excited for 3 1/2 weeks off with my hubs and dogs!!  And yes, Thanksgiving is Thursday of this week, and YES we WILL be at school!  We have a huge Thanksgiving lunch at the school, but its STILL a normal day!  

The school year is going by so quickly, and I am quite impressed with how well my kiddos are doing!  They have picked up and dove into the Daily 5 so well and I LOVE the way it works and how to an outsider it may look like my kids are just all sitting around the room on the floor doing whatever they want, but they are all working and learning and doing so well!  Due to my shorter amount of time, I am running 2 lessons/2 rotations one day and 3 lessons/3 rotations the next day.  This is giving the students a much more thorough work time and it gives me more time to work with each group!  SO glad I decided to give it a try!  Wish I had more than just one year here to try it out, I have learned things I would do differently and so much I would do the same!

Our BiG focus for reading/writing/Science/S.S has been Dinosaurs over the past month - month in a half.  We have read The Enormous Egg, written some fiction stories, such as 'If I had a pet dinosaur', have done a variety of reading of fiction and non-fiction dinosaur books and are working hard on a dinosaur research project now!  I have a HUGE document of all the things we have done that I am working on finishing out and will be sure to share it when I am done!  We are hoping to be done and have a big Dinosaur Museum for the kids to share all their hard work!  Since we live on a small island in the middle of the ocean, we were not able to visit a dinosaur museum, so we watched a variety of videos and utilized the anatomy museum on our vet school campus to look at other skeletons of dogs/cats/horses/donkeys/cows and discussed how they would be similar and different to dinosaurs!  The kids loved it!

We also had Halloween over this long period of time since I last blogged.  On Halloween students get to dress up and we go trick-or-treating to every semesters (7 of them) classes on campus.  The kids get S O M U C H candy!!  But it sure is fun.  This year one of my creative students made her own centipede costume (due to living in a house on the island where I killed around 80 centipedes in 4 weeks, I HATE centipedes) and it was SO COOL!!   

These are the SMALL portion of the centipedes we killed at our cCentipede house as we called it!

The FABULOUS centipede costume!  

And random - their cute ACORN acrostic poem and design!

I am trying really hard to get a good understanding of the Everyday Math Program and effectively teach it to 1st and 2nd grade simultaneously, and am finding it so difficult!  Does anyone else out there use the program and have any great ideas for teaching it to a multi-age classroom?!?!

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope everyone has a great holiday off with family and friends (I'll be thinking of you while I work all day!)

Christopher Columbus and catching up!

At our school, we have an assembly each morning for about 5-10 minutes that the entire school comes to (about 60-70 kids).  We generally discuss something important that is happening that day or that has happened in history.  This past week on Friday, our superintendent showed us a video and discussed with students how it was Stand Up For Your Teacher Day!  She played a great song that was really touching and I wanted to share it with other teachers out there!

While at times, teaching is hard and time consuming and so much work - but its amazing what we do for SO many children in our lives!  This song is a great reminder of that!  

This past week, my students have been working on a Christopher Columbus play which they will be presenting to the entire school at assembly Tuesday and they have also been working on my Christopher Columbus book and activity.  They had a great time doing it and felt so knowledgable about such an important person!  You can check out this unit here at my TPT Store! 

Here are some of the student outcomes displayed on my very limited wall-space classroom!

Our classroom is back into full swing now after Missoula Children's Theatre left and we dove right into week 5!  We are ALMOST done introducing all of the Daily 5 segments and letting kids start to make their own choices - hopefully in the next 2 weeks!   Students are doing a great job and I am so impressed with their hard work and dedication to succeeding!  I have been trying my hardest to hang all the posters we make together related to the Daily 5 up -but I am quickly running out of room!  How long should I leave them up?!   We are also starting to get our CAFE board up and running and I am diving into my individual assessments and groupings!  

Math on the other hand, has been a tough cookie for me!  I cannot decide the best way to get it down and taught in such a short time, with 13 kids, at about 3 varying levels and make it successful!  As I was avidly following my blogs, I found that The Clutter Free Classroom had a great idea so I took that and recreated it to fit my math curriculum and classroom!  Students can now refer to the bulletin board if they need to know their centers rotations, their assignment at each center or any other information such as our weekly goals, the unit vocabulary and their daily Math Message! 

Left - center rotations.  Below is grade level Weekly Goals (discussed on Monday, tracked weekly by me)
Pink - Teacher Choice center and instructions
Purple = Hands on center and instructions
Blue  = Math Games center and instructions
Green = At your Seat center and instructions
Yellows = Daily Math Message (all students have Math Message Journals)
Green/Red below yellow = Unit Vocabulary

Since I do not a teacher store to go buy things and it costs a FORTUNE to have them
shipped here - extra lamination worked great as a 'holder' for the center rotation cards!
Reuse!! 

Writing daily center assignments was made easy by putting a colored sheet of paper inside a paper protector.
I can write and erase daily with dry erase markers!

The Math Message is a daily assignment students get right to work on when they come in.
The vocabulary is something they check in on when they finish early! 

There it is!  Thanks Clutter Free Classroom for helping create my
Math bulletin board!

So far, it is working GREAT for the 2nd graders - The 1st graders are still getting used to the increased independence but they are learning!  

For our Catch the Reading Bug - kids are doing amazing!  I have some kids who in 5 weeks have read over 900 minutes!  WOO HOO!  I feel like maybe I should start requiring book reports?! Or at least book title -author - summary?!  Ideas?

The Important Book

While this week my students are all busy learning, practicing, reviewing, being hyper, and getting excited for the amazing production of Robin Hood Thursday evening, I have been trying to throw in some productivity! Last week I read The Important Book by Maragaret Wise Brown with the students and we discussed what makes things important, how they are important and that each of us have different characteristics that make us US!  To continue with that theme, I created this quick project for students to work on this week in the midst of being actors and actresses!

Students took so much pride in this activity and have made some amazing final products!

Check out the unit here at TPT and see some of the great products they have created!  (I have to say, this is the most honest and thoughtful my kids have been in sharing things about 'themselves'!  Usually they like to be similar to their friends!)

Tomorrow is our big ROBIN HOOD show!  It's going to be an exhausting day!  "Normal" school from 730 - 12...Rehearsal from 12-345...Show 1 @ 4...Show 2 @ 6...Clean-up...Normal day Friday!

Cold coming on, tired and ready for the weekend! <3