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

Catch the Reading Bug!

This year to help promote reading outside of school I have piggy-backed along with an awesome idea that Lindsey @ The Teacher Wife had last year!  It was a Home Reading Tracker board.  Her design was different than mine - but it follows the same idea!

I decided to use the phrase CATCH THE READING BUG and for ever 100 minutes that students read, they would 'catch'  a bug in their jar!  I was SO fortunate to find the PERFECT graphics from Scrappin' Doodles.  I took those graphics, created a cute border, made my heading and each student got a bug catching jar!

To track our reading, a monthly calendar is sent home.  To assure students are continually excited about getting bugs and parents and students alike are not forgetting to record their reading, students turn in their calendar each Friday, I add up their minutes read and we have a big Bug Catching Time!  What.A.HIT!  They are SO excited each and every Friday to turn their calendars in and see how many bugs they are up too!  Now I just hope that this excitement lasts all year!

Here is a look at our board so far!  This is after 3 weeks of school! *INSERT HAPPY TEACHER HERE!*

Happy Reading! 

Time? . . .

As a (new to elementary, multi-age) teacher, I feel like I am constantly looking for more time in my day, my night, my weekends and my life!  As much as I plan to be productive and get certain things accomplished each night, it NEVER seems to happen and then I am bogged down and behind again!  I know, teachers say it gets easier...but by the time I'm ready for year 3 at this job, I will be leaving St. Kitts and starting over (who knows where!) again!

Aside from that, the school year is continuing to get great!  My kiddos are getting into the routine, and are quickly getting more and more giggly comfortable with each other in our small community!  The first three weeks are almost totally past, and I feel like we have done SO much, but SO little!  Getting our routines and procedures down, introducing Daily 5 and Math Centers and throwing in as many fun crafty projects as possible has taken all our time!

Thanks to Amy's Great Back to School Unit!

Again Thanks to Amy's Great Back To School Unit!

These adorable All About Me Books are from Lindsey at The Teacher Wife!

Another great activity from Amy at Step Into Second Grade!

In regards to my Daily 5 - I am SO happy with the way it is going and how *AMAZING* my kids are doing!  They are SO proud of themselves each day for building stamina and making their teacher proud!  I deemed them experts at Read to Self today as they hit a solid 17 minutes of stamina and know the Urgency, the I-Chart, the IPICK strategy like the back of their hands!  We are still working diligently on actually implementing the IPICK strategy properly each time we choose a book, but that will take time!  They completed Day 3 of Work on Writing (or WoW as we call it!) today and made it to 7 minutes of stamina, created a list of topics to write about and were excited to start, and sad to stop each time!  WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?!

Here are some photos of what we've done, maybe I'll find spots on my walls for all of them and can get a picture of them together!

A students Topic List today!

Our Class Topic List

Hard at work during WoW!

I will admit though, I do have a major slight fear of how it will work in our TiNy classroom when everyone is not doing the SAME thing!  Training and practice!

Last week on Friday, we have an Everyday Math Inservice and learned a great deal about implementing the program into our classrooms.  I am still really a bit hesitant about teaching Math in a center format with 3 groups all at different levels, but I am hoping it works out okay!  This week we have been practicing rotating...Yes, JUST ROTATING!  Understanding that when the timer goes off we -
1) Are Silent
2) Clean up
3) Push in chairs and stand silently behind them until told to rotate
4) Rotate quickly and quietly and get RIGHT to work!

We are doing to use the acronym DING (like a timer!)
D - Don't Talk!
I - Immediately clean-up your area
N - No moving until told to rotate
G - Go to your next center and get RIGHT to work!

I only have an hour Math Block (which is actually less by the time we get in from Snack/Recess, get started and then clean up to go out to lunch!) so we have a LOT to fit in!  Luckily, I do have a few blocks where I only have one grade in my room at a time and that will be a HUGE Math re-teach time!

On a happy note...Missoula Children's Theatre is here for the next week and will be teaching the students grade K - 8 the play/musical of Robin Hood and there will be a HUGE performance next week on Thursday.  It is probably one of the most amazing things to see 2 people come in and transform a school of young children into amazing performers in such a short time!  It causes lots of turmoil to our schedule but is such an amazing experience for the kids its totally worth it!

This past week, in all my spare time, I have tried to create a fun and engaging Phonics Program for my kids.  They got really bored with the one I used last year, so I pulled the sound and word pattern outline from that program, and created my own!  I have 5 weeks worth done so far and am pretty excited about it!  This is my first BIG teacherspayteachers created unit and my first big unit I have complied in this format!  It consists of 40 words per week that students can choose from, and also a big activity to support that sound and other optional word work activities.

Check it out here:

Well, I feel like I may have a cold coming on...UGH!...so it's off to sleep for me!  I hope everyone is having a great school year thus far!  

First Week Recap

After a long 9 day stretch, the weekend was welcomed with open arms!  4 days of inservice and prepping for the new year and 5 days with kids...I couldn't wait to sleep in!!

Regardless, our first week went great!  My kids are learning our routines and procedures quickly and have done a great job this week.  I think my favorite thing about this week was seeing how GREAT my kids were from 8 till about 10:30 and how their attention spans slowly dwindled for the rest of the afternoon!  They are just SO precious!

Since this week was entirely focused on establishing rules, routines, and building community, we did a lot of fun activities.  The kids all worked really hard and I was so impressed with them!

In the first days, I asked my class to help me create a list of things that were important to include in a class promise (This activity was part of the First Week Detective Packet).  I was so impressed with the list they created!  Here is Our Class Promise:

After creating our class promises, students created a book to review the Class Promise.  They were then given a 'HW assignment' to take their books home and share it with their parents and families and teach them about our class promise.  Parents even had a sign a form and return it to school!  

I think the students favorite activity from the week was the Learning About Our Teacher from the detective packet.  They had to hunt the room for index cards with the answers to questions about their teachers.  They worked so hard, and had so much fun and felt reallly cool to know lots of new things about their teacher!

Another project that was a big hit, was making their magnifying glasses for the bulletin board from the Detective Packet.  They had to create clues about themselves, put them on the glass, and behind the glass they put a picture of themselves.  It was really fun to try and solve the mystery of Who is who?!

After our 4 days of TRIBES training, we were ready to begin using the great strategies we learned in our classroom.  One thing I did with my kids was create Tribles..They are little fluffy guys who help describe our feelings.  First we talked about each feeling and then the students gave a color to each feeling.  It was SO cool to hear the explanations for their feeling color!  One student said "I colored my happy face yellow like the sun because when I am happy I feel like the shining sun!"

Aside from these activities, my students also completed Amy's Stickin' to a Great Year craftivity and her Stand Tall Molly Lou Mellon flowers!

I am really looking forward to this upcoming week, starting our Daily 5 Routine and moving into some basic Math Center Activities from Amy's Let's Get Started Unit.  This coming Friday, we have an Everyday Math Inservice and I am looking forward to getting more training on our Math Program before jumping into it!  Here is a quick look at my week 1 Daily 5 Lesson Plans.

More to come next week - Happy Week 2 (or whatever week you may be approaching!).


I am going to end this blog with a little 'my life' photo-op!  These are my 'kids'.  They have a pretty rough life!

Koala - the Princess!

Nevi - pre launching into the pool!  

Nevi - post launching in the pool!

First Day of School WITH kids!

After a L O N G 4 days of inservice, we started with our *AWESOME* kiddos today!  I found out yesterday I got a new student, so I was up to 13 kids today! (8-2nd graders and 5-1st graders)  6 of the 8 2nd graders with with me last year and 3 of the 1st graders were in Kindergarten at our school last year, so the 4 'new' ones were in good hands! We are devoting our first week of school to learning, practicing, and embedding our TRIBES agreements, Our Class Promises, our school procedures and routines and some fun projects!  Today we talked about our fears and anxieties about 1st and 2nd grade, discussed and practiced our first TRIBES agreement, Attentive Listening, Created a Classroom Promise, and worked on a 'Detective' Project from our First Week Detective Packet.

Here are some pictures to show the great work my students did today and our classroom!

Our CAFE board!  Ready to be filled in!

Our Whole Body Listening, TRIBES agreements, I FEEL cards and the date box 

The students compiled list of things that would be important to include in our classroom promise

Close up of our I-Message Cards

Fears and Excitements for 1st and 2nd grade

One group (pre-day 1)

Pre-Day 1 again

Pre-Day 1 group 2 (and the packed full shelf!) 

1st and 2nd grade required, taught, and read aloud books

Daily Work/Folder/HW Bins

The FINALIZED Class Promises!  So proud of my students hard work and deep thinking! 

The beginning of our Looks Like, Sounds Like, Feels Like Chart with Attentive Listening 

Classroom at the END of day 1!  Not too bad! 

Piles that still need to be organized for the rest of the week!

Weekly folders mostly packed with materials.

Our 4 TRIBES agreement posters

All the day 1 hard work!  

Hard to work on their 'Find Someone Who....' activity!  

Many of the activities that I am doing this week are coming from my First Week Detective Packet.  My beginning of the year theme was detectives, so I made a variety of our getting to know you activities Detective/Solve a Mystery based.  Here are some activities from that packet!

Happy First Week of School!




And I thought I would add a little extra happy into this day.... When I got home, I got to take a dip in the pool, with this view...Though living here can be hard - I cannot complain too much about this!