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!
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| 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 |
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| 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!! |
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| 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! |
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| 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! |
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| 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?
