Kagan Cooperative Learning

Hey bloggers! 

I will be at the Kagan Cooperative Learning training at Walt Disney World next week. I'll be going Monday-Friday and I was wondering if any other bloggers were attending this training? 

If so I'd love to meet up with you! Just send me an e-mail! 

I'll try to debrief  you on everything I learn during this training next week. Hopefully, it will be a highly effective way to keep kids engaged, interesting, and learning cooperatively! 

Click to learn more about Kagan!

If you've ever been to a training or use this model I would love to hear more about it before I attend! 

Thanks,

Daily Schedule

Welcome to our world in first grade this year!

I'm starting to really think about the 2013-2014 school year now that it is mid July! So I thought I would take a look over my curriculum schedule. I've have the same schedule now for 4 years and this year it will be different! I've always had lunch around 11 and specials around 1:45 so a new schedule will be a big change for my first grade team. 

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday all look exactly the same but on Wednesday the kids get out of school an hour earlier and so our schedule is slightly different. The teachers still stay on Wednesday and usually have staff meetings, professional development, or work with our teams.

I love how much time we have for writing this year! It will truly make the process so much easier with first graders. It was always a struggle in the past because we had 20/30 minutes to teach and write which wasn't enough. Now we have time to teach and time for them to write. I think we'll get so much more writing done this year!

2013-2014

 Curriculum Schedule

First Grade

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday

7:55 - 8:40	Planning
8:45 – 9:00	Phonics/Morning Work
9:00 – 9:30	Enrichment
9:30-10:00	Whole Group Reading Instruction
10:00–11:05	Small Group Instruction (Literacy Centers, Guided Reading Groups)
11:05-11:45	Specials (Art, music, P.E., computer lab, library, Spanish)
11:45-12:36	Writing
12:36-1:03	Lunch
12:55-1:15	Physical Movement (fancy word for recess)
1:15-2:15	Math
2:15-2:45	Science
2:45-3:00	Dismissal

Wednesday

7:55-8:40	Planning
8:45 – 9:00	Phonics/Morning Work
9:00 – 9:15	RTI/Silent Reading
9:15-10:45	Reading Block (Whole Group Instruction and Small Group Instruction)
10:45-11:15	Specials
11:15-12:15	Math
12:15-12:36	Writing
12:36-1:03	Lunch
12:55-1:45	Writing
1:45-2:00	Dismissal

What does your schedule look like? Do you have any questions about my schedule? Does it look similar to yours or completely different? I would love to see other bloggers schedules. 

Thanks for reading! 

Favorite Pins Friday!

Coming to you from The First Grade Parade Favorite Pins Friday! I'm so excited about this because I just loving pinning on Pinterest and getting wonderful ideas! 

So here are my favorites from this week. Some links are the pictures and some of the text. Enjoy!

Favorite teaching pins:

Free chevron classroom labels from Proudly Primary! 

Great signs for meet the teacher or open house. From one of my favorite blogs Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits.

This adorable parent handbook flip book. I just found this blog through Pinterest!

Just Reed

Laminate and velcro name tags to desk instead of taping them. Can easily switch out and lasts all year. Why have I not already thought of this! Great idea from: 

elementary organization.

This whole writing table is awesome! 

Mrs. Verdon's Classroom

Favorite fashion pins:

Favorite food pins: 

4th of July fun food ideas

Star rice crispy treats for the 4th!

Favorite home decor pins:

Lovely porch with some of my favorite colors.

Love the table, couch, and hard wood floors!

 

Beautiful dining room! 

Favorite Quotes: 

Happy pinning friends! Go join up with The First Grade Parade for this fun party!
Have a wonderful weekend!

Summer Time {Wedding & Honeymoon}

It all finally happened! My wedding that is! I just got married on June 15th, 2013! Then we took a two week long honeymoon to the British Virgin Islands. It was all like a dream come true and I couldn't be happier. Let me walk you through out wedding day and tell you a bit about our honeymoon.

My husband's six year old cousin drew this picture of our wedding and handed it to be at the reception saying "Welcome to the family!" She melts my heart!

On our wedding day we had the most beautiful Florida weather sunny and breezy. We had a intimate ceremony that took place on a lawn overlooking the ocean. Our longtime friend and my maid of honor's boyfriend married us with a heartwarming and personal ceremony.

Then the guest moved to the pool deck area where they enjoyed cocktails and the view. We took as many pictures on the lawn, the beach, and around the beach club that we possible could.

A bagpiper started to play and guest moved across the street to the main clubhouse. This was where the major fun took place! We listened to touching speeches, ate delicious food, drank fine wine and champagne, and danced the night away with a funky band. Every detail was perfect from the flowers to the cake.

Our first dance to Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight.

It was the best day of our lives!

Then we hopped on a plane and went to BVI! We enjoyed visiting many island including Tortola, Virgin Gorda, and Jost Van Dyke. The highlights of our trip include visiting private beaches, boating, snorkeling, hiking, romantic beach dinner, gourmet picnic lunches, and spending much need time relaxing together.

The past few months we're extremely stressful leading up to the big day but these past few weeks have been worth all the effort and time.

I'm officially a Mrs. now!

I plan to be blogging a lot this summer and revamping this blog! Look for more to come! Hope you are having a wonderful, relaxing summer!

Field Day Fun

We just had our field day yesterday! I was so exhausted from chasing my kids around, being a cheerleader, and even doing a sack race! Field day can be so much fun with the right group of kids! This year my class was all into it and good team players. I did have to sit out two of my boys for arguing and being too competitive but after missing one round of a game they got over it very quickly. I love that at this age they have a 2 second re-bound. On with the fun...

Every year my school does field day around the end of the year. In Florida this always means it is hot and sunny. Which is wonderful if you are equipped for the weather...sunscreen, hat, shorts, and an extra shirt are in order. We also have a theme each year that all the games are based around. Last year we had an Alice in Wonderland theme this year we had a Superhero theme. The kids LOVED it so much! Everyone was supposed to have shirts that represented the theme and being the very tired and worn out first that we are we decided not to do an iron on for each student. Instead we did iron on's for ourselves. We got these adorable iron on's from Katie at http://iwanttobeasuperteacher.blogspot.com/.

Check it out! It says Super Teacher on the front!

We thought it was super cute and appropriate for the theme! 

I'm on the right in the sorority squat lol. 

Out at field day with water bottles in hand! 

Super kids with Superman!

Good ole' spidey sack race!

 I know you can't see but the sacks were decorated to look like spider webs!

Hope you're having fun wrapping up the school year too!

Next Year

Next year I will again be in 1st grade! I'm so happy that I'm staying in first grade and staying in my room! This takes away so much of my stress! It will be my 5th year teaching 1st and I couldn't be happier that I'm staying at this grade level!

Hope you all had a wonderful Monday!

What I've been up to: Earth Day & Butterflies

The past for weeks have been super busy! I went to a friends wedding, on my bachlorette party, and have done  crossed off many things on my wedding to do list!

I wanted to share with you all a two things we've done this past couple of weeks. 

Earth Day writing:

From A Cupcake for the Teacher

We learned a lot about taking care of our planet and reducing, reusing, and recycling this past week. My students wrote about how to take care of our planet and about Earth Day.

Beautiful butterflies:

View when you enter my room. It's so happy! :)

My students made these beautiful butterflies after learning about the butterfly life cycle. It was a fun unit that my students learned so much from! We of course did a informative writing about the butterfly life cycle and then made these butterflies. If you are wonder I've had this butterfly pattern since I first started teaching. I traced the wings and the kids cut them out. It was difficult for them to cut the holes but I think it helped their fine motor skills. After they cut the wings they pasted the middle part for the body. Then they tore tissue paper and made sure they covered the holes. The students had to make sure the tissue paper was symmetrical. Lastly they put the antennas and eyes on. 

I can't wait to go into work tomorrow because we find out what our job assignments are for next year. I put down that I wanted to teach first grade again next year and really hope that I get to stay in first. My second choice was to be a reading coach for our school. We already have a reading coach but our school is growing and many school now have coaches for K-2 and another for 3-5. I had previously talked with my principal before putting this choice down. Now that we find out tomorrow though I'm sure that won't be my job next year because I wasn't ever interviewed and I would think she would have to do that before. My third choice was to teach 2nd grade. Although I've never taught 2nd only interned in that grade level I feel like it would be a good fit. I would love to just stay put in first though! I don't want to change rooms anymore! I've had to move rooms every year I've taught so I would love for just once to stay in the same room.

I'll let y'all know tomorrow what my assignment is for next year! When do you find out your assignments for next year? Do you already know where you will be?

Have a great Sunday night!