Meet the Teacher & Photos

I had Meet the Teacher this past Thursday and these are the pictures of my room all ready for my 1st grade families. I have 18 students this year and I had 16 families come to Meet the Teacher. During Meet the Teacher I have the kids sort their supplies and get to know the classroom. I talk with each family to make sure they feel comfortable for the first day, have them fill out a transportation sheet so I know how their child is going home, and take a picture of each little new first grader.

Most of my kids were pretty excited but I have 6 kids that are new to the school and are very shy. I had one student who wouldn't talk to me at all or let me take a picture. Her sister got her to take a picture so we can have her smiling little face in our room. I love putting up the pictures so the kids feel like the room is theirs even on the first day.

I added lanterns above each desk.

Meet the Teacher goodie bags, books for students to view, and table numbers.

Book banner, leveled nonfiction library, and book boxes.

My lovely little reading corner.

View of meeting spot and desk area.

Meeting, calendar, and anchor chart area. First day books are ready to go! 

Calendar complete with rules and schedule!

Good work hangs out here! The baskets are to turn in work, homework, and hold today's work. I have highlighters for when the kids turn in their work and clipboards for any center work or when they need to move to sit on the floor. 

All my first grade planners ready to go and sharp pencils!

Writing area.

Daily jobs for kids (guess I should make a sign for that), lunch choices, and a chart to keep up with our monthly reading logs.

Happy Birthday banner (hard to see with the glare) and birthday months. I'll be taking pictures of my students tomorrow to add to this. All the kids will get together for a photo according to their birthday month.

My math games and word work carts.

Welcome to first grade sweet little birdies! 

Specials schedule, goodbye rhymes, and lunch/specials time.

Transportation chart, behavior chart, rules, storage, beanie baby strategies, para desk, and my fabulous kidney table complete with paperwork ready for Meet the Teacher.

 CAFE board, listening center, goals, and scales on the whiteboard.  

Another view of a table. I love the labels, ribbons, numbers, and lanterns!

Tomorrow is the first day of school and I'm super excited. I'm sure I feel similar to my students-anxious, nervous, excited, happy, a little shy, sleepy, but ready to go! I already have my outfit laid out and ready for the morning. Hoping it is a wonderful first day and a great year! Good luck to everyone out their getting ready, on their first day, and whole school year! You'll are such an inspiration to me and keep me loving my job! 

Common Core State Standards ELA

Hey friends! I'm deep into pre-planning now and busy going to faculty meetings, team meetings, Common Core training, and trying to get ready for meet the teacher. My head is kinda of spinning from all that has been going on.

We had a Common Core training today done by our reading coach and instructional coach. I went to the training with them and another team mate back in the spring. This training was a refresher about CCSS for me but left me with the same questions I had before I left the other trainings.

I know the 7 shifts of CCSS and how we need to implement more informational text and dig deeper into the text. I know about the standards themselves. Our coaches today said that right now as not to overwhelm us we should do 2 Common Core lessons a month which last 1 week each.

We were told that to really dig deep into the text we should use the same book all week long. One fiction book and one non-fiction book per month-2 Common Core lessons a month. This is how I thought I would outline my week using the Common Core lessons:

Monday-read book in it's entirety (Reading Literature or Informational)
Tuesday-dig deeper into text read a few key pages, have kids read pages, ask detailed questions (Reading-Key Ideas & Details)
Wednesday-dig deeper into text read a few key pages, have kids read pages, ask detailed questions(Reading-Key Ideas & Details)
Thursday-revisit the book and important parts, discuss,  students write a reading response in journal (Writing)
Friday-discuss the book and share reading response (Speaking & Listening)


This is my only current plan. :(

We don't know what books to use yet. I know we are supposed to use exemplar texts. But what constitutes an exemplar text? We haven't really been given a list just a few examples of text we could possible use. The problem is though we won't have a class set of these books. That's kinda of okay with me though because I know we're supposed to use this more as a read aloud book that is at a higher level for the students.

Another problem is we have all of the Houghton Mifflin resources- books for each kid, big books, and work books. But our coaches have told us to stay away from these because we won't be using them next year and the resources don't necessarily go with the CCSS.

My question is what are y'all doing? Are you still using your reading series with CCSS? Are you creating all new lessons like going back to theme teaching? Are you doing both? How are you actually implementing all of this in your classroom? Do y'all have book lists to go off of for first grade?

I would love if you would post any comments helping me out. My team and I are pretty much thinking we are going to have to recreate the wheel by using literature/informational text in our reading lessons.

Thanks!

Update on my classroom

Hey! I wanted to updated y'all on how my class is coming along. I feel good about my room right now and feel like I've accomplished a lot! I'm taking the day off tomorrow from all things school and getting a massage, pedicure, and manicure. I need a day to myself before all the craziness of back to school really kicks in!

Next week starts are pre-planning and we'll have many meetings, professional development, planning, and meet the teacher on Thursday. I hope to sneak in a lot of organizing too as I'm still working on my student's take home binders and want to organize some files before my kiddos come!

Back to my classroom....I'm just going to show you some parts of the room you haven't seen yet.

Listening area

In the right basket I have all my books/tapes/CDs and in the left basket I have my listening notebook which keeps response sheets, crayons, pencils, and headphones. I just finished making my beautiful crate seats. I stapled a ribbon handle on the side for easy lifting. I haven't decided what should go in them yet but I love them with this small table.

My CAFE bulletin board. Can't wait to add sticky notes from students and strategy cards up there!

My calendar area and schedule listed for the students.

My book banner! I got this idea last year from 4th Grade Frolics. This is in the library area-the library is to the left. The red bins to the left are my non-fiction leveled readers and the blue bins are my book boxes for my students. The one green bin is for my poetry notebooks. The other books are for the students and need to make their way into their desks. This will be a perfect job next week for PTA kids helpers who come by our rooms to lend a helping hand in getting ready for the school year.

Daily 5

Right now this is where my Daily 5 literacy stations chart will be. I want to have kids move their clothespins to where they want to go. Not sure if I like this spot but it is right in our meeting spot, easel, mini-lesson area so I feel like it belongs in this area just not sure I like how it looks. The other part of the bulletin board will be used for anchor charts.

My "desk" area which I have shown you but I just added this piece of fabric to block the organized files mess below the desk. I'll organize this underneath mess next week! 

Without a actually desk I need to stay super organized and put my files in this bins. I just need to go ahead and organize these things and move that teacher bag! I do love how the fabric covers this up though because even when it's neat I don't want people to have to see this! 

Just some odds and ends of my room. My pencil system which I'm sure you've seen ready to write and need to sharpen pencil bins so students can easily get pencils. Notice all the pencils are in need to sharpen lol this will be switched before the 1st day! I saw these adorable bathroom passes 3rd Grade Thoughts and had to make some of my own. Even though my kids use the bathroom in our room and we can hear everything this will be a germ free way to make sure they have clean hands when opening and closing the door.

Next week I'll be posting about Meet the Teacher, pre-planning, and my finalized room before the kids come! Hope you all are getting excited, prepared, and organized for the new school year!

Monday Made It!

It's almost time to go back to work and I've been getting ready by making a lot of new things for my classroom! The thing I'm most proud of making today is curtains for my windows! I'm so excited this year to have windows in my class and my team leader showed me how to make curtains out of bandanas! 

These are the materials needed to make the curtains. 

6/7 bandanas from Hobby Lobby or any craft store

Stich Witchery (amazing invention)

Hot iron

Ironing board 

Yes, I still have my college ironing board. We're getting a new one soon! We don't iron a lot at my house. We mostly take our iron worthy things to the dry cleaners or steam them with our steamer. 

The first step is to iron the bandana. Then fold the top over leaving enough space to fit on the curtain. Place the Stitch Witchery in between the fabric and press a damp cloth on the top piece of fabric. Then press the iron on the top for about 10 seconds. Do this all the way down the bandana. Wait for a couple of seconds and then check to make sure it bonded the fabric. I never had a problem with having it bonding but you want to make sure before you place it on the curtain rod. Then repeat this until you have enough for your curtain rod. Make sure you line up the bandanas so they are the same length. This is a tedious part of making these but I plan on never do this again.

Finished in the classroom! You see them when you first walk in and it makes me feel cheerful. They are so bright and I can't wait to finish my second curtain tomorrow!

Another few things I made today in my room.

My brain breaks from  3rd Grade Thoughts: Brain Breaks Revisited: Better Than Ever & A Giveaway!   I covered a tin can in polka dot duct tape to make it look a little bit cuter.

My pick me pot for calling on different kids from A Cupcake for the Teacher: "Pick Me!" Pot + Freebie!

My teaching neighbor had this giant leaf in her room from Ikea and just didn't have a space for is so we tried it out in my room. We attached it to the cardboard roll that my new rug came in. I also put tan paper around the roll to make it look more like a tree. It just leans up against the back of the bookshelves in this little nook. It hangs over the library more than it looks like in the picture.

Lastly I made this welcome banner that will go above my door outside my room but I wanted to show you all so I quickly pinned it up on a unused wall in my room.

Can't wait to see what everyone else made today! I know everyone is busy preparing for their new classroom and students.

Classroom Day 4

My day 4 in the classroom was actually Thursday but I've been kinda busy watching the Olympics, trying to make curtains and crate seats, tutoring, and going to yoga. I'm trying to soak up the last little bit of my summer but still get classroom stuff done too.

Let me update you on what I got done in my classroom.

My word wall is finished! I put it under the board and I think it will be a great area for the kids to see the words and be able to grab the words off the wall for spelling if they need to. My word wall is velcro so we can easily add words and take them away.

I also put up my beanie baby strategies wall. I use this mostly during guided reading to help my kids remember strategies so I put it up near where my kidney table will be.

Then I also put up my goodbye rhymes and daily specials schedule on my door.

It doesn't seem like I got that much done through the pictures but I did a lot of organizing done. I can't wait to show you all the finished product which probably won't be done until meet the teacher.

I have been looking everywhere for classroom jobs and I just couldn't find any that I wanted so I made some! My old classroom jobs were handmade-I actually colored them in my first year of teaching so I thought it was time to update these. You can click here to get them.

Hope you're having a great weekend! 

Classroom Day 3

 Day 3 in my room was successful! I got a lot of hung up on the wall, cross some things off my long to do list,  and starting decorating bulletin boards. This week I'm trying to focus on how my class looks and next week I'm going to try and focus on getting ready for the kids (paperwork, binders, meet the teacher). I got a surprise from UPS last night...my new rug for my room! I wanted to unroll it so bad last night but was patience enough to wait to get to my class this morning to unroll it. I'm overjoyed with my new rug! It is so amazing and totally worth the $$$ spent from tutoring this summer.

More pictures of my classroom as it comes along:

Loving my writing area...not yet complete still have to find where I put the card and book. This was a combination of helpful writing sheets I found from The First Grade Parade and First Grade Fresh.

The sign says good work hangs here. These frames will hold my students work. The baskets underneath are where my students will turn in work, homework, extra paper will be, and I'm not sure. So if you have any ideas they are welcome. I also have my basket of clipboards to the side. 

Here we have the new meeting area!  I have my rocking chair for reading wonderful books, my easel for teaching all the important strategies, my stool for when I write on the board, big books, and materials in my fancy storage. This bulletin board will hold my anchor charts for reading and math. I'm thinking of dividing the board but I think I'm going to wait. I have a feeling I'll have more reading anchor charts I'll want to post. I also put a lamp here because this will be my spotlight on our book/author of that week.

Still haven't put up my word wall because it took forever to do my other bulletin boards in the room. I did decide that it would be under the board though. It is enough room, easy to reach, and right in front of the classroom. I think it will work well and hopefully look good. I just didn't have the patience today to start messing around with measuring and cutting paper for under the board. 

Tomorrow is another day though and I'm looking forward to meeting with my team. I can't wait to see everyone and what they've been up to for the summer. I'm sure we'll have at least 15 minutes of just catching up before we actually settle down to business.

Hope your'e enjoying some Olympics!