Welcome Back!!!

It looks like I'm going to have to change the blog title...the fun has moved to room 304! I have spent the last couple of weeks making our new room feel like "home". I can honestly say this is my favorite classroom set up I have ever had. It's going to be a great year. For those of you who are new to this blog, let me fill you in. This will be the second year of my classroom blog, and you can check out last year's adventures by clicking on previous posts. But soon enough you will also find the regular happenings in first grade posted here. I like to think of it as a "window" into our classroom. Parents and family members can get a peek into what goes on in our room on a daily basis. In addition to providing a closer look into first grade, my eventual goal is to get the students blogging as well! I struggled to make it happen last year, but this is the year! I can feel it! I have been blogging on a personal level for six years as a way to keep a record of my own personal family memories as well as share them with my family across the country. I really enjoy blogging, and I think a classroom blog is a fantastic way to get students excited about writing. I can't wait to share our blog with you! Make sure you sign up as a "follower" to receive updates. Also, feel free to leave your comments. For now, check out some pictures of how the new room is coming along...

Winding Down...

I can't believe we are almost at the end of the year. I feel like I have failed miserably at getting pictures the last few weeks:( We enjoyed Spirit Week and the Spring Carnival last week, finished our plant unit before that, enjoyed our field trip to the zoo, and now we are getting ready to start working on our animal reports. Phew! On top of all the normal end of the year business I also learned that I am moving classrooms, so I anticipate a lot of packing in the last few weeks. I feel like our year has been a success, and I have learned just as much as the students! In my first year here, and my first year in first grade, I am so thankful for the welcome support I have had from my fabulous new coworkers and my amazingly patient group of firsties.

APEX Fun Run!

These past couple of weeks we have been working hard to get pledges for the Apex Fun Run. This is a new fundraiser this year, and let me tell you, it was a hit! Not only did we raise a lot of money for our school and classroom, the students had a great time hanging out with the Apex athletes who can to our room daily to do character/leadership lessons. They were a lot of fun! I personally loved that all the kids got to participate and feel involved, regardless of how many pledges they got. I also think it gave the kids more ownership in raising the money. Besides that, the run was a BLAST and great exercise! I ran with the kids, and let me tell you I was sore the next day! I am already looking forward to next year's run!

We Have Been Busy!

Well, can you believe it's almost March? I can't! The past two months have kept us busy with 100th day, Young Author's, and Valentine's Day. I also found an app for blogger that allows me to update from my phone directly, so maybe that will mean I can actually post more frequently, or that's my goal anyways.
We shared some fantastic 100 day collections and had a lot of fun playing games and doing activities with the number 100 on the 100th day of school.
We also enjoyed our Valentine's Day celebration, complete with a delicious friendship mix. In the midst of all the fun. we also completed our Young Author's book, which is a collection of acrostic poems using our names, and heart map illustrations. I can't wait to see the final product! Next week we will enjoy the book fair, and wind down the 3rd quarter with assessments before heading out for a relaxing spring break.

January, The Magical Month (whoops!!!)

Well, some how this post never actually got posted. I had it all typed up and ready to go, and must not have hit the submit button. Whoops! Poor January post. Well anyways, here it is...


January is often known as the "magical month" for teachers. When students return from winter break, often they are suddenly more mature, smarter, and the things you have been working on every. single. day. have finally "clicked". We are two days in, and I have already seen some light bulbs come on! This is promising, considering we are trying to get back into a routine after two weeks off, and they are more than happy to see their friends (which translates to CHATTY). Despite battling a massive head cold, I am happy to be back with my kiddos:) We are hard at work this week, and I am soooooo thankful that the holiday madness is over. Let's just say it's exhausting as a teacher. We are pumping up Daily 5, and I am now working on Read Naturally with three of my reading groups (great for fluency building). I have added some new word work (including the new favorite: make your own word search), we are going to be adding writing rubrics to work on writing and starting our Young Author's books, and soon I will be introducing the other component to Daily 5, CAFE! This is a great way to work on reading comprehension. Now that we are becoming more fluent readers, it's time to start focusing more on comprehending what we read. We are going to be BUSY!
We are still trucking along with Whole Brain teaching, and soon we will be adding number towers to our number walls to work on place value. I have two students that have reached level 5 on the Super Improver wall, which is BIG! Our scoreboard has also morphed into a happy snowman/sad snowman for winter (or maybe they are sandmen...that might be more appropriate for Arizona), and we are working on earning a new class reward, but this time it's a mystery!
Another exciting thing I am testing out (yes, I am crazy trying to juggle all of these things, but I LOVE technology and I HAD to implement this right away) is called Class Dojo. It's an awesome app that works perfectly with my classroom management system and allows me to track behaviors (positive and negative) using an app on my iphone or macbook. It will also provide detailed parent reports with graphs and charts (another favorite thing of mine). It also provides instant feedback to students doing a great job, and those that need a reminder to do the right thing or stay on task. Students will also be able to view and track their own behavior and reflect on where they struggle. I am super excited to try it, and so are the kids. I let them choose their monster "avatar" today. Fun times.

Finally, I have to throw in a leftover goodies from December:

A Special Visitor

Last week we welcomed the month of December with a very special visitor all the way from the North Pole!!! On Wednesday, we returned from PE to discover a box wrapped in gift wrap and tied with a bow sitting in front of our classroom door. We were all very anxious and excited to find out what exactly was inside that box!

When we opened the package, we found a tiny little Elf, a book, and a class set of "Elf Journals".

                          Student #21 wrote a cute little bit about wanting to name him Mark.
Hmmmmm...we were intrigued. We read the book and discovered that our Elf visitor was sent to us directly from the North Pole!!! He was a spy for Santa watching to make sure we were behaving and making good choices! We also learned that we had to choose a name for him, and write about his visit in our special Elf journals. After much deliberation, we voted on "Ethan the Elf" as his name. We also found that he doesn't speak, and we must not touch him or we could risk him losing his "magic". He spent his first day in our classroom hanging out on the book shelf.
The next day we found him sleeping in our tissue box...

 

We figured he must have been tired after his long journey from the North Pole. The next day he was hanging out on top of the lollipop tree enjoying a lollipop! He didn't even throw away the wrapper! What a naughty elf!

The following day he left us a message with the magnetic letters...

He also had an unfortunate accident and toppled off one of the boxes he was sitting on. We were really worried about him, but thankfully the next day he seemed to be okay, just a little banged up. Looks like he found my bandaids in the drawer though!

This morning he wrote our whole class a letter and thanked everyone for the nice notes and bucket fillers they have been leaving him. But he also warned us that he has been taking pictures of our classroom at the end of the day and sending them to Santa, and it has been very messy!!! Uh oh. 

Wonder what kind of shenanigans he will be up to tomorrow...

Whew....

Hello faithful followers! I have been not so faithful in my blogging. In all fairness I have a good excuse. The month of November (besides all the fury of the upcoming holiday season) was really tough because my son Luca got pneumonia. I have to admit, as a first time mommy to a toddler, this was pretty scary. The worst part was that we ended up in the ER at 10pm the day that my husband had just had surgery on his wrist. So, I spent the night in the ER with a very sick little boy and a daddy that was completely out of commission and on all kinds of pain killers. Not having any family around is really difficult in times like that. But thankfully our little guy is doing much better. We had to put a call in to grandma to come out and help take care of him (really, all of us since I ended up sick that same weekend) and we were very grateful that she was willing and able to make the trip. So, now that we are all almost back to normal, I can finally update this neglected blog!
I may just have to do it in a couple of posts since I have so much to add. I will start with November. We started the month with election fun and we even had a mock election in our classroom! We read three books: Duck for President, Gracie for President, and My Teacher for President. We then made campaign signs for who we thought should win, and held a mock election. I think the kids really enjoyed themselves, and learned a lot about how elections work. It only happens every 4 years, so I think it's an important thing to bring into the classroom. Here are some pictures of our campaign signs:

Now I am sad to say I have no clue which little cuties created these FABULOUS "Vote for Mrs. S" signs because these were done when my amazing substitute was filling in for me while I cared for sick little Luca. I took the pictures when I returned, but there were no names on them. So...if they are yours, I loved them!!! Oh, and guess who won the election...yep, me. I am so flattered.
We also got to try another special "Garden to Go" snack. This time it was some type of persimmon and the name is escaping me at the moment. The kids all tried them, and once again the majority of them liked it! So far, most of the special snacks have been a hit. Now I always try them with the kids (have to set a good example right?) but sometimes I have to try really hard not to make faces. I was not a fan of this snack...

Of course for Thanksgiving we had some fun activities to enjoy, and we did a lot of writing about what we were thankful for. Here are some of my favorites!

 Student #2 wrote the sweetest note to mom and dad. Love it!

This one is by student #20. How to cook a turkey. Pretty darn cute. In case you can't see it, it says "Take off the wrapper, take out the bones, cook it". Not sure about the whole bone removal, but hey, glad they knew to remove the wrapper!
We also did some special Thanksgiving "rotations" for the kids. We have what we call "rotations" every week in which the first grade teachers each teach a different subject such as social studies, art, science, tangrams, and some additional phonics and we rotate classrooms. During special holidays we plan holiday themed activities and students get to rotate classrooms and complete different fun projects. For Thanksgiving they got to do story telling bracelets, a cute "don't eat the turkey" craft, a pilgrim drawing activity, paint sample turkeys, and even got to make butter! I think they really had a good time. Sadly it was so hectic making story telling bracelets with 150 kids that I forgot to take pictures!!! Boooo:( I will do better during our holiday rotations next week, I promise!