Leaps of Learning

What a great week!  My youngest students are working hard on learning their letters.  My week was made when they started writing strings of letters during writing workshop this week!  They are learning that letters are what make up words and that the words hold the meaning in books.  I'm even seeing progress in their understanding of beginning sounds.  I attribute this progress to daily letter work and a few successful writing lessons.

In writing this week, we learned about different purposes for writing.  Writing lists and letters really encouraged my young students to try words (letter strings) instead of only drawings.  Desharae in Second on TpT made prep for these lessons a breeze!  Check out this amazing pack of writing papers I used:

 

My letter friends also enjoyed their first picture sort.  They really loved the poem that went with the sort from Words Their Way.  I think this really encouraged their interest in words as well.

 

I have made leaps in learning how to stay organized.  I am using colored file folders and stackable trays.  Blue for math, yellow for reading, and red for writing.  Each tray has the papers I need for each part of the day conveniently located in a brightly colored folder.  I also have two extra trays for papers to grade and need to file/copy.  So far this system is working for me.

 

What are your tips/tricks for staying organized?

 

-Olivia



Community Field Trips

I'm finally feeling caught up.  I'm sure that will change soon.  (It always seems to work that way.)  Part of feeling caught up is the arrival of these new bins and new found organization!  I love the continuity the bins give and that they hide a lot of clutter.  Now that they are all labeled, I am working on teaching my students to keep them organized.

 

 

 

I know I'm behind on blogging.  Last week was a crazy busy week.  We had field trips on Thursday and Friday!  On Thursday we went to an urban farm.  It was fun to go on a walking field trip.  We walked about 13 blocks.  It was a long walk for my Kindergarteners, but it was great practice learning appropriate behaviors out in their community.  As we walked, we searched for letters and numbers.  These basic skills are much more fun to build in the real world.

 

 

One of my students found a dead grasshopper.  We took the grasshopper back to school to study.  A week later, my students are still talking about the grasshopper.  I've had a number of parents enquire, saying that their child said they just had to see what we found at the farm!  Our trip was a huge success!  We learned some academics, but more importantly we learned to take care of one another and respect nature.

 

 

Think that was enough for one week?  Nope!  We took a field trip on Friday too!  We had a great opportunity to meet some senior citizens in our community last Friday.  I was amazed at how my students quickly got to know their senior partner.  Although many of my students were shy at first, by the end of our 45 minute visit they did not want to leave!  The seniors really enjoyed meeting my little ones and encouraging them in their learning.

 

The worst part was the bus ride.  After such a successful walking trip the day before, it was frustrating that my students just would not sit still on the bus.  On the way to the senior center, we tried songs and searching for letters and numbers.  None of that was really successful or engaging for all students.  On the way back, I whipped out some picture books I had brought along.  I had enough for each pair of students to read.  They sat still and read for the whole ride!  As pairs finished reading one book, they swapped books with another pair.  What a great way to get some reading in since we were missing our reading workshop time that day!  Note for future planning: pack a bag of books for every bus trip.

 

I hope you had a great week!

 

-Olivia

New Stuff For The Teacher!

Orders are finally coming in.  Remember how I got my classroom furniture the day before school started?  Well, now a month in to school I finally received my desk, technology cart, and student laptops.  I'm really happy about the new desk.  It has been a great motivator for me to get organized.

 



 Academics have started to pick up.  We are a month into school and students know the expectations.  We are building reading stamina.  My students were thrilled to reach 20 minutes!  We are getting close to our goal of 30.  We also just learned this week how to pick our own books.  This fit perfectly with our first visit to the school library.  We learned the I Pick Rap and earned a bookmark by being able to tell what each letter stands for.  You can see a better photo of the bookmark and download it for free in my TPT shop.



My math time has been taken up with state testing.  It is the only time of the day when we have the students grouped by grade level.  Reading and math screeners are done, now we must tackle the writing screener. I have had students exploring math materials while I give the individual portions of the assessments.  This is "Sir Pattern" that a student made with tiles.

 

 

I hope you had a great week!

 

-Olivia

Last week's successes in photos

I wrote this last weekend and just noticed it never published. Technology has not been on my side lately.

This week I finally felt like my room is more or less together and we are into our routine.  It took many days and hours (during which I have slacked on blogging-sorry). This weekend has gotten away from me as I finish up a few last beginning if the year projects, so I'll just do a quick photo post for you. Each photo is captioned with how it represents a success for the past week.

 

This is the front of the room. Technology is set up. Students have their toolboxes with pencils and markers each labeled and stored in their cubby. Hopes and dream bulletin started. Class jobs have been introduced, assigned, and displayed (the bees on the right).

 

I started CAFE for the very first time! Exciting, but challenging. This week I am going to review the strategies I introduced to give me more practice and ensure that the students have a good foundation of important reading strategies. To do this week is to conference with students and set their goals!

 

Math corner is set up and being put to daily use. We are using Bridges this year and I'm really liking it. (Maybe more on that in a future post).

 

 

Calendar time was chaos and time was being wasted on getting supplies. I simplified the process by setting up these toolkits. Each student gets two pencils and a dry erase marker each labeled with his/her name. I tried hot gluing Pom poms but they kept falling off when the students used them. So, I went to Dollar Tree and picked up baby washcloths. They came four washcloths in a pack! The students thought these were just as cool as Pom Pom erasers and much easier to use!

That's all for now. I hope you had a great week and refreshing weekend!

-Olivia

Taking a Pinterest Approach to my Email

With my attention more on Pinterest and blogging, my email inbox has suffered. My iPad makes it easy to reply to emails as they come, but I have found that I am not taking the few extra taps to archive my emails in their proper folders. So today on my Spring Break, I am spring cleaning my email inbox instead of creating new TpT products, knitting, or anything else fun!
How did my inbox get to be this messy? After reflection, I think it is because I take a Pinterest approach. I allow the most recent things, the things still on my screen to take my attention and I forget that there are other important things buried. I need to be as diligent about saving emails to their appropriate folders as I am about pinning interesting products to their proper boards. I will be making new folders and sorting each and every email today in the hopes that tomorrow I can start fresh!
Hopefully this weekend and next week I will be ready to polish up and publish some blog posts and products!
What are your tips for managing your email inbox?