Peek at My Week: Week 3

Good Morning!

It is a beautiful Sunday morning and I am actually done with my lesson plans for this next week. I am very excited for this week, not just because it is a 4 day week for us, but because we are starting a Science unit. I love teaching Science and doing experiments with my firsties.

To show you my plans I will be linking up with Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for her Peek at My Week linky. I love this linky! I have already gotten great ideas from others who join the party and it has really forced me to have my lessons done earlier, instead of 10 or 11 Sunday night.

This week I will be starting an Earth Science unit. We will talk about landforms, rocks, and soil this week. We will also be continuing to learn how to use our math interactive notebooks. We began them last week and will add a few more pieces this week. I will also be introducing our math key words wall. I want my students to learn the meanings of all the words that we use in math. I believe that learning the terminology and understanding it is just as important as learning to manipulate numbers in different ways.

Links to all available packets can be found below.

Math Journal Prompts Set 1
My Remarkable Rock Report
Math Key Words
GeoBoard It

Thanks for letting me share my plans for the upcoming week! Have a wonderful Sunday and a wonderful week!

Ashley

Peek at My Week: Week 2

Hello Again!

This morning I am linking up with Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for her Peek at My Week linky. I am loving this linky. It is motivating me to complete lesson plans earlier and provide images of the packets I am pulling things from. This proved very helpful last week when I forgot what packet held what I was looking for.

I am very excited for this week. Last week was the first full week of switching for the different subjects with our little firsties and it went really well. I am loving only having to focus on half of the subjects that I used to teach.

This week our theme is Arizona. We spend a week looking at Arizona symbols and history so that students can become a little more knowledgeable about the state they are growing up in. We will start by reading The Three Little Javelinas and then work through a state symbols book from Melissa Schaper. We will end it by making the Arizona state flag to hang in our room.

I am also introducing number bonds this week. Our school uses Saxon math but I weave as much Singapore math in as I can because I love how much easier it is for students to master things when using those methods. I am using pieces from two packets this week. Both packets are from Brenda Cosby and the links can be found below. 

Math Journal Prompts Set 1
Math Journal Prompts Set 2

Have a wonderful week!

Ashley

Peek at My Week - First Full Week

Hi Everyone!

Well it has been over a month since my last blog post. I have had many adventures with family; some planned and a few unexpected. I ended it all by heading right back to the classroom. Life is finally starting to go back into a routine so with the encouragement of some dear friends I am returning to my blog. For my return I decided to try something new. I am linking up with Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for her Peek at My Week linky.

This will be our first full week of school and we are diving right in. I am excited. This year my teaching partner and I have decided to do the teacher switch, so I am only teaching math, science, social studies, and handwriting. It definitely is making lesson planning a lot easier.

We start off our week with a lesson in Creation. We make a book for the days of creation and then we follow it up with a coloring activity the next day. In previous years we have used the book template that allows for our kiddos to draw the pictures but this year we have less time so we are using the book template that already has pictures for the kiddos to color.

We use Saxon math and it starts off really slow for first grade so we spend several days learning about Mathematicians. We did two activities last week (books about what good mathematicians do and the numbers of me) and we do the parts of a mathematician this week. This helps make the first part of Saxon math a little more exciting as well as the beginning of the year assessments that we have them take.

We also start with a Social studies unit all on routines and rules within the home and school. It is a really short unit and allows us to purposely spend a week reviewing routines and rules while covering needed material within our curriculum.

The Days of Creation and I Am a Mathematician packets can be found in my TPT store if you want to get a glimpse of what we do.

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Ashley

Together We Are Better: Making Improvements

Good Morning,

I am continue to catch up by linking up with Schroeder Shenanigans in Second and Lucky Little Learners for this months Together We Are Better linky.

 

This month's linky topic goes along perfectly with thoughts that have been swimming in my head all summer. This coming school year I will be doing a teacher split with my  partner teacher. I will be teaching all the little firsties math, science, social studies, and handwriting. She will be teaching the rest of the subjects. This requires some big changes in my room. I no longer need all the reading, writing, and phonics posters in my room. Along with this I have been reading Mindsets in the Classroom, Teaching with Intention, and Learn Like a Pirate. These books have also given me lots of ideas for my classroom.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos at this time. I have only been in my room twice since school let out a month ago so it is still a disaster. It is also slow going since I bring my one year old with me.

All of my bulletin boards/covered wall spaces are receiving face lifts. I have chosen new colors (blue, green, and purple) for my room. One of my boards is becoming an "I Can" wall where I will post the statements for science, math, and social studies. I am adding a space near my classroom library for a bible wall. This will be where I post bible projects and verses throughout the year. Outside my room I am turning one of my walls into a gratitude wall. I will be having my kids write what they are thankful for once a week and then posting their thoughts on that board so that we can be reminded of all the wonderful gifts we have all been blessed with. I have not decided quite yet what the other boards/wall spaces will be yet but pictures will be posted when I finish my room.

I am also excited to have expanded my library/meeting area. It has always been small and in a corner of my room. We have always struggled to fit in that space so this year I have moved furniture around and made it larger so that we can easily fit in for class meetings and they kids have more reading space too.

That's all I have for now but I will be in my classroom all this week so I will try to add a few photos to show a little of what I am talking about above.

Ashley

Learn Like a Pirate: Chapter 5

Good Morning!

I am continuing to catch up this morning by finally linking up with The Primary Gal for chapter 5 of Learn Like a Pirate.

 

This chapter was all about the different ways that Solarz gives the responsibility of running the classroom to his students. He has a group of formal jobs that are assigned to students and everything else is considered a collaborative responsibility. I like that he teaches his students all of the things that need to be done to keep the classroom running and then empowers them to jump in to complete these tasks on their own when they see that they need to be completed.

I have thought about how to accomplish this with first graders and I haven't come to a conclusion yet. I have decided to expand the jobs that I assign to students this coming year which will give them more responsibility in their classroom. I will have to think a little longer on how to instill that collaborative responsibility in my little firsties because I love the idea of them being more observant and concerned about how their classroom looks and runs.

Solarz continues on to talk about rituals vs. routine. He states that rituals are activities that follow the same pattern but are motivational for students and make students want to be a part of it. Routines are activities that follow a similar pattern but are not motivational to students. After reading his descriptions I could clearly see the few parts of my day that are ritual and the larger amount that are unfortunately routine. I do like how he pointed out the routine parts of our days can be turned into rituals for our students. My goal will be to turn those routines into rituals for my students. I am hoping that by doing that I can make things easier for subs when they are in my classroom. I try not to be absent but I do end up staying home more with my sweet girl when she is sick and feel that my subs would have an easier time if my students took more control of the routines.

My goal for this coming year will be to expand the classroom jobs and work on making rituals within my classroom versus routines. Solarz is excellent in painting such a wonderful picture of a student led classroom that you can't help but get pumped up and ready to dive in to changing your classroom. I look forward to reading all the other thoughts and ideas over on the Primary Gal's blog.

Ashley

The inLinkz code is:

An InLinkz Link-up

Teaching with Intention: Chapter 5

Good Evening!

I took last week off to deep clean my house and then spend time with visiting family so tonight begins catch up. Tonight I am finally linking up with From Kindergarten with Love and The Kindergarten Smorgasboard  for chapter 5 of Teaching with Intention.

 

What a great chapter! This was a beautifully laid out lesson plan to help students comprehension grow and develop. I love the idea of using a poster board as a folder to post our schema (what we think we know), new learning, and misconceptions. I also love that she uses post it notes (in different colors of course) to post the thoughts of the students throughout lessons and readings. That is a great way to show them an example of moving thoughts around or evening "deleting" a thought if it is not accurate. It is also a great way to teach them to pull thoughts from their reading and write them on post it notes to share with the class. This will help them remember the information from the reading and it will give them the power to teach/share something with their classmates. This will be a great tool to use this year for my science and social studies classes.

Ashley

Five for Friday

Good Morning!

This morning I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky party.

So this was a big week in our house. My sweet 1 year old daughter has been sleeping in our room since March. She was sick every few days the last three months of school so we just kept her in our room since her room is on the other side of the house. Well that changed this past weekend. Our sweet girl is finally back in her crib sleeping the nights away. Now if I can just get the fur baby (90 lb golden retriever) out of the bed we will be sleeping peacefully again.

I was able to completely redo one of my favorite units. I have so much more clip art now that it was really fun to go back and make my Johnny Appleseed product look nicer. It also motivated me to go back and start updating the products that I put on TpT preclipart and boy do those products need a little TLC. I am excited to see how different and more professional they look when I am finished.

I had the privilege of spending the afternoon with some amazing Arizona teachers at the AZ Teachers Brunch and Bubbly. It is humbling to be a part of a group with so many creative and talented women. I am learning so much from them and I look forward to all the things they will be able to teach me about TpT and blogging.

I got to spend another week at home with my sweet girl. My favorite part of summer vacation has been being a stay at home mommy. I love spending time with her even on those challenging tantrum filled days. I will definitely have a hard time going back in August. I love my job, but I also love being a stay at home mommy.

I love music and I love Christian music. My sweet girl and I jam to Air 1 whenever we are in the car. This is another one of my recent favorites. Enjoy!

Ashley