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Happy teaching!



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Kindergarten Here I Come!

Well, it's almost the beginning of August which means that I only have about a month before school starts. It also means that I'm beginning to get that "itch" to get into my classroom and get things set up. This year is a little different though. It brings a new district, new school and another grade level change. I am happy to say that I will be back with the younger students and will be teaching kindergarten!

I was able to take a brief tour of my new school at the end of last year, but since it was the leveled library room and the teacher was trying to box things up so I didn't get a real good look yet. I am hoping to get into my room and take a good look around soon. I also am looking forward to getting all of these boxes out of my living room and dining room. Teachers have a lot of stuff!

I have been trying to do some research and look into the curriculum I know I will be using, such as Lucy Calkins Units of Study for Teaching Reading and Everyday Math, which I am already familiar with from my old school - just a different grade level. I also know they use a program called Action 100. I've been reading other kindergarten blogs and watching YouTube videos of kindergarten instruction in hopes of gaining some tricks and tips.

I've already had some professional development through my new district. New hire training in July was wonderful. It saves me some added stress at the beginning of the school year, not having to worry about all those forms and paperwork while trying to plan and set up a classroom. I've had two days of ENVoY Training which was a great refresher of classroom management tools. We all realized that we were doing most of the Gems but just needed to tweak and fine tune them to work better for us. I am looking forward to the Action 100 training in August along with all of the other new teacher training I will have.

Do any of you use Lucy Calkins, Everyday Math, or Action 100? I would love to hear about your experience with it!

Wake up, classroom!

Today I went to my classroom for the first time since the end of June. Our neighbor kids were hanging out with me for the day so they came along to help. While they were sorting my classroom library books into bins for me, I was working on bulletin boards. I got the backing up for all but three boards and was able to get the boarder up on one of the boards.  This is obviously a before picture and I forgot to snap a picture of progress made before I left. Look for more pics and details of my room in the coming days and weeks. 

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Summer Projects

Well it's about that time again.

Today I decided to dive in to one of the "projects" I put off until summer. A few members of my team got on board with me this year and decided to shake up our science curriculum a bit and make it more hands on and inquiry based versus reading based as it was last year. We divided up the strands among us. Today I picked apart the sound and light standard for third grade. We already had some good things in place from resources other staff put together so I took those and built on them.

While I was looking for resources to use and ideas for the unit I came across this little gem of a website www.scimathmn.org/stemtc/  . It has all the Minnesota math and science standards broken down, sample vocabulary lists, and resources.

Some other projects I worked on this summer have been:
1. Organize my Words Their Way teacher binder. Last year I worked on organizing my testing lists for my lower and on level spellers who work mostly out of the Within Words spelling pattern book. For this coming year I wanted the same type of lists for my higher Syllable and Affixes spelling group. I pulled out my sorts, put on a TV series I've been watching (Dexter-I know it's creepy but I like thrillers!) and got it done in a few short hours.

2. Level my chapter books. I've gone back and forth with this decision for two years now. I want my students to be able to find some good fit books on their own for their book box for Daily 5. I ran into the problem last year though of a few of my kiddos choosing books that were way out of  their independent range. Of course I conferenced with them about their book choices and tried to steer them to books closer to their level in the same genre but it kept happening. Now I must confess I have not read most of the chapter books that are in my classroom library. There are so many and I just don't have the time to do that. I do have a good idea what most of them are about though. So this summer I decided to help myself and the kiddos who struggle to find a book at their level by leveling my chapter books. We will see how it works this year!

3. Print out my reading brag tag incentives. I started these last year and my students LOVED them. Parents of children who did not like to read outside of school were commenting on how much their child was reading at home and loving it just so they could "level up". I use these editable tags from TPT. I will try to post more about how I use them and how it works once I get my bulletin board up.

  

I am anxiously awaiting the go ahead from administration to get back in my classroom to start setting up. Once that happens hopefully I will have more to write about. When do you start back to school? What big projects -if any - do you work on over the summer? Leave a comment and let me know! 

Bin give away

Lori over at Teaching with Love and Laughter is partnering up with Steps to Literacy and having a give away of some great looking bins. Head on over to her blog to enter to win! Good luck!

Classroom Progress

Whelp my room is coming along! I've been in a few hours here and there but today I went and worked all day and I'm feeling pretty good about where I'm at as far as unpacking and putting things up. I feel a million steps ahead of where I was at this point last year. One year ago today my husband and I were just arriving in Minnesota from our cross country move from Nevada. It's hard to believe that it has only been a year! Here are some pictures I snapped of my room before I left today. When It's all ready - piles put away, bulletin boards up, etc. I'll do a more in depth tour. Who knows.... maybe it will be a video;).

This is the view when you walk into my classroom. There is a "kitchen table" style table in my book corner area. On the back side of the table bench there are two book cases filled with baskets of chapter books loaned to me by my friend who moved down to teach kinder this year.  The "kitchen table" is also hers.

 Here is another shot from that same place but over a little so you can see my side wall and desk arrangement. Over near the flag is my teacher area with my desk and a bookshelf for my materials. On the right is my guided reading table.

 From this view you can see my guided reading table in the back corner. You can also see a little bit of the back of my reading corner area.

For some reason I can't type above this picture... Anyway this is a picture of my reading corner and the view toward the door of my classroom. Don't mind the piles of stuff on the desks still. :)

 Here is another view from my desk area. You can see more of the reading corner and also off to the right there is a writing nook there. I think I'm going to choose one "writer of the day" to be able to sit back there and write.

Here is a view of my room from my guided reading area.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think!