The Work Begins

I am about six weeks out from the start of school.  That means I am focused on everything I need to do to get my classroom ready for the new year because there never seems to be enough time.  My friends and family tend to roll their eyes and remind me I have plenty of time and I should take a break and chill out.  I might be a little bit of a workaholic...or a lot. I spent June working summer school and when summer school was out I went and stayed with my family for a week.  My first day back I planned to laze around and watch tv and be a total bum.  Then I got on Bloglovin and Pinterest and checked my feeds.  An hour or so later I was headed into my classroom to get started on all the awesome ideas.  Go figure. I count myself lucky that I get paid to do a job I adore.

I am grateful that in my third year I am staying in the same classroom and teaching the same grade level. My first year I was in first grade and my second year I moved to third grade.  This will be my third year and I feel like I get to really settle into my room and the routines I already worked with last year.  I also know that this year we are starting a new math series AND a new reading series simultaneously.  This upcoming school year should be very interesting.  In a way a lot will be the same and on the other hand a lot will be different.  That's why I'm determined to get a jump on it this year.  As teachers we put soooooo much effort into our classrooms at the beginning of the year and parents, students, and administration usually see the final product.  I decided I would start with some before pictures this year to show what my classroom looks like without the effort and attention.  These are the "no make-up/just rolled out of bed" pictures that we all dread...get ready for it...

I will say that this is actually after several hours of work.  My shelf in the back was loaded and I managed to get it unpacked, but some of it ended on the table.  I'm looking forward to posting some lovely after pictures when I get a chance.

Monday Random Meet Up

So as a new blogger I am linking up to other teaching blogs for the first time ever.  It's nerve-wracking! Today I'm linking up with The Teaching Tribune for some Monday Meet Up.

Here are some random facts about me!

End of the Year Scrapbooks

This post may seem a little premature, but it's never too late to prep for the end of the year right? Ok so the year hasn't started yet, but this takes all year to put together.

I love for my students and their families to see how far they have come since the beginning of the year.  If you go back and look at pictures from the beginning of the year and compare them to the end of the year, they are SO different! Add in how much their skills improve, like writing, and you will be amazed.  As much as I say it is for my students and families to see a difference though, it is just as much for me.  As teachers we tend to get overwhelmed and all we see are the things that we didn't get to this year.  It's nice to have something to show us that even if we didn't teach every single lesson we wanted to, we made a ton of progress.  The best way I've seen to do that is to do a scrapbook for the end of the year.

When I found out our hallway all does scrapbooks for our kids I thought there was no way that I was ever going to get enough to put in a scrapbook...boy was I wrong.  About half of the scrapbook was pictures and the rest was writing.

We took pictures for:

• First Day of School
• Field Trips
• Hall Decorations
• Christmas
• New Years
• Valentines
• Superhero stories (we used Face in Hole to make them superheroes)
• Mother's Day
• Recess Pictures
• Quizbowl Pictures
• Parties
• Centers
• Grandparents Night
• Open House
• Pretty much anything else we could think to take pictures for
• Class pictures

Any time my students wrote a published paper that I would hang in the hall, I kept the work and put it in a file for my students. Some things we wrote about were:

• Beginning of School what we are like
• Grandparent's Day Why I Love My Grandparents
• Field Trips
• What we are Thankful for
• Disguising a Turkey
• Letter to Santa
• Letters to Soldiers for Christmas
• Superhero Narrative
• Descriptive Writing about Monsters
• The students created a publisher page about their Halloween that used clipart and borders.
• Letter to a Valentine
• New Year's Resolutions
• How to Catch a Leprechaun
• Narrative about a time they were happy or their favorite day
• Letter to the principal explaining what the student would do if they were the principal

Those are just the things I can remember.  Anything that you do can end up in the scrapbook.  It does take time and planning though.  I spent a large portion of the end of my year working on these scrapbooks because I hadn't kept up with them.  

What I Wish I Did Last Year:

We took pictures about once a month for this, that, and the other.  Those pictures of each student ended up on my computer on an edited page with cute graphics and captions.  I was pretty good at making the pages for all my students when I took the pictures.  Unfortunately I didn't print them off until the end of the year so it took forever.  Plus I still had to make some of the pages.  This coming year when I make them I plan on printing them so it is one less end of the year hassle.  Here are some examples of picture pages with me front and center:

Their writing pages were either typed on a computer with a border or they were hand-written on cardstock with fun borders.  Once again, I didn't always print out the typed pages, so this coming year I want to print them as they complete them so it is one less thing I have to do to complete the scrapbook at the end of the year.  The other problem I had was that some of my pages were laminated and some weren't because once again I didn't make time to get it done during the school year.  It was one of those things that I kept thinking "When I have a chance..."  I ended up not going back and laminating because there were just too many to do.  Plus anything that was printed at the end of the year didn't get laminated either.  It was ok for the scrapbook, but it doesn't mean they will hold up well over the years and my goal was to make something parents could keep.

With all those pages, putting the book together was actually pretty easy.  I made a list of all the things that went in the book and made sure the list was ordered.  The students' work was already separated into an individual folder so when they brought me the binder I requested I could just hole punch and put in the pages.  It actually isn't as much work as it sounds like if you do the printing, laminating, and separating work throughout the year.  I think of it as 20 minutes or so every couple weeks or month or hours of work at the end of the year.  I have to say they turned out adorable and I hope my parents were as excited to get them as I was to see them finished!

Board Games: Frog Publications

So there are a million and one cute little board games that you can find on TPT and print off.  They can be specific to a skill, adaptable, or use cards that you create.  While I love these, I really love my boards from Frog Publications.  I know several teachers that have used their Drops in the Bucket daily review.  I always have to stop by their booth at teaching conventions and conferences specifically for their game boards though.  If you don't normally stop you really should.  They have always given me a game board, set of example cards, die, and a couple pawns.  At my last convention, I even talked one of my friends into stopping at the booth and grabbing a gameboard (because I'm a little obsessed) and giving it to me since she wasn't interested.  She came back and told me in no uncertain terms I wasn't getting it because she was keeping it.  That was that.  She fell in love with the boards too. They are adorable! On top of that, they are also about the size of two pieces of paper.  That means more room for pawns and more space than most of the TPT ones.  Plus they are already laminated and extremely durable. If they can withstand the torture my kids dole out on my manipulatives and centers they can withstand anything.

Frog Publications has classroom sets that you can buy with pre-made cards covering all kinds of skills and the directions for the game are all the same.  You want to talk about easy for centers?  They've got it done for you.  Plus, I like to make my own cards and games to supplement.  Do you want students practicing math facts? Add in a set of flashcards with the board and they can practice their math facts.  Working on sight words?  My students loved having to flip over a card and say their sight word in order to move on the board.  Give a spelling list to your students and one student gives a word that the other has to spell correctly to move.  That is a center they can be engaged in.  They can even learn sportsmanship while in the center. There is no end to the number of ways you can use them.  Don't forget your fast finishers.  Keep some of your games in an extra box and they can grab a partner and start playing.

If you are interested in having resources for your parents, Frog Publications also has a Parental Involvement pack.  I haven't used this, but the games follow the same guidelines and it includes the self-checking cards.

Like I said, you can find plenty of game boards, but Frog Publications does the work for you and creates cards that focus on the skills that you teach in math, reading, and grammar.  Add in the durability and these are definitely products that you want to check out.

Yoga Breaks

I have a new love and it is called yoga.  Most people would say I'm more than a little obsessed with yoga.  Yoga is incredible for stress relief, increasing healthy habits, and is a wonderful exercise. Personally, I have started working out regularly, drinking more water, eating healthier, lost weight, and been less stressed, all because of yoga.  Now, when most people think about yoga they think of crazy flexibility and people saying "OM."  While you will see that in different aspects of yoga, you can also make it suitable for your needs and even your students' needs.

One of my co-workers was doing research on things that would help with things like testing anxiety and getting students to focus.  She is also a yoga lover and came across a ton of information on yoga in the classroom.  She also found these amazing cards.

(picture from yogakids.com)

These cards are great because each card has a single pose with large pictures of a student doing the pose.  The poses also have kid friendly names and a detailed list of instructions you can read right off the back to help your students get into proper position.  Even if you have never done yoga, you can still use these cards in your classroom.  Another aspect I love is that they put the poses in groups depending on how they are intended to affect your children.  Do your children need to calm down? There is a whole section for that.  If you need them to focus it's another section.  Each section is color coded and marked so you can easily find the ones you want.

(picture from yogakids.com)

When do I use this?

Many teachers are already doing brain breaks and these fit right in with what you might already do.  Indoor recess?  Kids can do yoga instead of playing games, watching a movie, dancing, or any number of other things.  My favorite time I used them was during the testing season.  When we had breaks between testing sessions we would get up and move around and we did lots and lots of yoga.  This was relatively quiet which was important since we were indoors and trying not to disturb others.  It's also one of my favorite things to do when my kids have been doing a highly active task like centers, just coming back from PE or recess, or just have an extra dose of energy.  This gets kids moving, but several also require students to calm down and focus if they want to succeed in the pose.  

Why use yoga?

If you already use brain breaks, the best part about yoga, at least in my class, was that many of the poses were ones my students didn't do in our regular brain breaks or other places like PE.  If it is something different you know it is more likely to attract their attention.  

Personally, I also saw an improvement in my students after we had done our yoga breaks.  I have previously danced, done jumping jacks, run in place, and so many more active things for a brain break.  What I found was that usually my kids were more energized, but they were energized to the point they had trouble settling down and getting back to work.  I love the yoga poses because most of the time my kids got to move, but they had to focus in order to control their body.  Their brain got the break, but their behavior didn't disintegrate into craziness.  

I wish I could list all the benefits of yoga.  If you want to read a little more about it, here is an article from Parents.com.  This site gives you a list of ways kids benefit in the school setting.  Even PBS agrees!  If you want to order the cards here is the website.  I am not recommending this product because I received anything for this post.  I honestly have used the cards and they work!

School's Out for the Summer...What do Teachers do in the Summer?

At the end of May my room was boxed up, my kids were headed home, and we were all talking about how great summer was going to be.  Well, it's the end of June and school is finally out for me.  Yes, I was one of the crazy people that signed up to do summer school for a month.

I can't complain because I actually enjoy it.  For a whole month I don't have a set agenda of what HAS to be accomplished.  Instead, I get to see where some of my future students are at, what skills we need lots of work on, and what I honestly don't teach well. I use summer school to be a better teacher.

I spent the first couple weeks of summer school really focusing on grammar.  Grammar is one of those things that many people I know struggle to teach and I don't always do the best job at it.  So I taught the first few grammar skills that we would be learning next year.  I found some great resources, created some powerpoints, and came up with a list of ideas for future resources I want to create.  If I hadn't taught summer school I wouldn't have been able to try some of these out on my kids to find out what was working for me and what wasn't.  Once I've refined those resources a little more I will start sharing. :)

So now that summer is over, what in the world will I do?  Anyone else have a summer "want to" list?  Mine is pretty long.  I will be spending some togetherness time with my family this summer and later this summer I will be helping my mom set up her classroom since she is changing grade levels.  The last two years she has gone above and beyond in helping me with my classroom so I'm hoping I can be half as helpful.

I do plan on doing lots and lots of reading this summer.  I love reading, but somehow it just doesn't get done as much during the school year.  On my summer list are:

1. My Dad's book (No that isn't the name of a book.  My Dad wrote a book he hasn't published yet and I am in the middle of reading it.)
2. Lies My History Teacher Told Me
3. Yoga School Dropout
4. The Bhagavad Gita
5. Fault in Our Stars (I know I'm a little late to the show on this one. Don't ask how long it took for me to get around to the Divergent series.)
6. The other five billion and one books that are on my list that I haven't read yet.

The other big item on my summer "want to" list is to add to my TPT store.  I got started during the snow days and then didn't keep creating.  I get super excited when they send an e-mail saying I've sold something.  Now I just have to get a more somethings up to sell.  I have a list of a million resources I want to create, so it is just a matter of sitting down and creating them.  Along with creating resources I also need to create some centers.  I have lots of prepackaged games on my shelves that our district has purchased, but I usually want something a little more specific for my kids.  My goal is either to find some games or centers that target exactly what I want or to create some.  Of course that means ultimately there will be lots of laminating and cutting and folders and ziploc bags and time spent on the couch organizing and putting together.  At least I have Netflix right??

What are your summer plans?

My Journey to the Centers of the Classroom

So this blog is kind of my captain's log for my teaching journey and one of the most difficult journeys I have had is dealing with centers.  I see all the time these great blogs where teachers are rocking their centers and it makes me feel a little inadequate.  I have to keep reminding myself:

1. I just started teaching.
2. No one is a rockstar the first time they try something (ok some are but I choose not to acknowledge them because jealousy isn't nice lol).

With this in mind I figured I would share my journey with it's ups and downs for anyone else who is trying to find their way through this minefield.  This post is a little bit long, so sorry in advance.

During my year in first grade, I started out doing ten reading centers a week so students could rotate to two centers  every day.  I had some specific problems with that:

1. I never had enough time to prep the ten centers because as a new teacher half the time I was scrambling for my lessons. Center prep was overwhelming and put off until the last minute and sometimes it was Monday morning before I managed to force myself to prep centers.
2. I started with worksheets that I had to check.  Once again it was a time thing.  I didn't have time to check, I didn't check, my students figured it out, and you can guess the end of that story. No checking and we don't care.  Center time was fun time.

Despite those two big problems, I did do a pretty good job of pulling students to my table and working with small groups.  I saw the majority of my class a few times a week. My big regret though was that sometimes I didn't see my higher students as often or at all.

By the end of the year I had grown some new brain cells and cut down to five centers, most of which were self-checking and had multiple steps to keep my kids entertained. This was working better and I felt like my students were accomplishing things. I had made progress and was going to improve the next year.  Then I moved to third grade...

This last year I did both reading and math centers. My third graders weren't very focused in centers and needed lots of redirecting. This time I was smarter and did all self-checking centers and also was more familiar with the games and manipulatives in my classroom.  The five center model from first grade stayed so center prep was much easier this time around.  My big change this year was that towards the end of the year I tried letting them pick their centers. This did not go well for me for a few reasons.

1. It took forever! They couldn't remember what centers they had been to and I had the only record so they were asking where they had been or picking a center they had already chosen.  We did picked centers on the Smartboard so they were dragging and dropping their name, which can be problematic because not all of my kids were good with dragging and dropping.  If they are going to choose this year, I have to revamp how we go about tracking where we have been and I probably won't do it on the Smartboard.
2. The students almost always picked working with the same students most days.  Even though I called randomly they usually still ended up with their friends. While that was ok for management because my kids were happier, I want my students to get used to working with other people.  I need a motivator to get them to pick to work with different people.

I will say the positive of letting them pick was they were more engaged.  When students picked a center, even if it was just the last one that they hadn't done, they were more focused than they had been before.

My major problem this last year wasn't the actual centers, but pulling students to my table.  I didn't have to have students at my table to make my center system work like in first grade.  My bad habit became putting my students in centers and then work on something that I needed to or pull students to my table to complete work from a day they had missed.  I wasn't working with struggling students or expanding work for students as much as I needed to.  I did better in math than I did in reading though.

My goal for the coming year is to do a better job pulling students to my table to work in small groups.  One way I plan on doing that is to change how I do centers. I'm going to try doing 4 centers and a fifth group at my table, that way I have to pull students to make my center system work.  Since my centers are becoming pretty low-prep, I can focus on planning for small group time.  More to come on the Journey to the Centers of the Classroom!