Let's Catch Up (Five for Friday style)!

Hey there!

The last couple weeks have been absolutely CRAZY for me between teaching, coaching volleyball (Saturday tournaments every weekend), and this last week's parent teacher conferences. I actually just got home from our JV tournament, so I am about ready to CRASH.

So thankful to Kacey over at Doodlebugs for this linky!

First, my kids are loving these new books we got from Usborne Books. We had a book fair through them last Spring and got a lot of books for our library. Woohoo! These two are easy chapter books for my beginning 2nd graders who have been "dying" to check out chapter books!

Second, I love morning tubs! 

Who knew? 

The creativity and opportunity for socialization before we get down to business is perfect!

Third, when the HEAVY pillows someone gave you work like a weighted blanket for a student who really needs one...BONUS!

Fourth, we are rocking our Daily 5! 

There was one day this week, when I looked around and was just super impressed. 

The read-to-self kiddos were reading. 

The word-working kiddos were working with words. 

The work-on-writing kiddos were writing. 

I literally had to take a moment and soak it in. 

Then I gave them all Super Improver stickers because we have improved so much!

Fifth, we have been talking a lot about this kind of thing at school...teaching independence. 

This sums it up perfectly!

So parents and teachers...teach your kids to be independent! It may not be perfect when they are learning. They may make mistakes. But in the end they will be building confidence and gaining independence to prepare them for LIFE!

Happy weekend!

Morning Tubs and Even a Fluency Tub

Happy Friday! 

This year our schedule changed in the mornings so that students come to my room before choosing to go to breakfast. As soon as I found that out, I began considering what I could have students working on. My principal kindly told me that "work time" was probably out or all students would be choosing to go to breakfast. Ha!

Then I saw the idea for morning tubs which I'm hearing a lot about now, so I know there are probably a lot of great ideas out there of what you can use as morning tubs. 

Each morning when the kids get off the bus (8:10), we meet in the gym to say our pledges and acknowledge birthdays, etc. Then we head to our classrooms. My students make their lunch choice and check their GO (Getting Organized) Books. Then they either head to breakfast or start on morning tubs.

For now, I have been setting the assigned tub on a group of desks and rotating them daily. Each week I set out different tubs or go back to ones we have used in previous weeks.

Some of the ones we've used so far: Play-doh, Legos, how-to drawing books, lacing beads, and my Fluency Tub (more info below). 

Some things I plan to use: Letter tiles and/or magnets, base 10 blocks, math wraps, puzzles, whiteboards, etc. Basically anything they can play, build, or do that will get their little minds engaged.

I love this time! 

The students are excited to get to class and hurry back from breakfast. It is fun to see what they create, build, or draw. I've overheard a lot of good conversations and problem solving. I have time to take care of my lunch count and even pull a kiddo aside to talk to them or do a quick fluency check. 

I play my "Rise and Shine" song at 8:30 and we gather on the rug for Morning Meeting. 

I was a little worried that the "Fluency Tub" wouldn't be as popular when I introduced it this week, but they are LOVING it. 

Here's a video on what is inside the tub (if it won't play for you, try checking it out on Facebook):

The favorite from the fluency tub is definitely the "I have…who has…?" game--which is fantastic because as you probably know I have a lot of them! :-)

This particular one is the high-frequency words from our Reading Wonders unit.

If you need some "I have…who has…?" games, check out our TPT store. We have several that cover a lot of grade levels and phonics skills (math too). There's even some freebies to get you started!

I'm pretty excited to know that I should never run out of morning tub ideas they love. :-)

Have a great weekend!

P.S. Trying the embed video from FB here:

Five for Friday - Back to School Style!

WOW!

First week back to work complete.

I am exhausted!

How is it that an experienced teacher can never be completely prepared for the physical and emotional back-to-school demands?

I set up my room the first week in August. I lesson planned for the first weeks and have my year long plans done. I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. a week ahead of time. I was taking about 10,000 steps each day during my final weeks of summer.

And still, I came home from the community cookout and scrimmage last night feeling a lot like this:

I seriously limped to bed. :-(

Anyway, let me give you a peek at my week Five for Friday style!

Thanks Kacey for this weekly link-up!

1

The Christian Teachers Facebook Group leaders have put out a prayer journal for this school year (started Monday). It is based off of Psalm 119 and covers four verses a week. I'm accepting the challenge to memorize it! I love this app for practicing my memory verses. 

2

Monday morning it was back to work for inservice. It was plagued with technology issues. Ugh! I felt so bad for our administrators who had planned good things, but nothing was working correctly. One of the drawbacks of a small school...no full-time tech person. I did manage to score some goodies though! Can't wait to read this book!

3

No tech person means we have get to do a lot of techy stuff ourselves. I had an issue with my computer/projector connection all last year, so they promised me this Google Cast thingy would solve my problem. I was a bit skeptical, but happy to report that it did solve the problem after I spent an hour installing it and setting it up. I fear it will only work when our internet is working though. Can anyone confirm that?

4

Thursday was our first day of school, so of course, I had to make my kids get in a picture with me! He's a junior. She's a sophomore. Me...well, I'm a 2nd grader (year seven).

Also, from the first day of school, my students working/playing with their morning tubs. 

This is new for me this year, but so far I'm liking it. We have our morning meeting in the gym, students come to my room and do their lunch count, check their GO (getting organized) book, and then head to breakfast (if they choose to). The morning tubs keep the non-breakfast eaters busy and encourage the breakfast eaters to be quick! I rotate the tubs each day and as the year progresses, I'll add different activities. The first few weeks, we are sticking to Legos, Play-Doh, and Pattern Blocks.

5

Day two (yesterday) we started building our stamina for Daily 5. The students did 3 minutes really well, so they wanted to try 4. It really went better than I expected based on some of my littles this year!

We are also building our stamina for school right now. This bunch is doing pretty awesome in the morning. The afternoons are a little rougher, but we will get there I'm sure. So thankful that our administration agreed to a morning and afternoon recess PLUS our kiddos get PE every day. :-)

I even got things done during my PLAN time (if you've followed us long, then you may remember I did not have a plan time during the school day the last three years) so I do not have to go work at the school today! I think I'll go up for a few minutes just to make a video classroom tour for you though. We'll have to see the how the day goes. ;-)

Have a great weekend!