Calling All Morning Duty Ideas!

I must apologize for not posting last week - glad Kristi popped in on Saturday! 

We had morning duty last week (a pleasure the torture we have every 6-7 weeks or so). Ugh! It makes me feel completely behind. Add a Back-To-School Revival at my church Monday – Wednesday evenings, my son’s first cross country meet and my daughter’s first volleyball game on Thursday evening, and you will understand why I was MIA.

I literally came home Friday and laid on the couch all evening – blissfully doing absolutely nothing playing words with friends and even that was too taxing for my worn out brain so I had to stop. LOL!

Speaking of morning duty, I’m curious how other schools handle it. None of us are completely happy with our current system, but we don’t really have any better ideas.

Here’s how it works…we are a K-6 school and morning duty lasts from 7:45-8:10. The students are grouped by grade levels – K-1, 2-4, and 5-6. One week a grade level group will be in the gym doing activities with our awesome PE teacher while the two other groups are sitting in the hallway “reading.” I put that in quotes because most of the kids just pretend and to be honest I don’t care as long as they are quiet. The K-1 group sits in the library and watches a video instead of reading in the hallway for obvious reasons.

I know we’re all busy right now, but if you can find the time to post a comment about your morning duty, we’d love to hear from you!

Happy Labor Day - enjoy the extra day off!

Crystal

 

P.S. Here’s some pictures of us “building stamina.” We are up to 15 minutes – woohoo! I give the kiddos the choice of sitting at their desk or on the floor near their desk. This particular day most of them picked their desk.

 

 

Word Work

We are so excited about the Daily Five that we just started in our classrooms this year.  So far, it is going great!  We have introduced the read to self and work on writing.  Next week, we plan to launch word work and read to someone.  We were curious about the word work and wondered what others were doing as activities for this part.  Would love to hear about the things you are having your kiddos do during this part of the Daily Five.

Hope all of you are starting your year off great!  Kristi

Read to Self and Behavior Chart

YEAH!!!!!  We did 9 minutes today of read to self with the Daily 5.  I was so excited because the kids did a great job!  I will say that I was a little nervous to start this, but they have really done a great job with it!  We were going to start the work on writing today but ran out of time so I plan to start it on Monday.  I'm excited to see how it goes. 

I've started a new behavior clip chart this year as well.  This is how it goes:
1.  Toad-ally awesome student
2.  Frog-tastic Outstanding
3.  Jump for Joy
4.  Ready to Learn
5.  Slow Down
6.  Hitting Rough Waters
7.  Frog Overboard

I was curious on those of you using this type of behavior chart, how do you use the positive part of it?  I have been using the positive part quite a bit as a motivator to follow the rules at this point of time .  When do you have them move up on your chart? 

 

Hope all of you are having a great beginning of the year.  I look forward to hearing how you are using your behavior chart.  Have a great weekend!  Kristi

KABOOM and Craft Project Ideas!

Look what I came home to yesterday? Surprise!

Another goodie box from CraftProjectIdeas.com. They sent these out to us for FREE! Check it out:

Poms – will be great for craft projects and even Kristi’s POM POM Critters

Paint brushes – these will be great for our Extra Fun Thing or Fun Friday…not sure what we are calling it this year, one of our choices is water coloring.

Construction paper – what teacher can’t use construction paper?

Beads – fine motor skills practice by stringing them or craft projects

Craft sticks – teachers can never have too many of these! I just used a lot of these to make KABOOM! games with math facts - idea from the Teacher Tipster...

Pipe cleaners – WORD WORK – WOOHOO!

Magnetic buttons and magnetic adhesive roll – just love to make things magnetic to stick on my white board

Remember you can find all these ideas at Wal-Mart and they have some great ideas on the Craft Project Ideas website.

Go make a KABOOM game - super simple and the kiddos will love it! ;-)

Crystal

Building Stamina!

Okay, I keep forgetting to take pictures while we are doing Read to Self, but I thought I’d pop in to update you all on how we’re doing anyway. Kristi and I were both nervous about starting the Daily 5, but we went for it!

We both launched Read to Self on Friday. We were more than a little surprised at how well our new little Firsties did – even if we did only do it for 3 minutes! Today we made it 6 minutes – hooray!

We also taught the I PICK Good-Fit Books lesson today with the shoes. The kids loved it! In fact, they were the most attentive during the shoe lesson than any other day. Apparently, watching us try on shoes is very interesting. LOL!

I do have to tell a little funny on Kristi though. Sitting at the small group table has been a little difficult for both of us. We’re both used to walking around and keeping an eye on things when students are working independently. As the D5 book suggests, we have not done that.

Today when Kristi asked her kids what she would be doing during Read to Self, one little girl raised her hand and said, “Sitting.”

Of course, Kristi explained that once they build stamina and the D5 is up and running, she would be teaching and working with students – not just sitting. J

Tomorrow I’ll be launching Work on Writing. Kristi has to start a day after me because we share books that we use for our writing lessons. We plan to launch Work on Writing using the mini-lessons we have used in the past during our Writing Workshop.

I’m really excited about getting the D5 up and going so we can start our small group instruction. I think the kids are really going to benefit from it!

Hope you all are having a great start—or enjoying your final weeks of freedom!

Crystal

Classroom Ready

It always seems like there is so much to get done at the beginning of the year to prepare for the new little ones.  It also seems like it will never get done and be ready in time (at least that is how I feel every year).  BUT, in the long run it does get done and ready for the little ones on the day that they arrive.  Here are some pictures of some of the things that I have in my room this year. 

Writer's Eye

Daily Five

Daily Five Clip Chart

Job Chart

Behavior Clip Chart

Calendar and to the right is my Behavior Catalog and Mystery Person Bag

Ways to Write

We have had two days in school now and spent the last couple days having fun getting to know each other.  We read David Goes to School and they loved it!  They asked me to read it again to them several times LOL!!  :-)

Have you started back to school yet?  Hope you have a great weekend.  Kristi

Back to School Jitters Linky!

Kristi and I thought this would be a fun linky party - especially since we are back to school TODAY!

So we put this together and scheduled it to post today - we knew we would be way too busy and stressed for fun today - LOL!

Looking forward to reading all of your Back to School Jitters!

Kristi and Crystal