Morning Calendar

Boy, sometimes the littlest things make the biggest difference! I am sure this is a no brainer for a lot of people, but what a difference it has made with my morning calendar routine! I started giving students individual white boards to do the calendar work on! Yeah, I know, not rocket science!

One student now leads the calendar and the rest of the students write the answers on their white boards. They all are on task instead of talking or just zoning out. And, with a quick glance, I can see whether they are doing it or not. They are getting the daily practice in important math skills everyday!

Character Trading Cards - Cont.

My wonderful aide made a suggestion as I was showing her the Character Trading Cards about 3 minutes before my lesson. She said it would be cute to have them use the card to draw and write about their Halloween costume - the Character they would be on Halloween. Then they could make the character out of art materials. So, I changed my plans on the spot and my students loved it!

Character Trading Cards

We will be finishing up our mini unit on characters soon. Students will be making a Character Trading Card about one of the characters from a story they have been reading. Here is the sheet they will fill out. I will post some pics when they are completed!



Character Trading Card

Syllables

I am so in love with all the cute graphics out there! When I see them, I want to just sit down and make something!

That being said, here is a syllable sort I made for Halloween!

Spooky Syllable Sort

New Year, New Room!

This summer I had to move classrooms. I was a bit overwhelmed at first. This is my 4th classroom in 6 years even though I have been at the same school! I made it though with the help of the custodial staff and my husband. Here are some picture of my new room!

Characters

Another story element we have been working on are the characters. Students use this graphic organizer to keep track of some of the characters in their story and to note what the author said about the character. We will discuss this in our writing as well as we begin to describe out characters in our personal narratives. Character Graphic Organizer

Story Elements

During our first trimester of school we work on story elements. After working on setting for a few days, we played a "Setting Scoot" game. I set a book out on each table. As a group they needed to look through the book, and agree on the where and when of the story. After a few minutes, they had to "scoot" to the next table and do the same with that book. They students absolutely loved it! And,  I got a good glimpse at whether they got it or not! Setting Scoot