1st Grade JOURNEYS Smart Board - Lesson 5

Hi fellow 1st Grade JOURNEYS teachers!!  Smart Board lessons for Lesson 5 (Days 1-5) are ready!! Click the picture to visit my TPT store and download.  Have a fabulous week!!         Love, Beth

Houghton Mifflin JOURNEYS Smart Board Lessons!!

   I'm finally done with my Smart Board Masterpiece (I think...)!!  I've literally been working 12 and 13 hour days on the weekends in addition to work after school getting these done (Can you tell I don't have kids?? haha), but now they are here for you all!  My school district adopted a new reading curriculum this year, Houghton Mifflin Journeys (the new 2012 Common Core Edition), and it has really been a big change for a lot of teachers, including myself.  Thankfully, though, I had taught a similar curriculum in another district (SRA Imagine It!) and had some experience using a more scripted curriculum.  However, at my old district I had made Smart Board lessons for each lesson to help me pace myself and make things more interactive for the kids, and I found myself starting Journeys this school year wishing I had the same!  So... even though it meant starting from scratch, I have started making Smart Board lessons for each Journeys lesson for 1st Grade, and it has been fabulous!  I am really keeping my kids engaged and also making sure that I am pacing the lessons well and getting everything in that I am supposed to in order to ensure my kiddos reading success.  I am SO excited about these lessons and I couldn't wait to share them with you!  I am kind of backtracking right now, because I just finished  Lesson 4 (Lucia's Neighborhood) and I am working on Lesson 5 now (Gus Takes the Train)..... so I will have to go back and do Lessons 1, 2, & 3.  But from this point forward, I will be making these each week and posting online to TPT.  So if you teach Journeys, stay tuned!!  I hope you find these as helpful as my team members and I have!  

    If you are a 1st Grade Teacher and teach JOURNEYS, please visit my TPT store.....just click on the picture.  I would love some feedback too from those of you who teach Journeys!  God Bless!
      Love, Beth

Wonderful Word Families Word Work Game

     Whew! Every year I underestimate how exhausting and stressful the first month of school is....  I think it must be like what women say they experience after they have a baby.  They're quick to do it again.... because after it was over, they forget how hard it was! Hehe. I just have to keep telling myself that in about mid-October we'll be smooth sailing... :) 
    Anyway, I have been less than blogger-ific lately just because I've been so busy.  But I'm happy to say that I am working on some resources that I think will be very helpful to lots of teachers out there (Smart Board lessons to go with every lesson of the 2012 JOURNEYS Common Core Version Reading Series for 1st Grade)... so stay tuned! 
     But what I have been working on with my kids recently is Word Families!  We've been drilling short vowels like crazy, but what some children don't put together is that if they can read one word, they can read lots of words!  That's where Word Families come in...  Teaching children to make connections between words really helps them to feel more confident as readers and writers.  So I've been working on teaching my kids how learning the ending suffixes of words (-an, -at, - in, -ug, etc...) can help them to read LOTS of different words.  If they can read and write CAT, that means they can read and write HAT, BAT, SAT, PAT, RAT, FAT, and MAT!!  You get the picture...  So I made this Word Family game to use during my Daily 5 Word Work block.  My kids have really enjoyed it, and I hope you do too!  Just click the picture to go to my Teachers Pay Teachers store. :)
   Have a blessed day blog friends! 
                     Love, Beth

Handwriting Practice - Great Resource from GROWING KINDERS!

  Hi blog world!!  I've missed you...  I seriously haven't laid eyes on my own blog in like....um....two weeks.  I just can't do it all. :)  School is off to a good start, though.  Things have been VERY busy.  And I was out of town throwing my mom a surprise 60th birthday party with family and friends, so that was a blast....but planning for that has also kept me from blogging. But anyway, enough excuses.  I have officially NOT been working on any amazingly fabulous teaching resources for all of you, but I DO have a great resource that I've been using in my classroom this week that I found on TPT from the GROWING KINDERS blog.  It has been incredible for my kids!!  Every single year I am always secretly frustrated/annoyed about how poor some of the students' handwriting is.  Many of them form their letters completely wrong (write from the bottom up, write them crooked, not on the lines, etc) and about a 1/4 of them are always flipping letters (particularly b's, d's, and p's).  My assumption was that they were getting handwriting instruction in preschool and kindergarten, but I'm not really sure if they are.  So I just decided to take matters into my own hands and make sure that I spend an entire week on explicit handwriting instruction so I can feel confident about my expectation for handwriting. If I haven't taught them the correct way to do it, I can't expect for them to do it correctly, right??  Anyway, this FREE handwriting booklet from Growing Kinders has been great!  I've done about 5-6 letters a day with the kids, and it's been a great opportunity for me to tackle individual issues/confusions that some of my kids have with letter formation and fix them fair and square!  Click on the picture to download this awesome resource!!

       God Bless!!   - Beth

Back to School Classroom Tour!!

I just got home from Meet the Teacher/Curriculum Night!! Whew....I'm tired....and hot!  Having 40+ people in your classroom and having to get up and speak in front of all of them will certainly give you hot flashes. haha.  But I had a lot of fun meeting all of my new kids and their parents. It made me really excited to start the school year.  So....the time has come!  I am finally done (yeah right.... I'm never done) with my classroom, and I'm so happy with how everything turned out.  I worked REALLY hard on a lot of different projects, but all the hard work and $ was worth it!!!  Thanks to my FANTASTIC husband who came to help me get ready for Curriculum night tonight, I got my last and final IKEA bookshelf put in and all my books arranged.  My work here is done! Enjoy..              - Beth

Front of my classroom.

Math Shelf - Trofast Frame from IKEA labeled with all the different math manipulatives.

I LOVE how this turned out! This shelf is amazing!

My calendar and class Focus Wall.  This is my first time using a focus wall...I'm excited!

My PRIDE AND JOY! Rotating classroom utensil holder.  And this is NOT the lazy susan from IKEA.  I had to actually make this one with 18" round pieces of craft wood, ball bearings for the rotating part, spray paint, clear lacquer, a compass to measure out the angles from the center, and a ton of sanding!! Ahhh.... it was a pain.  But I flipping love it!   The bins and plant in the middle are from IKEA. 

Classroom library & mini-lesson area.

IKEA Besta Shelf with my Target book bins.

Back wall of my classroom with my guided reading table/teacher area.

This is where I organize all my teacher stuff, supplies I use, and everything for my lessons.  I have a drawer labeled for each subject and put all the printable stuff I need for each lesson in the drawer.  The little things with the apples are the dividers for each of my reading groups.

Our school is a Leader in Me school, and one of our focuses this year is on teaching our students to be leaders.  So all 22 of my kids have a job this year!!  After seeing a little roach friend in my room, though, I think I need to add "bug squasher" as a job!  What do you think??

My read aloud book baskets.... I organize my read alouds by what comprehension strategy/subject I use to teach with them.

Magnetic word wall & computer stations.

This is where extra student supplies are kept, my extra crayon organizers, writing paper for Writer's Workshop, clipboards, etc.

Our "Family Tree" that's outside of our classroom.  I am going to put all the kids pictures on the tree after I take them on the first day of school so it will look like a real family tree.  I got my tree at Hobby Lobby.  And I LOVE the sign at the top. I found it on TPT.  It's going to be a LONG time until my kids are going to graduate high school.....Class of 2024!

My little bakers!!

So....I have to give my teammates credit for this ingenius idea!!  How can the kids pick and pull at their name tags if they are behind them??  No stickiness or mess on my tables any more!  I just used metal rings to attach them.

Side wall of my room with cubbies. 

My hallway display.  I HATE di-cutting letters for hallway displays, so I got a frame and painted a piece of wood with chalkboard paint to make a hallway chalkboard.  So now I can update the title of my hallway display on the chalkboard!  NO MORE DI-CUTTING LETTERS!  Whoohooo!!  I also used ribbon to cover up the not so pretty cork strip in the middle of my display.

Back to School Student Gift

Oh....blog followers!! I'm so very sorry I have been MIA.  I have been crazed by the back to school whirlwind and have had less than adequate time to think about posts.  Just for the record, I had a goal to get my classroom preview up by August 1st.  Hahahaha!  Hilarious....  That SO did not happen.  Me being, well, me....(a.k.a. a combination of lots of flowing creativity & un-diagnosed classroom-induced OCD), I came up with about 10 million other things I needed to do to my room before I took pictures, so that's why you haven't seen my classroom yet.  But I PROMISE it will be up ASAP.  I should be done now with classroom purchases (after my 4th trip to IKEA Charlotte in the last 2 months.....is that bad??!).  

   Okay, so I have a little goody for you.  I found little bags of Oreo cookies on sale at Publix this week B1G1 FREE, so I bought two boxes and am attaching these little tags to them to give out to the kids at Meet the Teacher/Curriculum Night this Monday. I changed the wording for grades K, 1, & 2, so all you primary teachers out there can utilize them. See you in a couple days with my newly decorated, arranged, and IKEA-fied classroom! 
  PS:  As lots of you know Katie got Teacher of the Year for her school and the latest is that she made it into the TOP 5 for her entire county!! She won't post about it because she's too humble, but that doesn't mean I can't!  Yay Katie!!
         - Beth

Classroom Tour and Setup Tips

I had open house Friday... I can't believe it's already back to school time! I took some pictures of my classroom, so I could share my classroom setup, organization, and decorating ideas. I sure hope it stays this clean and organized all year long :)  I would love to hear about how you set up your classroom!

In this picture you can see my back reading carpet and library. Also, I have a positive behavior clipchart by the bathroom door (I love this system!) I know it's small in the picture... but a friend made me a super cute alphabet that i have posted at the top of my back wall! At each group of desks I have an organized station with 4 drawers and a basket on top with six cups. I have group helpers who pass out  and collect group materials to make for easy transitions and clean up. 

In the picture to the right you will see my front carpet by my interactive white board. Above my white board are my SRA sound cards (they will be flipped over as each sound is introduced). Also, I have baskets on the front wall with early finisher activities. The numbers over each group are a management strategy. The numbers 1-30 are written around each square and I move a clothespin around the square to keep up with group points. when they get to 30 they earn a reward :)

The picture to the left is my classroom library. I am so blessed to have great friends! Another friend made me this beautiful bookshelf, and I got the baskets from hobby lobby about 3 years ago on a 90% off rack. I LOVE A DEAL!!! My books are organized by genre. Within each genre, I have colored dots on each book with AR levels. The students know what colors are best for them, so it makes it easy for students to find a "Just Right Book." 

Are you a PBIS school? Does yours school have a school wide ticket/money system? If you answered yes to one of these questions, then I have great way to help you easily manage your students dollars, tickets, loot, etc. I laminated library pockets and put student numbers on each pocket. As the students earn "eagle feathers" (Our school's name for a "dollar") they place it in their library pocket. Since I start this management system I have not had students loose or steal feathers. Also, it's easy for me to see who has earns lots and who I need to spy! 

Are all teachers OCD or is it just me? This little shelf is one of my favorites! I have classroom supplies in the green buckets for students to use if they need extras. The folders are color coded by subject area. I have found that if I only have the students keep a few things in their desk, they stay organized and clean! On the bottom two shelves are my math manipulatives and math tubs. My math tubs have activities that use manipulatives, so I keep them by each other so the students always have easy access to the materials they need. 

I would LOVE to hear ideas about how you set up your classroom and organize materials!