T is for...

Blog Hoppin' is having a Week of Giving Thanks, so I decided to join in the fun...

Because really, after a crazy day at school...

then a crazy evening at home 

(thanks to one boy that wouldn't eat and another that wouldn't sleep

and on a night when the husband is at a basketball game)...

Taking a second to think about all the things I am thankful for is just what my heart needs!

Appreciation is one of our IB attitudes so this month that has been a focus in my class. 

It is easy to take a lot for granted, unless we slow down to appreciate the little things.

Each day of the week will be a different letter of the word THANKS...

T was a No-Brainer.

 I have been blessed with some awesome teammates! I am so grateful to go to work with girls who are so loving of their students, so excited for the teaching and planning, and so encouraging to me!

(and know when to hand me that piece of chocolate at the end of a long day!)

I have learned so much from them and am thankful to have them in my life!

My goal is to do it every day this week, but we will see! ;) 

Be sure to go back to Blog Hoppin' to see what everyone else is thankful for!

It's Almost Thanksgiving!!

These past two weeks before thanksgiving have been exhausting! It's been difficult getting through the day let alone getting to blog or do anything more. And of course, nothing is getting done on time so that is why I am linking up to Doodle Bugs Teaching Five for Friday... on a Saturday!

1. We have been a little slow in starting new IB unit, Where We are in Time and Place, but we are getting there! We looked at our central idea and talked about some of the important words. The kids got confused with the word greatness and grateful, so we talked about that for a while and then we listed the sames of some people we thought showed greatness. It was a good preassessment to see what they already knew, and I will use the names they gave as a spring board for the new people we need to introduce.

2. Friday we did Fun Friday, which basically means I make sure that every thing we need to practice or review is in the form of a game. So we started with Musical Sight Words, for lack of a better name. I put all of this quarter's sight words on foam pumpkins and the kids walk on them until the music stops and then they have to say the word they are on. If they can't read it they are out! We played Kwoosh ball sight words on the smart board too! That is always a hit!

3. Punctuation practice was done with the help of candy corn, sweet tarts, and gummy worms!

4. We ended Friday going to Alex's school program! He is the cute one with his hands in the air! He was ready to start! :) I was so worried that he would not sing or even get up there, but he did a great job!

5. We have 2 days next week and then we have the rest of the week off for Thanksgiving. I know of some schools that have the whole week off. I have sale going on in my store through Monday to celebrate with you if you are already on break, or to give you a little boost if you need help to make it through! :) Go here or click on the picture!

Go to Doodle Bugs Five for Friday to see what other teachers are up too!

Sharing the Planet: Teacher Tips!

As we learned about sharing the planet and the kids were starting to make choices based on what they learned, I did some reflecting on the amount of paper I was using. My life sometimes feels overwhelmed with paper and I hate it! And sometimes its not about the planet... Do you all have copy limits? Limited budgets? All those things can make planning a little difficult.

But there is a way to:

Save Paper, Save Money, Save the Planet...  and Save our Sanity!

So here are some things we can all do to feel like we are doing our part!

Whether it is basic sheet protectors or dry erase pockets, these things are a LIFE SAVER! Instead of having to print a class set, you can print one or two sheets, slip them in a pocket and you are good to go! Groupon has had deals on the pockets so I have a set of 20 and we use them ALL the time, small groups, workshop stations, sometimes even whole group. I LOVE them!

This is a new one for me. We have always been good at recycling paper when we are done, but now if there is a blank side, we fill it up!! The first couple of times the kids were so confused about what side to work on, but they quickly figured it out.

We have all bought those great packets on TPT that end up taking up a TON of paper... but sometimes there is extra space on the page. Did you know that you can print two pages to a page on PDFs?

My printer/PDF viewer at school looks like this:

Just go to page scaling and pick multiple pages per sheet. Click on two pages and it will scale it down!

My PDF view is, for some reason, different at home. I guess they may be different versions.
Anyways. If I only want one page for a station I will choose the pages I want to print (blue arrow) mark the same page twice, choose the multiple page option and I get a half size sheet. A lot of times shrinking it down to half size still gives them enough space to write!

Just a couple clicks, but it can help save lots of paper!

This is easiest to do on our laser printer at school, because you don't have to feed the paper through again, so check to see if your printer will do it too!

Go to preferences when you click print and the screen that is special to your printer will come up. Choose to print on both sides. Ink Jet printers might have special directions, but no extra work is needed for the big printers at school!

Call me a pack rat, but certain things I know I can reuse, so I hold on to them a little bit longer. If I don't use them in the next couple months I will throw it away, but think creatively first! I used to use shelf liner for my bulletin border. When I changed up my boards I held on to the long strips for a bit, and they became perfect for number lines! I have had these for a couple of years now and the kids love them when I pull them out!

Those are 5 easy things to start doing! Start saving the planet! :)

Five For Friday

It's been a week! Even with Tuesday off for Election day, it was still a really LONG week! We have been working some more on teamwork activities because the kiddos are really struggling to get it along. I wrote about some of the things we have been doing here.

I'm linking up with Doodle Bug Teaching's Five For Friday to share some of what we have been up to this week!

1. We finished up our unit of Sharing the Planet. As an ending activity the kids worked together to make a pledge. We added it to our bulletin board. 

The kids also wrote the pledge to add to their portfolios. We wrote it on the back of old paper to make sure we were reusing!

2. I pulled out a new math game now that we have been focusing on number paths and counting on an counting back. I made it using old bulletin board boarder (or actually shelf liner!)

I love these add/subtraction dice too! It is such a good way to have kids move back and forth between adding and subtracting!

3. Election Day meant I got to hang out extra with this little man! We went to the library for story time while Alex was at his preschool. They were having a story time cafe so Liam enjoyed some gold fish while I had a coffee and scone!  We then made it through most of story time! 

4. My kids have been loving this activity from my Dice Games pack! It's editable so I have used it for sight words, short vowels, and much more! 

Be sure to check it out!

5. What a better way to end the week then with a sushi party with your team! It is so fun to teach friends how to make sushi and open them up to a whole new world of fun! :)

Teamwork Time #3: Collaborating Across the Grade Levels!

After the beginning of the year, I can get so focused on academics that some other areas suffer, but as I have been reflecting I realized that we needed to start building in teamwork time again. It's that time of year when behavior issues can start flaring up and often it comes back to the fact that kids don't always know how to appropriately play and interact with each other. Here are a couple of things we have been up to recently!

Inquiry Buddies

One thing I have been able to start back up this year after a year or two break was book buddies with an older class. Except the other teacher and I decided our kids would be inquiry buddies because we wanted to engage in a variety of activities this year!

We have done book buddies twice and another time played games. Have you watched kids play games these days? It is interesting... taking turns in a circle, playing by the rules, problem solving, I have realized do not come naturally. So we had 4th and 1st graders spread out all over the room playing sorry, trouble, memory, jenga, headbandz, etc. For the most part they played the games well and it was good for the first graders to learn from the 4th graders.

Last week, we did our first inquiry project together! After watching the Landfill Harmonic we got to work using some trash to create treasures!

I've done a similar project before but I noticed that my kids had some ideas, but they were able to get a lot more elaborate with the help of the 4th graders! 

The 4th graders were so sweet to work with my kiddos too and help build off of their ideas! 

We had a great time collaborating and I am already thinking of some ways that we can work together when we start our next unit!

Problem Solving Words

I think this comes from the The First Six Weeks of School (Strategies for Teachers)

or The Morning Meeting Book and I have used it for several years, but this year I have really pushed it and I hear the kids using it all the time! So often we tell kids to problem solve, but do not give them the words to do it. A couple weeks into the school year we will talk about our problem solving words and then we talk about scenarios and kids practice the language. Once they have the language to problem solve they can take ownership of their solutions. Besides, no teacher has time to problem solve every "he stole my pencil" situation! ;) We talk about how these can be used for happy feelings too and try to use it in both situations. We also discussed different feeling words because I have noticed that can be lacking in their vocabulary as well.

This year I have a Peace Keeper, for super tricky situations, but they haven't really had to do their job at all. I saw another teacher tell two kids that we end our problems with a hug, hand shake, or high five to show we are friends again, so I have encouraged my kids to do that too. And really, by the time the boys complete their little secret hand shake, it seems like they have pretty much forgotten what the problem was in the first place!

Our next focus for building collaboration/teamwork are some of those social skills that are keeping us from moving forward in building that deeper trust and collaboration. One of our school's amazing teachers has provided us with some social skills lessons that we are going to work through over the next several weeks. I'm excited to use them and hope that it will start to bring about some of the change I need to see in a couple of those kids that are struggling! It may mean losing some minutes for a workshop station, but when it comes down to it, I think keeping a focus all through out the year on building those collaboration skills will be more beneficial to their academic careers!

You can see my other teamwork time posts here and here.

November Currently

It's November! 

Listening

It is SO quiet in my house right now!!

Is anyone else like me? 

Will took Alex out to the park, Liam is sleeping, 

and I am loving the few moments of peace and quiet I get right now!

Between a bunch of first graders at school and 2 little boys at home, 

it doesn't happen that often! :)

Loving

I ran to Target this afternoon and was so excited 

that those huge bags of halloween candy were on sale! 

We hide it up high away from the boys and snack on it when we need a treat.

Thinking

My class decided to attempt composting in a bin this year. (You can read about it here)

And I am a little nervous that we might have attracted bugs into our room... 

I really want to check it to see if it is going okay! 

I am really excited for us to keep up with it over the next several weeks to see how it turns out!

Wanting

I was up earlier than my boys for Daylight Savings! 

That tiredness from life is catching up with me, 

but the minutes are too precious to sleep away!

Needing

Not sure why I told Alex we would bake cookies instead of just buying something from the store...

but we are new to preschool, snack time, 

and not wanting to seem like I am that mom that doesn't really try... 

So I told him we would make Alphabet cookies...

definitely not winning for sending in nutritional things, but at least they will be fun to make together.

Reading

I have been doing the latest Beth Moore Bible study on 1 and 2 Thessalonians, as well as reading through some of Paul's other epistles, and I am SO encouraged and challenged by it all! 

 I have so much to be thankful for! 

I'm linking up with Farley's Currently!

Composting!

What I love about guided inquiry as a teacher is that I can GUIDE the direction a bit... I've always wanted to try composting-- at home and at school, and after we read the book:

we continued the conversation about food waste and composting, and I was REALLY hoping that someone would suggest we try composting....

Thankfully someone did! :)

So I told the kids that I didn't know too much about it, so we would spend some time researching it in the classroom to figure out how to do it! The kids had some basic background knowledge, thanks mostly to Peppa Pig's episode about composting. Another boy kept saying Worm

s, Worms.... (not going there quite yet!)

The night before I did a little online research to get started, but it was a process that we were really going to do together. In my mind, this was a going to be a "fun" day, off of our regular schedule. Little did I realize how this "fun" experience was really an authentic learning experience that allowed us to apply a lot of skills that we have been learning in the classroom. As I think back I probably could have planned out those moments better, but now I know and plan to do a lot more of this in the classroom!

We started the morning talking about how we research (CCSS W.1.7) We talked about how we could can use the internet or the library. We googled our question "How do you compost?" and started watching videos, reading some websites, and looking at images to find information (CCSS RI.1.6).

Then we wrote down some of our notes and findings:

Then we took a trip to our library. There we talked about where we should look for our books about composting--in the Fiction or Non Fiction section. The kids all shouted out nonfiction because we needed real books and ones that give information. (CCSS RL.1.5) That was good for my heart to hear that all those conversations about fiction vs. non-fiction were helping them apply it when they needed it! Then we learned more about the dewey decimal system and went in search of some books!

When we got back to classroom, I told the kids that I didn't want to read the whole book to see if it talked about composting and wondered what I should use to figure it out... That of course led us to nonfiction text features! (CCSS RI.1.5) I students suggested I look at the table of contents, but when that didn't give us enough information, i suggested we look a the index. That was a feature they had trouble understanding the purpose of, but after this experience, they definitely understand how that will help us! If the book didn't have either feature, we did a quick picture glance to find out the info.

 Then we started focusing on the recipe for composting and we found out we needed some browns and greens. The kids got a little confused when thinking that the object did not have to be brown or green to count as that kind of material, but they worked in groups to make a list of some things they could start collecting.

We collected food scraps from breakfast and lunch over the next couple days. We also gathered pine straw and dead leaves from outside. 

I found this resource that was helpful to me in figuring out how to do this small scale (classroom bin instead of an outside one). We do have a composter bin at school, but I am not ready to go large scale yet. 

Friday we made the compost recipe! 

We did a little bit more brown materials-- I read that it would help the smell not be so overwhelming. Every couple of days we need to stir it up a bit. I have no idea how it will turn out and really hope that it doesn't invite a lot of bugs into the classroom this weekend, but it was a great learning experience!! I am excited to see how this helps us change our thinking about food waste over the year. Once challenge is the fact that we are collecting a lot of the same types of food, so that can affect the balance. 

If anyone is an expert in composting and wants to share some advice, we would love to learn more!

I'm excited to incorporate more authentic learning experiences into our weeks. It is so important to help the kids see why what they learn is important and they were all so engaged I did not have to have some of the behavior conversations that I normally did!

I'm curious to find out on Monday what kind of conversations they will have with their families about the experience. In the days we have been focusing on food waste, I have been a lot more conscious of all the compostable materials I am throwing away! We are never too old to keep learning and reflecting!