Five for Friday

With less than a month left of summer break, I really started to work on things for the upcoming school year in my free time and make a "game plan" for the rest of the summer to help me get it all done by September.

The teacher tip of the week was about managing trash at student tables.  I have always used Table Top Trash cans in my classroom and think they are the greatest thing when it comes to having the students throw trash away.  

The students are at their seats working and they don't need to get up to throw scraps away.  They all put their scraps in the table top trash can on their table and continue working on their activity.  When they are all finished and are cleaning up their area.  They dump the table top trash can into the classroom trash can and continue with their day.  

I used a basket, but I have also used many different containers from the dollar store.  It just depends on my theme that year.

I updated my 100 chart number cards to include place value cubes as well as the numbers.

In my classroom, this is part of calendar time, which we review every day.  This year I wanted to spend more time on number sense, so I included place value cubes for the students to make the connection with the 100s chart.  The numbers and place value cubes are color coded to help students with skip counting.  Cards are made to fit in a 100 chart pocket chart. 

This is a picture of my calendar time set up, but you can see the pocket chart in the right corner and see how it is color coded to help with skip counting.

 I started thinking about my Meet The Teacher day, and decided to get glow sticks from the dollar store and make these cute tags to go with them.  I plan to place one at each student's seat and when they come to meet me, they will get to take it home. You can get these editable tags for free in my TPT store.

I started working on my positive notes for the first week of school.  I try to choose a few students who have been working hard all week to get a positive note from the teacher on Fridays.  Because first grade is new to the students, they ALL get a positive note on the first Friday.  I started writing these out this week.  For more info about this check out my link.  You can also get my note cards here.