Teacher Tip Tuesday #12

I know many of you are going back to school shortly or are already back to school. I still have a few weeks left of summer, but either way we all have to hang things and decorate our rooms to make them welcoming to our students.  This little trick is how I hang up EVERYTHING in my room and it allows me to reuse my borders/decorations year to year without ruining them.

If you place a small piece of packing tape on the back of whatever you are hanging and then add hot glue to the shiny side of the packing tape, it will not ruin the border or decoration.  It will stick to the wall just fine and when you are finished, it is also easy to take down without hurting your decorations. The hot glue will stick to the wall when you take down the decoration and not to the back of your decoration.
From there you can pick the hot glue off or use a scraper to get it off the wall.
Hope this helps when decorating this year!

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.

Five For friday

It was a busy week and I am happy it is coming to an end.  I was able to sleep in this morning and get some things done around the house.

I went to see visit this cutie in South Carolina for the weekend!  I had so much fun catching up and playing with this little girl.

This was week 10 of my teacher tips.  It was about my classroom library organization. I place colored stickers on each book and the sticker matches the sticker on the bin in my library.  I also have labels on my bins so the students can look for a specific kind of book if they want.

This is one bin from my classroom library.  You can see the sticker on the book matches the sticker on the library label and bin.  The stickers I got at the dollar tree and target.  The library labels are in my TPT store.

I also decided on my welcome wall for outside my classroom and job chart for the beginning of school.

I posted this on TPT this week for you to use as well.  

I am going to have a mickey/minnie ears for each student in my class.  When I get my class list, I will place a name on each mouse for my welcome wall and on each hand for my job chart.

Mickey Mouse Welcome Wall and Job Chart

I've been working on my teacher binder and updating it for this year.  We are going to have a lot of changes this year in the curriculum and in the pacing of each subject so I needed to create a better teacher planner to help me with all this change.  I am not finished yet, but I am continuing to work on my teacher binder.

I hope to finish this in a couple weeks and post an editable version on TPT.  If you have any suggestions about what I can add to it I would appreciate the feedback.

Since I have been tutoring, I started using these to help with print and forming letters and numbers correctly.  

I printed them out on card stock and laminated them.  Now i have the kids I tutor use a dry erase marker to write and erase when they are finished.

Teacher Tip Tuesday#9

My teacher tip of the week is about pencil management.  As I am getting some things ready for the upcoming school year, I wanted to share this tip with you all.  I do not let my students sharpen pencils at all and I don't let them interrupt a lesson or work time to have a pencil sharpened.  I have 2 bins in my room.  One is labeled "sharp pencils" and the other is labeled "dull pencils".  I have used these bins for several years now and it is so nice.  When students can't find a pencil or break their tip, they just walk over to the bins and exchange their pencil for another one.  I sharpen the dull pencils in the morning or during specials so we don't run out of sharp pencils throughout the day.

Teacher Tip Tuesday #8

I love this idea for dry erase markers. I hot glue poms to the back of dry erase markers and use them as erasers. It makes it so easy to not have to worry about the students finding an eraser in order to erase their work. These also come in handy at guided reading and guided math time when I have the students write right on the table and then erase before I call the next group over. I make these over the summer for the next year's class. I have them in centers, at my teacher table, and in their pencil cases.

Five For Friday

Hey teacher friends, I still have 3 weeks to go in school, but it feels good knowing that ALL testing is complete!  Now we can step up the crafts and cleaning in the classroom!

My teacher tip of the week was about taking inventory for the end of the year. I always like to see what I have so that I can ask for donations at the beginning of next year and be ready.  I try to make the a theme to my donations for when I display them at Meet the Teacher Day and Back to School Night.  In the fall I will be putting out these cute cupcakes and this "sweet" sign.

This week's Phonics rule was a-u and a-w make the /aw/ sound.  The students worked on their word sorts and phonics books.  Here is the link to my teacher phonic's books to help reinforce the vowel team sounds.

These are my summer review books that I give to my students at the end of the year to help prevent the summer slide.  I posted them a few weeks ago, but they have been a big seller in my store wanted to thank those of you who purchased them for your support!  If you haven't seen them yet, they are a great deal and easy to put together.

This is what the rest of our month looks like.  We are going to be very busy the last week of school.  I also just LOVE these calendar cards that go along with my Black and Bright Color theme.

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!!

First Week

It has been a very long week, but I made it.  I am excited to start academics next week and see what my students can do!  The first week is all about procedures and routines.  If we don't do it right the first time, we go back and try again.  I must have said that phrase 50 times last week.  I have 27 students in my classroom this year and there are a lot of personalities within my room.  This week we also spent a lot of time of getting to you know activities.  I love getting to know my students and talking to them about what they did outside of school.  I love hearing about their baseball games and play dates with their friends.
Because the first week of school is so different than the normal school year I wanted to share with you what I like to do for the first week of school.  I know it is very crazy time of the school year and very busy, so I try to keep my first week plans the same each year so I know not to miss anything. Most of the activities we do this week are procedures and a lot of talking, but we do get to do some fun activities too.

The first week of school book and the first grade is WS are from Fun with Firsties There are a lot more activities that she includes in this pack, but this is all we have time to do in the first week.  The summer writing on day 2 is my summer craftivity that you can get here. This is something that I like to do so that I can hang up my students work by the end of the first week of school.
The All About Me pennant is free on TPT from Kate Boynton.  I love hanging this up for Back to School Night and having the parents look at them.  It is a nice touch to my classroom.
We always start school on the Tuesday after Labor Day, so this year it was a late start, but only have to plan for 4 days.
These are the Read-A-Louds that I used with the 1st week of school.  These do change each year, as I find and add new books to my collection.

First Grade Stinks(top left) was a new book that I read for the first time this year to my class.  I loved this book and will be adding it to my first week read a lounds from now on.  It is about a girl who thinks first grade is going to stink because it is so different from kindergarten.  As she goes through first grade she realizes that it is fun and loves 1st grade.
This book really connected with a lot of my students who were still upset about leaving kindergarten.  It made them realize that it was OK to feel the way they were, but that they have a lot to look forward to in first grade!