Come On In!

Hello there, come on in!

I am so excited to take you all on a tour of my classroom. I love, love LOVE baseball, and I always dreamed of having a baseball themed classroom (I was one of those weird people that knew what I wanted to do in life since I was 4); and it makes my heart so happy every year to see my baseball classroom come to life. I know a lot of people like to change up their theme every year, and I think that is awesome; but I really enjoy keeping the same theme and adding to it each year.

The first stop on the tour is my absolute favorite part of my classroom this year, the chalkboard!

The most important character trait  I try to instill in my students is kindness. I am a big believer in working hard and being kind to move forward in the world, and I expect nothing less from my students. Throughout the year, I work with my students to define kindness because it's kind of an abstract concept for seven year olds, but by the end of the year I'm happy to report they understand and demonstrate hard work and kindness every day.

I plan on hanging the four anchor charts from my super hero character traits unit on each side of the "work hard and be kind" motto once we work on them as a class. On the actual chalk board, I have my literacy station pocket chart, my four vocabulary words of the week and my calander. As the year goes on, I will also add my math stations chart and my writers' workshop chart to the right of the calendar.

Next, I have my bulliten boards for my anchor charts. I tried to keep these as simple as possible to draw attention to the actual anchor charts.

We are starting a new writing curriculum this year that focuses on the six traits. I put six baseballs on my writing bulletin board that will represent the six traits as we begin to learn about them. I made the baseballs somewhat small because I wanted to leave ample space for anchor charts modeling writing, and detailing our grammar skills that we are working on. 

Finally, under the writing bulletin board we have my second most favorite part of the classroom... the dugout! I have always, always, always wanted to include a dugout in my room, but in the years past I didn't have my classroom set up in a way that could accommodate the space. I purchased three, five gallon buckets from Walmart and flipped them upside down to create seats, and the carpets and pillows are from Ikea. Lastly, a sweet student last year gave me the adorable White Sox pillow as an end of the year gift; I'm a little obsessed with it, and it makes me think of him whenever I see it. I debated adding a pillow top to the buckets, but in the end I decided I wanted them to be authentic and I compromised by resting pillows on top of the buckets. I figured this way my students could use the pillow as a back rest, or lay it flat on the bucket to create a comfy cushion for their tushies. 

Next to the dugout I have my classroom library which I will share more of in another post about organizing my library. Next to the library I have my meeting table.

I intentionally left the wall behind my kidney table blank because I'm going to try something new this year, and hang up the anchor charts I work on with my small groups on this wall - I'll update on how that system works as the year goes on!

You can kind of see my cubbies to the left of the table, but here is a better shot of my student cubbies.

I have an adorable sign that says "The Locker Room" that will hang above the cubbies, but I need to wait for my aide to arrive on Tuesday to hang them. I'm what some may called vertically challenged, and I struggle every year to hang my high items. My sweet husband comes faithfully every year to hang all of my high things, but I forgot to pull out this sign while he was here... whoops! On another note, I like to just number my cubbies rather than putting students names on them mainly because I keep the same theme every year, so this saves me from having to replace the name tags on the cubbies every year.

To the left of the student cubbies I have my classroom sink and water fountain (I know, it's awesome!), and above that I hang my student jobs.

I actually used this bulletin board last year and it worked really, really well. I stapled the bottom and the sides of the mitts to create a pocket, then I hot glued numbered baseballs on popsicle sticks. I change the jobs once a week, and just rotate the popsicle sticks through the mitts until they've made it to each job, then they retire to the dugout to wait until it's their turn for a job again. Next to the sink I keep my hand sanitizer and Kleenex. I make my hand sanitizer into bathroom passes for my students, and this is one of those procedures that I love. The students don't have to ask me to go to the bathroom, when they have to go they grab the sanitizer from the back counter, place it on their desk and go. If the sanitizer is not on the counter they need to wait until it's back to go. When they finish their business they do a quick pump of sanitizer, then put it back on the counter. This seriously stops so many interruptions during instructional time, and I have found when the bathroom isn't such a hot ticket item that they have to ask for, they tend to forget about it and use it less #winning.

Finally, the last area of my classroom is a new arrangement I'm trying this year.

Don't mind my shoes in the background, I like to get comfy while I work, ha!

 I moved my shelf out next to my door, and I moved my teacher chair and easel close to my desk to create a meeting area. In the years past I put my meeting area where I have my dugout now, and I'm excited to see how this new configuration works out.

On one side of the shelf I keep all of my literacy station baskets.

These baskets are the absolute BEST ones I have found for housing my stations. I found them at the dollar store, and they have held up better than every other basket I have tried (three years and counting!). The thing I love the most about them is they are virtually indestructible, and they can be wiped out with a Clorox or Lysol wipe super easily at any time (hello flu season...). I put a tag on each basket identifying the station, and I tape the same tag on the shelf under the basket. This makes it really easy for the students to put them away in the correct spot, and I can really easily see who is taking too long during clean up time / who forgot to return their basket to the shelf.

On the other side of the shelf I keep my math tubs for my math stations.

I use these tubs for math stations rather than the red ones I use for literacy because my math games tend to be in baggies, and I like that these boxes make them look nice and neat. I have a weird thing about seeing the baggies poke out from the top of the red basket, it kind of gives me hives just thinking about it. I will share more about how I organize my math stations later in the year, since I typically don't start math stations until early October.

Lastly, on top of the shelf I keep dry erase markers, pencils, scissors, glue sticks, crayons, dice and a reward supply bucket. Basically, I try to keep everything my students could possible need at their stations open and available to them without putting them in my station baskets. I think this help keep the baskets neater, and it helps keep things from getting lost. I also put a box of Kleenex on top of the station shelf too because one of my biggest pet peeves is a student interrupting my small group to ask where to find the Kleenex... really!?

With that, we have completed the classroom tour, now I just need my new crop of sweet peas to fill this classroom with noise, laughter and love! Before I leave today, I wanted to leave all of you with a "Fantastic Friday Freebie!" The one thing I struggled with significantly my first two years was knowing what procedures to teach, and how to teach them. I knew I needed to teach procedures, I just really didn't know where to begin. While my first year was abysmal, I learned from my mistakes and set about making really solid procedures to teach my class the following year. The past two years have honestly been smooth sailing, and just delightful which is in large part due to the work I put in teaching my procedures in the beginning of the year. SO, to all you newbies out there or veterans looking to try something new, I have a created a complete checklist of procedures to teach AND examples of how I teach them. You can get this resource for free here on TpT.

Thanks again for stopping by, and have a fabulous weekend! I will be back Monday with my plans for the first week of school, but for now I'm off to go squeeze the day lights out of this cutie pie for the next two days!

Leave a comment and tell me...

1. What does your classroom set up look like?

2. What do you think are the most important procedures to teach at the beginning of the year?

Grammar Fun and Desk Blues

Hello Again!

I don't know about you, but these last few days of summer are flying by for me! I came back to my classroom yesterday to start working for the upcoming school year, and I think I'm pretty close to having it set up the way I want. Please don't ask me about my plans for the first week of school though...

In an effort to procrastinate from organizing my filing cabinet, and putting away the rest of the mess I've made getting my classroom ready I thought I'd pop in and tell you all about a couple of units I've been working on this summer. One thing I struggle with every year is grammar. For me it is one of those things that I just don't LOVE, so I have to rally to teach grammar to my kiddos. Obviously it is so important to have good grammar, but at times the instruction of grammar can be a little... how do we say... boring? My goal this summer was to create some grammar units that not only taught my students, but were FUN to teach and learn. I have two units that I'm really proud of that I'm so excited to share with all of you!

The first is my collective nouns unit.

Collective nouns are definitely one of those things that my students struggle with every year. I think it is because there is just so much memorization when it comes to collective nouns. Enter this unit; I have made it heavy on the center games (hello engagement!), and I have included one of my favorite things ever - a collective noun alphabet book! I am so excited to see some of the drawings my kiddos come up with to complete the alphabet book. 

My second unit that I created is a proper noun unit.

 Again, proper nouns seem to be one of those things that my kiddos need reminders about all year long. I made this unit with TONS of interactive notebooks pages for my students to refer back to all year. I also included lots of fun games, and a super fun craftivity that I'm so excited to hang on the walls in the hallway this fall. 

I suppose I should probably get back to organizing my papers considering I am currently blogging from a desk that looks like this...

I tell myself every year that I will keep my desk clean, aaaaaand three days into the school year it looks like this, womp womp. I have a feeling this year is going to be the year, the fourth time's the charm! I will be back tomorrow with an update of my (hopefully) completed classroom - I am so excited to show it off, also my desk WILL be clean tomorrow ;-).

A little sneak peak of my classroom...

My bulletin boards for anchor charts

I hope you are all have a fantastic last few days of summer if you are still on break, and if you're back in school I hope you are finding some time to relax and put your feet up after those long first few days!

Tell me...

1. Are you a person who's desk is always clean, if so, how!?

2. Are you a desk is messy despite your best efforts type of a person? If so please comment below and make me feel better ;-)

3. What is your one area that you feel like you struggle to teach every year?

Hello... Again

Hello again, it's been a while! I didn't intentionally let my blog sit quiet for all of last year, it was just one of those things that kind of happened. The transition back to work after becoming a mom was much tougher than I imagined it being. The work load wasn't too hard, and of course I loved teaching my sweet babies; but leaving my son every day was so, so hard. I'm sure every parent feels a struggle to some degree when it comes to that whole work - life balance, and I just really needed a year to focus on being the best mom I could possible be AND being the best teacher I could possible be; for me that meant putting the blog on hold for a while.

 When you become a mother, it's just a complete wave of emotions and life changes that happen at breakneck speed, and you just have to hold on for dear life until you get used to the ride. I remember holding Squish for the first time and feeling like my heart would explode because I didn't know I could love one person so very much. He looked at me, and it was like we had always been knitted together at the heart. The bond with my boy was so very strong in an instant, that leaving him at 14 weeks to go back to work was devastating. While I was on my maternity leave, I left him one time to go to my six week postpartum checkup; I wasn't prepared in any way to be away from him for 8 or more hours at a time. The night before I went to work, I sobbed to my husband that he was going to forget me, and what if he was scared and I wasn't there, what if he wanted more milk than I had pumped and stored, what if he sneezed and I wasn't there to say, "bless you." It literally took every ounce of self discipline I had in my body to kiss my sweet sleeping baby goodbye and walk out the door the first day of school. I can't say it ever got easier to leave him as the year went on, but I became more used to the routine. I still had my days when I would call my husband sobbing on the way to work because I just didn't think I could do it, but I did, and I'm proud of myself. Being a mom has been the absolute greatest thing that has ever happened to me, I feel like my whole life started when Squish took his first breath, and now I can't even remember what life was like without him here.

He has made me a better person, a better teacher and given my life a purpose. He is always on my mind and in my heart, and I am so thankful that he is mine. Having a child has impacted my teaching in so many ways. I have always been compassionate and loving towards my students, I have tried my hardest to be patient and understanding with my students; but having my son has made me so much more empathetic. I feel like my heart has grown ten times larger, and I am always thinking, "What if this was Squish" when I am working with a student. I'm excited for this school year to start, and I'm even more excited to share my adventures with all of you because I feel ready for that this year. It's still hard to think about leaving my son when the school year starts, and I know now that it always will be; but I also know that me being at work isn't harming my son. He is loved, he is smart, he is thriving and that is all I could ever ask for.

I know this seems like a long drawn out love letter to my son, but I hope that at least one mama out there can relate, and maybe even a new mommy getting ready to go back to work for the first time can read this and feel a little less lonely. For a return to regularly scheduled programming, be sure to check back in this afternoon for some fun units I've been working on this summer!


Questions:

1. If you are a parent, how does the work life balance work for you / what is the hardest part about being a working parent?

2. How do you prepare for the upcoming school year?

Positive Behavior Intervention Systems

Hello again, somehow the past two weeks have gotten away from me. I've sat down with great intentions to blog, and then life happened. Can't win um all right? In my defense, I've been working my booty off getting every last bit of next week planned, and in my file folders, so at 2:30 on Friday I could walk out with a clear conscience; and think of nothing but this guy all weekend. 

There really is nothing better that starting off the weekend snuggling my Squish while he naps and I read Gone Girl (so good!). Now that I've included the obligatory photo of my favorite boy, let's talk positive behavior intervention systems! If I end that with an expiation point you'll all be as excited as I am right?! 

The truth is, having a positive behavior system in my classroom has saved my sanity and spirit for teaching. To explain this, we have to go back to my first year of teaching where the behavior in my classroom, to put it lightly, was not exactly peaches and cream. I had a lot of students with major behavior issues individually, and when put together it was a recipient for disaster... and it was. I had six different behavior plans going at once, my principal on speed dial, and I was drowning. I put so much energy everyday just into getting my class to semi behave, it took every ounce of everything I had left just to teach. I felt defeated, and I felt like a huge failure; BUT I was also determined that I would make some changes, and I would NEVER have a year like that again.

Enter a positive behavior intervention system. It all started with a clip system. My first year, I only used a system where students moved down for misbehavior. There was no warnings in place, and no incentive for students to turn their behavior around. Basically my students weren't motivated to behave, so they didn't. Thus, I adopted a clip chart where my students were rewarded and noticed for positive behavior, they received a warning before a consequence AND they had the opportunity to turn their behavior around and move their clip back up. Once I had the basics of a positive system in place, the rest snowballed from there.

I could talk about the PBIS in my classroom for days, so I will! I'm going to be making a weekly series on my blog about the positive behavior intervention systems that I use in my classroom. I feel so passionately about having a classroom that runs on love and positivity, and I want to share how I've come from a classroom management system where I was drowning to a system that is fun, happy and encouraging. I hope you enjoy taking this journey with me!

I Mustache You a Question

I feel that I should preface this post by sharing that I am always a year or two behind the trends - as in, I purchased my first maxi skirt this summer (why did I wait so long!?). ANYWAYS... it took me a little while to embrace the whole chevron / mustache trend, but now I must have chevron and mustaches on all. the. things.!

Obviously, I needed to make my first unit of the year a chevron and mustache masterpiece - you know, because I'm such a trendsetter and all. For our scope and sequence, we always start the year out with asking and answering questions. It just seems like a good fit for the beginning of the year, and it really is the basis of all comprehension in reading. Thus, extremely important that students master this concept early! That being said, asking and answering questions can get a little... how do we put this... redundant? after a few days.

While I love reading, and I am constantly asking myself questions while I am reading, I can tell that my students just want to read the book; and don't necessarily want to stop to think about their thinking or ask questions. I knew I needed something that would be entertaining, and convince them that stopping every so often while they are reading to ask themselves questions is actually fun.

I decided to hook them with mustaches, because who doesn't love giving themselves a pretend mustache?

Handlebar mustaches make everything more fun! 

First, I read the book Help! by Holly Keller to my students, then I busted out some mustaches and had the students buddy read the story (we have this story in our reading textbooks) with their partner. I gave each student a mustache, and as they were reading they were allowed to hold the mustache up only if they were pausing to ask a question. Needless to say, lots of questions were being asked ;-).

After the students finished buddy reading the story, they grabbed a questioning tic-tac-toe game to continue the questioning fun!

I loved how they would look back in the book to find answers to their questions! 

Working on mastering a standard before breakfast was even finished!

The students LOVED the tic-tac-toe game, and they were so engaged while they were playing. I loved that this activity was really easy to differentiate, and it allowed me to work one on one with kiddos who I knew were struggling; while the other kiddos had a very meaningful activity that they were able to do independently. I originally thought we would only do questioning tic-tac-toe once, but the students loved it so much that I worked it into a couple more lessons throughout the week; and I put a copy (with mustaches of course) in our buddy reading station.

You can get a copy of questioning tic-tac-toe for FREE! here on my TpT store, and if you would like to grab my whole questioning unit (which include several other fun games and activities - as well as the mustache cutouts) you can purchase it here on TpT.

Tell me...

1. What is the first standard you usually work on with your students
2. How to you jazz up those standards that just seem redundant?

We're Back!!

Sorry for the hiatus on the blog, I was busy having one of these...

My husband and I welcomed a beautiful baby boy (I call him "The Squish") in early May, and I spent all summer cuddling and smooching my sweet boy - and trying not to think about leaving him in the fall :-(.

Alas, the school year came around and through many many tears, I kissed my sweet boy goodbye and embarked on my third year of teaching second grade. I must say, there has been some divine intervention with my class this year (someone must have known I was in a fragile state this year!), and my class is seriously the class you dream about having. They are absolutely fantastic, and they make leaving my baby boy each morning a little less hard.

That being said, lets get down to business! I'm going to backtrack a little here - seeing as it's the third week of school, and I'm just now sitting down to blog! The first week we started off with several get to know you games.

Starting the year out right with a snowball fight! 

One of the biggest hits of the first week was a class snowball fight. I had the students write three things that were true about themselves, and one lie on a piece of paper. Then they crumbled up the piece of paper, and I put the song "happy" on and we had a three minute snowball fight. When the song ended, the students grabbed the piece of paper that was nearest to them and tried to guess who it belonged  to. The kiddos LOVED this activity, and are still asking me when we are going to do it again.

We also had a find a friend scavenger hunt, and made an adorable Scaredy Squirrel craftivity that I found here on TpT.

I love how you can see each student's personality! 

Well, this post is getting quite lengthy and wordy, so I think I will end here today - but I will be back tomorrow with a fun questioning unit and a freebie!

Don't forget to leave a comment and tell me...

1. What did you do / what are your plans for the first week of school?
2. What was your favorite activity in the first few days when you were at school?

Measurement Olympics

This past week my class has been getting into the Olympic spirit by hosting our own Olympics in our classroom. We are currently working on the common core measurement standards in math, so I thought what better way to learn and practice our measurement than to make it an Olympic event!

We started out by meeting the different types of measurement tools, and hosting a mini Olympics to determine which tool was the best for each measurement job. We used my Measurement Olympics unit on TpT to record our answers. After we became familiar with the various measurement tools (we learned about a ruler, yardstick and measuring tape), we started to learn about the various units of measurement.

We learned about inches, feet, yards, centimeters and meters. The students went around the room, and categorized various objects from the room into different units of measurement.

 I allowed the students to pick the objects out around the room for themselves, but I challenged them to find at least 2 objects in the room that would fit into each unit of measurement category. They were also able to carry around a ruler to help them check their estimates. This activity really helped the students get a concrete idea of about how big each unit of measurement really was.

After we had a good idea of the units of measurement we moved on to the fun stuff... using our rulers to measure! We did several practice activities measuring with our rulers before the Olympics started.

 First we measured ourselves, and traced our bodies onto butcher paper. The students measured the length of their partners leg, foot, arm, hand and face. After the students traced their bodies onto butcher paper we added their measurements onto their official Olympian Card, and hung their cutouts around the room to decorate for the Olympics.

Next, we practiced our measurement one more time before the big day by measuring the arenas.

I made half of the arena spaces into straight lines, and half of the arena spaces into squares or triangles. I taped down yarn on the floor to be our arena spaces, but duck tape would have worked well also. One of the advantages of having squares and triangles, was it allowed students to practice addition with regrouping using three and four two digit numbers (always a win when you can review other standards as well)! Have straight lines and shapes also helped with differentiation. I was able to send my students who had mastered the skill of measuring to work on the harder shapes first, while I worked on measuring the straight lines with the students who were struggling.

Finally, after all of our hard work preparing it was time for the Olympics!

Trying to set a record at the half pipe!

Measuring their cotton ball's distance at the cotton puck shoot out.

Measuring his speed skating distance.

Measuring and comparing the bobsled tracks.

Measuring the distance his ball traveled at alpine skiing. 

 The students competed in six different Olympic events, and at each event they were actively involved in a competition which required them to measure. The favorites were the half pipe jump where I marked the wall with tape in 1 foot increments, and challenged the students to see how many feet they could jump off the ground. There was some very heavy competition here! Another favorite was the speed skate race. Students stepped on paper plates, and had 5 seconds to "skate" across the carpet as far as they could.

Overall the students loved the Measurement Olympics, and it was an awesome was for us to get up and moving after being stuck inside for months on end with this awful winter.