Weekly Wrap Up

It's Sunday and I'm barely getting around to post my Five for Friday pictures. It's been a busy week.

First up, there was no Five for Friday last week because I was on an airplane flying out to Illinois for my 15 year college reunion. Wow! Where has time gone!?!  It was so good to see old friends and catch up. I got home at 1:30am on Tuesday morning... turned around and went to work on Tuesday. I was dragging all week.

While I was gone my students made these cool owls for our tree inspired by this pin. They turned out so cute!

We've been learning all about owls and using the book Owl Moon for our read aloud this week. The kids have been very motivated by our bat and owl studies.

Friday afternoon we started our owl pellets. The kids thought it was really cool. They were pretty fascinated with this project. I love when they are super engaged.

My students are really struggling with social skills this year. I spend a lot of instructional time dealing with disagreements and hurt feelings. It's been a rough year in this department and it's only October. Our psychologist has started a social skills group with my kiddos. We're working on "I feel" statements and understanding it's okay to feel differently.  For now these skills are listed on the board where they are easy to see. But I need a permanent home for the skills we're currently working on.

Last up, our Halloween costumes! We went to a Halloween party this weekend and actually won the costume contest for Best Group costume as Clan DunBroch (from the movie Brave). Sewing all of these costumes (minus Queen Elinor the Bear) has consumed a lot of my extra time these days.  My girls are VERY excited about trick or treating on Thursday!

Monday Made It- QR Codes

I finally did it! I tried a QR code in my classroom that I made! I used this site to create my QR codes. Then I used these little frames from IKEA to display the codes. Each student has a frame with their 4 sight words for the week (there are two on the back side of the frame was well). I print out the QR codes and tape them in place so I can reuse it with new sight words each week.

Anything that involves technology is exciting to the kids! First they scan their QR code with the app i-nigma. I've tried several QR code readers, but this seems to be the easiest for the kids to use and navigate. I just wish that the font was larger when the text pops up.

 Then they record their sight word on their recording page in the corresponding number.

The last step is cutting apart their sheet with their signs. We photo copy the signs and the students need to match up the words and signs. 

This is great practice for my students and they love this new center!

Five for Saturday

I recognize it's supposed to be Five for Friday... but it didn't end up that way. When I finally sat down last night it was all over. I'm getting a cold... I feel it. I'm shocked I made it all the way until October to pick up my first cold.

Any how, here are a few random things from our week. I'm linking up with Doodle Bug's Five for Friday linky party.

We're in the middle of our Stellaluna book study. We've been busy learning about bats. The kids wrote a few facts about bats then created these bat silhouettes. I really like how they turned out. 

Inspired by this pin on Pinterest, we made beginning, middle and end Stellaluna bats. It was really hard for my students to write on the bat turned upside down!

My little guys were busy counting by groups of 10 to make 100 in order to make this illustration for the class. A bat can eat up to 600 insects in 1 hour! After seeing it, they understood just how many that was! (Sorry, I can't find the resource for this.)

Now that my little guy has mastered counting 1-30 it's time to get him to 50. This week I saw this post by First Grade Blue Skies and had to go out and find some of these cute Halloween erasers at the Target dollar spot. This Hallowteen activity was perfect for my students practicing counting to 50.

Not school related, but taking up a lot of my time recently has been making this Merida costume (from Brave) for my daughter for Halloween. I'm not sure how I pulled it off, but her costume is complete and it's only the middle of October!

Five for Friday- October 4th

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs for her Five for Friday weekly posts. Here's a look at five random things from the week:

 We started our Stellaluna book study this week. The kids are very excited to learn all about bats.

We are still working on place value and counting. The kids love it when I throw in a fun learning game. These place value dice were a huge hit.

Now that our schedule seems to have evened out, I have a little block of time to work on specific writing/grammar skills with my older kids. They enjoyed this little mini-unit on contractions. Contraction surgery was a hit.

I found this fun QR Code Contractions activity for the kids to practice their new skills. Pull out the iPad and they are all over it!

I took the day off today to join my daughter's kindergarten class on their apple picking fieldtrip. Hands down, the bus ride was her favorite part of the trip!

Five for Friday Sept. 27th

 I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs for her Five for Friday random things about our week. We were pretty busy this week finishing up learning about pirates and doing some mapping activities.

We enjoyed some Friday fun today in math and used Babbling Abby's Marshmallow math activity to practice what we've been learning about place value. The students really enjoyed this hands-on activity. It was great practice for my little guys counting by both ones and tens. For my older student, he needed more practice with writing number words and this was a perfect way to motivate him.

 

This week has been all about maps and cardinal directions. After lots of practice labeling a compass rose in our own classroom they've got it down! I love it when things click.

  

This afternoon I broke the student into teams to create their own map of our school. After creating their map, they hid a red X outside and the other teams had to follow the map to find the "treasure". The students were so excited about this activity. It was nice to see them working together on a challenge and having fun. 

Our Fairview Learning rotations are in full swing. The students take home a guided reading book at least once a week to read at home with their parents. I am loving the new kitchen rod that came from IKEA to hold the student's homework bags.

 

Next week our new PE schedule starts. Scheduling is a nightmare for me since I teach 1st-6th grades. I've learned to be flexible and take things as they come. With new additions came an overhaul of round one of the Fairview rotation schedules. I spent quite a bit of time re-working the afternoon rotations and am keeping my fingers crossed next week runs smoothly and that I haven't made too many errors. At least it's only 7 kids to schedule for rather than 13 like last year.

That just about sums up my week. Next week we start our new book study on Stellaluna and bats. Hello October!

Three for Friday

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs for her Five for Friday random things about our week. The only problem- I didn't take enough photos this week... so you only get three. =)  Hey, I'm new to this teacher blogging gig. I'll try harder next week.

Our Word Wall work is going well. Remember how I vowed to actually use our word wall this year? Well, we are using it daily. We have about 10-15 minutes when one group or the other is out at recess. The students each get a word a day. This is individualized to their needs according to our Adapted Dolch Word testing. Monday-Thursday they get a word practice page. Then on Fridays we do a Word Wall activity. I'm using several activities from this freebie pack here. This weekend I plan on making a few of my own to add to the fun.

We started our new place value unit. I really liked these place value names by Amy Lemons. We did a variation of the activity. For my little guys, cutting out all of those ones blocks would have taken years... so they just cut down the tens rods. They also only used their initials. This was a great activity to see where everyone was at with counting ones and tens. For my little guys, it was very clear that we need to go back to counting 21-50.

We finished up our "If I were a pirate" writing and craftivity from this pirate unit. They turned out adorable! We started off with making a pirates can/have/are chart. Then the students used ideas from the chart to help them with their writing. They worked really hard and enjoyed this activity on a Friday. Next week we're going to have all kinds of fun with maps and cardinal directions.

So there you have it... a few of the activities we did this week in our class.

First Five for Friday

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching  for my first ever Five for Friday post. Now that I am getting into the groove at school, it's time to show you some of the things we've been up to this week. 

First off, it was a rough week for me at school for many reasons. I felt pretty down on Tuesday. It was a reality check for me on day 14 of school. I have a feeling this year is going to be a very long one for me. Luckily, my awesome co-worker cheered me up. This quote from her is my new motto for the school year. I have to remember that even if where they are at today is three steps back from yesterday, keep moving forward. I can only control what happens within my classroom and my attitude about each situation. I've got to stay positive.

 

 The arrival of my second iPad for the classroom was very exciting. This bad boy will get to travel out to the mainstream classroom with one of my students. The cool Wordflex dictionary app and the Signing Savvy membership app will help the student become more independent during language arts activities.

 

We started our new read-aloud "How I Became a Pirate". Today we completed this fun treasure chest beginning, middle and end  from this unit on TpT. 

 

We finished up our noun study. We cut pictures from magazines for our person/place/thing anchor charts. The students sorted person/place/thing pictures and words during several different activities over the past two weeks. 

We also finished up our first math unit on money. Since we are using coins this year for our Classroom Economy I wanted to ensure the students had a good foundation for counting coins. The touch money system will be perfect for my younger students. I was so proud of my youngest kiddos that could count by 5's and count nickels with pennies. These little accomplishments are huge in my classroom and a reason to celebrate.