Finally Five for Friday!!

 

O-ME-OH-MY!... Tonight after school I was zonked! Let's just say the phrase, "There's no kind of exhausted like teacher exhausted," is a true statement!

 

This girl got home at 5:30 tonight and drank a coffee to try to wake up & well it just didn't work! I went straight to bed and now it's 10:30 and this girl just woke up!

 

So, now that I have a little spurt of energy I thought... FINALLY, I have time and energy for a 5 for Friday!!! If you have the energy then click below to link up!

 

 

This week as supposed to be all about "Pete the Cat." I had my plans all done on Saturday and then Sunday we get a dreaded e-mail from our principal.. you know the ones that throw a wrench into your fun plans for the week? Let's just say Pete the cat only blessed us with his presence two times this week. :(

 

We had to do STAR assessments... and I know that doesn't sound bad but the kids (1st graders) had to do these on the I-pads--- they had to type in a username and password.

 

This doesn't sound so bad right?... well................ here is an example of a password that the kids had to type in on their I-pad.!

 

 

Can you imagine how long it took us to type this stuff into an I-pad? It was a great teaching experience though! Now my kids know how to switch keyboard on their I-pads, capitalize letters and find the punctuation. That part made me happy. Anyway, we did spend an hour on Tuesday learning to log in and then taking practice questions. Then Wednesday we did the math and reading portion of the star test. After the kids took these the poor little babies were so tired so I took it a little easy on them.

 

This week we went full fledge into Math Workshop and our Literacy Stations!

The kids are doing awesome with this!

 

Last year I was way too lenient with students during stations as in, they did talk, they weren't always on task and all that stuff. So, this year I am making sure my kids know what I expect and know how to do stations correctly.

 

 Each time they break one of our 'classroom/literacy station rules' I call them back to the carpet. On the first day we were back at the carpet a total of 10 times to discuss what went wrong, then today we only came back 5 times! Improvement!

 

Here are the rules we came up with together! I like to keep it simple and to the point!

 

 

As soon as the students start to veer off track I ask them to stop where they are, leave everything where it is and come to the rug for a quick check-in. I am not moving clips on my behavior chart at this time since this is totally new to the students. I want them to learn the expectations first and not be reprimanded for breaking a rule on here yet... we are still learning. :)

 

Here are some snapshots of the stations in action!

 

 

I will have a post up on Sunday on how I do my literacy stations so stay tuned. If you read my last post on that you can ignore it... I tried that way, strongly disliked it and I changed it ASAP! :)

 

This week in Cheerleading... we had our first home game and we WON! 38-8! My girls did such a great job! Here is the run-through sign they had to whip up real quick!

 

Then, to leave you with a little something that put a big file on my face this morning. I told the little girl that gave this to me that I loved it so much I sent a picture of it to my mom and she started to squeal and jump up and down! :)

Can I just say that I love my job?!! I think it says, "Ms. Williams you are the best first grade teacher. Are you the best first grade teacher?" I think we got out sentences combined a bit. :) Adorable!

 

 

Have a happy weekend and I will see you Sunday for my Visual Plans!