New Teacher Tips!!

 

Okay... So, I have seen this linky running around in blog land lately and have been reading all of the great tips & boy have I learned a lot. I am a new teacher & as many of you know I just finished my first year! As a newbie myself, I do have advice for NEW, NEW teachers that I learned from my first year... here it is! ;)

 

1. FOLLOW AS MANY BLOGS AS YOU CAN!! Read, read and read some more about classroom management, lesson planning and station rotations before you begin school! Having a classroom management plan BEFORE school starts is so important and STICKING to it is so important!

 

2. Find a lesson plan template that works best for you and try to create a routine each week with your lessons so kids know what to expect. Kids like routine and messing with the schedule will throw them off (trust me)!!

 

I always looked at Erica Bohrer's lesson plans to help guide my own.

Mrs. Wills has a wonderful linky during the school year where teachers link up and show you their plans. I cannot tell you how much this helped me! I struggled with this a lot for some reason.

Here is the link to my visuals! They're not as good but I am hoping this changes next year! I am still learning! :)

 

 

 

 

3.Also, learning to set up stations and how to run them was the hardest thing for me. Thank goodness for my bloggy friends or else my stations would have been an absolute disaster! Find a way that you want to set up your stations, prepare them early and correlate them to the theme!

 

I took my station rotation system from Deanna Jump. I don't do it exactly... but very similar. I added second stations to my rotation because I teach first. I don't yet have a post on my stations but I will once school begins! :) Here is the link to hers.

 

 

4. Try your best to organize! As a new teacher it is so hard to know how to organize your items. All I can say is have file folders ready and as soon as someone hands your something throw it in a file folder and label it & put it away. DO not loose precious items!

 

5. Get to know your students and treasure every moment that you have with them. Your beginning years fly by in a flash and it is a blurr. Treasure your moments and have conversations with your kids. They love you and don't let the time you have with them slip by.

 

6. Don't try to teach like anyone else. Teach like you and don't let others tell you your ideas are bad... that is why we all have separate classrooms. Do what works for you & make sure you students are learning. If you classroom is working and your students are improving then you're fine!

 

There are a few of the things I will be doing differently this year. My first year of teaching was so tough and boy was it a learning experience but I loved it. I chose the PERFECT profession for me & I hope you have a fantastic year!

 

Happy Teaching!

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Ten Pin Linky!

I have been seeing this linky party for the past few days now and I have finally worked up the motivation to put this post together! I love pinterest and I am so excited to show you my favorite things!! Thanks to Just Reed for the linky!

1. The first pin is a recent one that I found and it is called, Slap & Go! Each week two sight words are written on two hands and before students enter (or leave) the classroom they slap the hands and read the sight words. I am thinking about doing two hands and two feet so students can practice four sight words a week! I think the kids will love this!

 

 

 

2. The next pin that I found a while ago was this ones below. I just want to do this for back to school week! How fun would this be?!!

3. My next pin is ear bud storage. This year each one of my students will be assigned their own I-pad and of course will have their own ear buds. I would like to set up something like this to keep them organized and keep everyone's ear gook in one place. ewww!

 

 

4. My next pin is an awesome management idea that I forgot to use this year! Editing student writing is a great one-on-one learning opportunity for them but it is so distracting when a line of 15 other students are standing their waiting for you to edit their paper too. So... SOLUTION! :)

 

Students who are ready to have their papers edited pin a clothes pin on a board beside you instead of waiting in line.

 

 

5. Next pin is an anchor chart that I used this year to teach verbs. I attempted to make one that looks the same! I just love it!

 

6. The next pin is so much fun to do! All you have to do is write numbers on a twister mat! Students throw a bean bag onto the twister mat and come up with an addition/subtraction problem to the sum that is written on the twister mat! So much fun and great math practice!

 

 

7. Next, is a way to organize math games. My district does Everyday Math and we are constantly teaching kids games to play to reinforce concepts. I would love to organize the games like this so they are available for the kids to play during free time or math center time. I will be doing this! :)

 

 

 



 

8. This year I am doing an owl theme and I moved to a new classroom that has a HUGE whiteboard and three big black metal cabinets... So, I saw this pin the other day where the behavior 'clip' chart is actually a 'magnet' chart. I am going to use the clipart I bought to make my own... but I love the idea!

 

9. I will also have a table for guided reading. It is not a kidney one but I am using my desk as my meeting area as well to meet with my students. I am going to be getting vinyl mats so students and I can write down things that come up during a guided reading lesson. It will be so much easier to pull out the dry erase marker than to pull out paper and pencil to learn to connect sounds or comprehend a story!

 

10. My last pin and one that I am so happy to have found was this one! A magnetic word wall! Um... genius! I am in the process of making cute word wall cards to match my colors in my room & my word wall will be up on my massive white board! I love this idea because students can simply pull a word off of the word wall if they need to know how to spell it during their writing. It will be so easy to make my word wall useful & interactive!

 



 

 

Here is one last final one that just explains us all! :)

 



 

 

Thanks for viewing my favorite pins! I hope you got some great ideas for your new up and coming school year!





 

 



 







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Inspired by Dr. Jean!

The K and 1 team at my school went to Perrysburg, Ohio today for staff development with Dr. Jean. Through all of the ups and downs of my first year of teaching this really helped me become motivated again and remember why I love teaching. With all of the things that Ohio is having teachers do and especially filling the plates of us brand new teachers it can be very overwhelming and hard to only think about the kids with all of the other millions of things that we have to do. For one day today... I got to JUST think about my kids and different ways I can engage and teach them! I am revamped and ready to go! I am so excited!

I am not going to share all because Dr. Jean has her own blog...and I believe she blogs daily! She also has her website with a ton of free resources!

Anyway... back to ideas! These are some of my favorite things that I wanted to share with you!

This is an adorable simple to make book. All you need is paper. Fold it, hole punch, choose anything like a stick, fork or twig. Then, put the rubber bands through the holes, over the object and Whala! A booklet! 

 

This was a mini paper bag. We folded down the edges to create this "nest." She gave an idea for earth day of course. She talked about how birds are natural recyclers... so with students you could talk about the different ways birds recycle in order to build their nest. She suggested going on a nature walk and gathering different items from outside. I would have the kids put it in this 'nest' and when we get back to the classroom have kids attach their things to the nest. Then we could put these in the hallway on a tree and use a cute recycling quote! :)

 

 

This is what she called a 'toolbox.' Use a brown paper bag. Punch two holds at the bottom. Place a pipe cleaner through the holes. Then make sure you fold the bag up on the side where the bottom can flip. Slide paper under the flip and use for whatever you want. I am going to use it tomorrow actually for an informational writing on triceratops. We have already researched and I think this will be a fun way to do an informational writing. Then I want them to draw a picture of one and stick it on the 'flap.' In the hall I am going to put, "Flip me down to see what I found." It will be cute since we researched so many different sources together!

 

I saved the best for last!

This is a BIG brown paper bag made into a writing portfolio/file folder or whatever you want it to be!

You can see that I stored all of our crafts/books inside of it! It is perfect! Look below for how to assemble this!

I want to use this next year as the kids writing portfolio where they can place one writing a week and at the end of the year they get to take it home. I will have the kids decorate the flap to make it their own! So perfect and kid friendly!

 

I hope you enjoyed this post! Check out Dr. Jean's blog and website! It is awesome!

See you on Friday! My post will be all about the dinosaurs!

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