Fitting it all in - My Daily Schedule!

I wanted to pop on by today to give you a peek at our schedule each day. It's always so tough to configure these things and I love gathering ideas from other bloggers to help make the most of my time with the kids! Some of my favorite bloggers that I gathered ideas from for my day were Fabulous in First and First Grade Critter Cafe. I don't have any pictures yet of the schedule in place since we just finished up week 2. Once we get there, I'll be sure to update you! :)

Rise and Shine

Daily Language

Spelling Bee: Give students a whiteboard and dry erase marker. Give them a practice spelling test! 

Spell Orally: You spell a word orally and have students tell you what word you spelled. Tell students a word to spell orally and listen as they spell.

Clap/Snap Spelling: Clap low for letters that hang below the line when you write, clap in the middle of your chest for letters that are small, clap above your head for letters that are tall. Snap on the vowels!

Sight Word Game ideas from Fabulous in First!

Eraser memory game: Write new sight words on the board. Show students. Erase one. Have students write the one you erased on their whiteboard.

Hot Potato: Pass around a bag with paper potatoes. Students pull out a potato. If they can read the word, they keep it. If they can't, they put it back in the bag. If students pull out a hot potato, they lose that turn.

Link to a printable for the potatoes!

I included all sight words that we will learn in the first quarter. Perfect review!

I have/Who has: I just made some quick I have who has cards with our sight words on them. I am just changing the cards by the quarter. Download them here. Feel free to change the words!

Mind Reader: Give students clues to the sight word you are thinking of. Have them write their guesses on their whiteboard.

 Example: 'good' - I am thinking of a word that starts with a g. It means the opposite of bad.

This week we did, Pete the Cat!

Here are a few more:

Bad Apple Literacy Unit

Dino-Basketball Literacy Unit

Coming Soon: The Runaway Pumpkin!

I also love the units from Fabulous in First!

Our stations include: Listen to Reading, Word Work, Read to a Partner, Skill Work!

Skill work is where students complete activities that require a recording form.

They have 2 must turn in activities a week. Then, they can play word games!

There you go! I hope this is a helpful little post! :-) Have a fabulous weekend!!

I'll be back with some visual plans for our week 3!! :-)

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My Daily Schedule

Today, I am joining Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd and Lucky Little Learners for their monthly #2getherwearebetter linky parties! We're going to be discussing our schedules and resources we use in the classroom!

You know how you always see those fabulous schedules on Pinterest and all over bloggy land...?

 I used to look at those and say, "How in the world do they do that everyday?" I loved looking at them, and I used to try to make my schedule mirror other schedules that I thought were 'ideal!' I cannot tell you how many schedules I have tried in my little teaching career! It's probably around the range of 20...! :-0 Good thing kids are resilient! 

This year, I finally learned... that there is no 'perfect' schedule. No matter how hard I try to set a routine to follow each day of the entire year, it just doesn't work. My schedule depends on WHAT I'm teaching at that time. 

My advice to you, don't be too hard on yourself if you are sometime who felt like I did. I honestly used to be so hard on myself.  I felt like something was wrong with me because I couldn't stick with a set schedule. Honestly, if I kept my day the same every single day, then I wouldn't be doing 'me.' I would be a little bored. This is why! --I like projects... I like active learning... I like collaboration... I love trying new things... I try to stay away from worksheety things... This stuff takes time, and yes, messes up the 'schedule.' Don't feel bad if you don't stick to your schedule each day, if you're moving away from it, then I bet you're doing something really meaningful with the kids. They'd rather do the something meaningful, than sticking to the schedule! Trust me! ;) They will thank you! 

With all that said, this is my 'ideal' schedule. Keep in mind though... it doesn't go this way everyday because classroom 'life' happens. So, sometimes... the schedule will change!

Now, onto resources I use...

As you can see, my school does not have a curriculum. I literally get to be 'me' in the classroom, and I love it! It's hard work, but I love it!

For reading, I use a lot of mentor texts. I create my own lessons to go along with the books. I haven't uploaded many of them to tpt due to lack of time. Here are a few of my reading units that I've used this year with my third graders! 

I use these for student's reading responses.

    

   

My kids also do reading stations to work on grammar & language skills.

These are the stations that my students are currently working through.

For math, I also make all of my own units. Some of them not yet uploaded, but I have quite a few.

     

     

    

For more, click here.

Sometimes, my students work with math stations. These can be found here.

I hope this post helped out a little bit!

If you have any questions, please comment below!! :) I'd love to help!

Make sure you link up too, or check out these other great posts!

An InLinkz Link-up

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Math Workshop this year!

Hey all! So, a few days ago I shared how Reading Workshop runs in my classroom and today I'm going to share how I've been math workshop-ping it up in this year with the kids! If you are a K-2 teacher and you are curious about math workshop then you're in luck! I did a post last year for my first grade classroom on math workshop and you can find it here.

My math workshop from 1st to 3rd, honestly, isn't that drastically different. You all know how much I love hands on stuff and well... I am going to keep the hands on stuff present in my third grade classroom... the kids LOVE IT!! I always say they love stuff... ha ha - maybe I should take a survey?! Anywho... Here is how it runs this yea: (so far) ;)

Here is my daily schedule too for this year in case you were wondering about my day.

This lesson was on number patterns and you can grab it here.

 You can find these football math stations here.

If you haven't heard of adapted mind, then... um... you might want to take a look.

It's awesome! It has videos that teach kids concepts at their levels. So, if they need review...ba boom- there it is. If they're ready to move on.. KaPOW... it does it for you! AND!!!!... You can to see their progress... AND they're super motivated because they earn cool badges!!

Another cool online math program is called Ten Marks... this is totally free AND directly correlates to the Common Core! So, you are doing standard 3.OA.9?... Guess what... there are practice questions for the students to do. I assign this as homework! It's awesome, easy AND again, you can see their progress! I'll be posted more about these two soon: but, until then... I would check this out ASAP if I were you!

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