M is for Mustache

So before I could post my students photos I had to get permission from parents.  And until last week I had lost the thumb drive that had all of my forms on, luckily I happened upon it so now I can post some more pictures.

A few weeks ago we began learning letter names and sounds.  So for the letter Mm we made mustaches and placed them into our ABC journals, but not before taking the super cute pictures enjoy!

So the beginning of the school has been a bit hectic!  But I am finally getting the hang of the routine and life in general.  I am finally updating some of my finished classroom products!  Enjoy

Trash can for a holding homework folders.  Such a simple idea  thank you pinterest for giving me this idea!

I wrote all the students names on index cards, highlighting the first letter in a different color.  Every more since day 2 I have flashed the students names in our cubby area before entering the classroom.  This had greatly increased awareness of name recognition, every student can recognize their own name and they also are aware of the other student names and are beginning to recognize all their classmate names.  

Entering the classroom,  my desk that is rarely used!

Here is the cubby area, where we use the name recognition cards.

Here are our honey combs.  This is part of our school wide positive behavior support system.  Student can earn check, stamps for demonstrating the different aspects of HONEY.

This is where I house the centers.  There are there different spots the blue for literacy centers, red for afternoon theme centers and the clear buckets for math centers.

I found these great schedule cards on pinterest, through the First Grade Parade blog.  I placed them on ribbon and attached them to velcro pieces so that I can change the pieces when needed.

You are looking at our thinking spot (ALASKA) and our two laptops that will be implemented into center time.

Calendar area

Here I just highlighted how I let students use the block area during afternoon center.  I have all  the students names on index cards and I choose four students at the end of every day so that the students know that they will be able in the block center and I also do this for dramatic play.  I created these so not all the same students are always in these areas.  I also use it as an incentive since they know their name is there, they know that they can not have more than one time out to use these areas as well.  I don't need to use that for many however it does seems to work for the students that need a little incentive to work harder.

This is how I display my daily objectives.

A whole classroom view.

This is my listening center.  Students may listen to a story and then they have a sheet to complete to draw a picture of their favorite part of the story.

My library 

Our ongoing writing portfolios of their best work.  I also add photos to each of the portfolios.

One of the writing lessons that I did involved showing the students the different ways we can write, with different lines and such.  

This is our incentive board once the students have mastered one of these skills their name goes on the wall.

This is more of organized library.

computer centers

Sensory bucket, students have to find letters in the bucket and then trace the letter they find on an additional sheet.

My word wall.  I read somewhere that sectioning the letters allows the students to access the wordwall easier.

When teaching a specific number this is the number chart that I created last year and use .

Here are our clickers for the mimio, we haven't used them yet but it is one of my personal goals to implement using multiple choice questions with my students.

These are my writing buckets for writers workshop.    Each bucket belongs to a specific table and each student has a designated table.

This is the anchor chart that I have used for the past two years.  I never knew the strength in anchor charts until last year.  LOVE MY ANCHOR CHARTS!

It has been FOREVER!

     So really it has been since March that I last posted!  I just couldn't seem to catch with my life when March rolled around.  There was too much testing, evaluations, DESE portfolios had to be done,  goals needed to be complete, both my boys were playing baseball and doing everything else in life! So here I am in the blogging world attempting to start out with a BANG! 
     Over the summer I was able to meet with my teammates where we created units of study for math and ELA for the whole month of September, which made the beginning of the year really feel a little easier.  My district started school on the 20th of August and the students started on the 21st,  YES that's right in Massachusetts we started in August.  We are the only district in the area that started this early.  We also have gone extended hours with our students as well.  We will be going to school from 7:30-3:30 and let me tell you that it definitely is taking some time to get use to the longer hours. 
     OK enough ranting!  I am still teaching kindergarten this year.  The kindergarteners do not have to stay the extended hours, however we will be offering tutoring after school for students that could benefit from it.  I am working on getting parental permission for my students pictures to be on my blog.  So for right now I will am uploading the before pictures of classroom and will take more photos this week to show the after picture of my classroom setup. 

Here are the cute treats I gave out to the students on the first day of school!  You have to love pinterest!

Jami and I (year 2) on our 1st day of school waiting for the kiddies to arrive!