Celebrating!

I am linking up with Ruth Ayres writes to share a celebration! Every Saturday we will link up on on our blogs to share some kind of Celebration that you want to talk about in the classroom. It can be anything! I was trying to think of something fun that I can celebrate.

So this week I am celebrating my class in working on their Mystery Stories. We are wrapping them up this coming week and we are doing our writing celebration this coming Thursday. My kids still have some work to do with editing, but we are on the right track! They have been working hard and I know our writing celebration will put them in the right frame of mind to continue down this writing path!!

Reading

I have been doing the Daily 5 in my classroom and it's been in full swing. I haven't introduced all of the choices quite yet, but the kids are doing well with what they have been doing.

The one thing that is going amazingly well is conferencing! I have a small class this year of only 14 students and with the help of some great para's in my room we have been able to conference with every kiddo in the class everyday! I am truly hoping this extra help for the kids will help them to become better and and more metacognitive readers! I will start strategy groups next week and we will be focusing on Close Reading! We will work on other strategies as well, but using Close Reading will allow the students to really dig in deep to their reading.

What kind of strategy groups do you use in your classroom?

Class Dojo

This year I am trying something new for classroom management and so far it seems to be working great! We are are doing the Class Dojo in our room. This is an online classroom management tool that you can monitor both positive and negative behaviors of your students. We strive to find the positive behaviors and students have really responded to this!

If you haven't checked out this site yet, you really should! They have thought of so much and you can customize the behavior goals to fit your classroom!! This can also be accessed by parents and students so they are always aware of the behaviors! In addition, you can download an app to your smart phone and you have access throughout the day to add or take away points! What a great tool!

Professional Development

Well I have been meaning to post, but have been busy! I had a pretty exciting September and got to see the Sisters in Denver for a Daily 5 and Cafe conference! It was AMAZING, despite the flooding that was occurring around the Denver area.

Another positive thing going on right now is our district has contracted with Stephanie Harvey and her company, and they are providing PD for all of our title schools. I feel very fortunate! Hopefully, this will help me to become a better reading teacher! Since reading is my passion, and want to help all of my students succeed in this area!

I will be posting more about news in the classroom soon!

Read 40 Books!

Well we started back to school last Wednesday and have been super busy practicing expectations and getting to know students. I am very lucky, as I've had the majority of my students a few years ago in the 3rd grade. Now they are 5th graders! I am also lucky, because currently I only have 14 students and I'm excited for all the things that we can do this year!! I read the Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller this summer and absolutely thought it was an AMAZING book. I plan on having my students read 40 books this year, but am still coming up with the amount of books that I want them to read from each genre. I will have it finalized this week.


Are any of you requiring your students to read a certain number of books this year? How are you having them do this?

From DRAB to Color FAB!!

So, I was shopping at the goodwill and I ran across this old Directors chair and I picked it up for $5.00.

 

The first thing that we did was take it apart, and we (my husband and I) sanded down the white paint and then spray painted the frame of the chair bright orange! That was the easy part! Next I took the old fabric and thought I would dye it dark purple The dye did not take at all and it turned out awful!!

 

So I had to figure out what to do next!! I can not sew.... so I knew that I had to find someone else to sew a new seat for me. So lucky me, I was able to enlist the help from my friend Michelle and she sewed me new bright purple fabric for my chair!! Below is the finished product!! I'm so excited to put this new bright chair in my classroom!! It really will brighten up my room!!

 

 







Classroom Check Out Board!

Well, I have been absent lately! I have been busy with summer school, but it has now ended. Now it's time to start getting my classroom ready for the year. I feel like I am so behind!! I will be working in the classroom this week, but next week I will be taking a STEM Science class with our district, so I've gotta get busy! Tonight, I made a checkout board for the classroom. I really think it turned out cute, and hopefully the kids will like using this system for signing out of the room.

To make this I bought a bright purple magnet board, magnets, rocks, sticky tape, washi tape, and duck tape. Oh and I got fun sticker letters too! I used the duck tape around the edges of the board and I used the washi tape to divide the sections of the board.

Check out my finished product! It should be fun in the classroom with this interactive sign out board!!