Parent Teacher Conferences

This week I am running around like a crazy person with a million things to do which isn't too different from any other week, but it feels like a lot - we've got student council stuff going on almost every day, I'm leaving my class with a sub so I can attend a conference for the first time this year, progress reports go home on Friday, and we have parent teacher conferences next week. Ok, that is more than usual so I guess I am justified in feeling a little bit stressed but I can't complain because I am really looking forward to getting a little bit of extra sleep on my "day off" and I am excited about the training that I will be attending!

About those conferences...

I usually keep all of my student's assessments that I use to monitor their progress in binders for each subject meaning all reading assessments go in the reading binder, math in the math binder, writing in the writing binder, etc... This way I can easily take out one binder at a time to give new tests, check out a students progress in a specific subject area, and enter grades for that subject. However, this is not the most convenient method when it comes to preparing for parent teacher conferences. I think it would look silly if I sat down with parents and had a stack of binders on the table that I had to flip through to find their student's information. So, instead, this year I will be using this three page progress report that you can pick up at my TPT store here.

  

What's Included?

1. A Reading Progress sheet: this can be used to test students on letter recognition, recognizing and producing rhymes, counting syllables, isolating beginning sounds, and identifying the parts of a book. 
2. A Math Progress sheet: this can be used to assess number recognition, ability to count to 20, one-to-one correspondence up to 20, ability to write numerals 0-20, recognition of basic shapes, and knowledge of the days of the week and months of the year.
3. A Checklist of important Kindergarten motor skills, work habits, and behavior for success!

This little packet is what I will use to let each parent know how their child is doing in Kindergarten so far, the areas of strength that I have already observed, and the skills or subject matter with which their child may be struggling. I will also show them writing samples from the first day of school and from this week so that they can see how much their child has already improved!

I hope you can put this to use and save yourself some time and stress while preparing for conferences!

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3D Shapes

This week we are going to be learning all about 3D shapes in Math. I always have a hard time making this topic interesting and fun, so this year I've rounded up some great resources from pinterest and some of my favorite teacher bloggers.

To introduce the 3D's I found this cute poem on pinterest. I couldn't find the source, so I'm not sure who the original author of the poem is, but here's a copy I made that you can cut and use in a pocket chart or however you want!

While reciting the poem, I will give the students manipulatives so that they can see and touch these shapes and understand that they truly are "fat, not flat". 

Next we'll listen and sing along to Harry Kindergarten's song: 3D Shapes I Know.

I will also use this awesome powerpoint by Mrs. Ricca to look at real life objects and figure out what 3D shape they are.

Finally, we will work together to sort objects by their shape in a pocket chart using yet another freebie from Mrs. Ricca. 

Here are some more fabulous freebies to help you teach 3D shapes!

3D Shapes Worksheet

3D Shapes Free Printables

3D or Flat Shape Sort

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First Day of Fall

Happy belated first day of Fall! I did not realize that that was yesterday until I got to work in the morning and saw Google's cute little ad. I panicked! What kind of Kindergarten doesn't know the date of the first day of fall and prepare crafts and fun activities well in advance?! This kind. But you know what, I did a great job of winging it and the kids had no clue that it was all planned last minute! Hooray! Thanks to a few other wonderful teachers who shared their ideas, we were able to celebrate the change of season all day.

First, we used a few worksheets from this awesome packet by This Reading Mama to practice math skills such as counting and sorting pumpkins, scarecrows, leaves and more by different attributes.

Next, because we are working on reading color words and drawing detailed pictures, we completed the coloring sheet that you can see on the bottom, right of the picture above. After coloring in the tree and leaves, I asked everyone to add at least five details to the background.

Then we reviewed letter sounds using this fun activity from Miss Kindergarten that you can pick up here.

That's about all I was able to squeeze in today, but I wanted to share this fabulous list of 50 Free Fall Printables for Kids that saved my life today!

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Synonyms

Are you teaching synonyms this week? I am, and I'm pretty excited about it because my students always love synonyms!

I always start out by having a student volunteer toss me a ball, I hand it back and ask them to throw it to me (cue laughter - they are so easily entertained) and then I ask, "did he or she do anything different the second time?". They all shout in unison, "NO!", and I say, "those two words: toss and throw mean the same thing so we call them SYNONYMS. Say it with me now! SY-NO-NYMS". I repeat this exact same thing about ten times with synonyms like jump and hop, smile and grin, push and shove, etc... We go over lots of synonyms, they get to move around, they laugh, and most of the time they get it!

Of course, I always end up having one student who raises his hand a few days later and says, "You just said 'whatever' and 'whatever' and I know those are cinnamons!!!". Oh, so close! This always makes me smile and I figure as long as they've got the basic concept down I am a happy teacher.

I put together this mini lesson to help you teach your little ones about synonyms. You can pick it up at my TPT store, print, and enjoy! Happy teaching :)

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Morning Work

Good morning and happy Monday everyone! This weekend was very relaxing especially thanks to the "fall" weather that we got here in Southern California. I may have indulged in some pumpkin ice cream, a pumpkin spice latte, and some fall nail polish colors even though it is not even close to being time/weather for that yet. Whoops.

Anyways, I wanted to post about morning work today! During my first year of teaching, I developed an aversion to morning work. At my school parents are welcome to wait outside your classroom door and bombard (sorry I'm not sorry for being dramatic) teachers with questions, requests, information about their children, etc... I was SO frustrated with this because I wasn't confident enough at the time to stop them or ask them to leave, and while I was busy talking to them my students were running wild in the classroom. My principal suggested that I give them some morning work to keep them occupied while I dealt with their parents and I, being the stubborn person that I am, thought, "why should I have to waste precious time that could be spent on instruction and prepare more materials just so I have time to talk to parents when they should know that teaching my class is my priority over talking to them". And that's how morning work and I got off on the wrong foot. 

This year, I have let go of the past and made amends with morning work. I might even call it my new best friend. I still meet with my students to do our morning meeting first, and if parents try to interrupt I let them know that we are busy and will answer their questions after school or via email if they so wish to write it down. But as soon as we have sang good morning to each other, talked all about today, and updated our calendar, I send my kids to their tables to do morning work quietly for about fifteen minutes. During that precious, quiet time I am able to check their homework, take attendance, send things to the office, gather myself and everything I need for the day and, on some, very special days, drink my coffee.

I have created a 26 page morning work packet that you can grab here. Each day students can use these worksheets to review important beginning of the year skills such as handwriting, letter recognition, counting and cardinality, continuing patterns, and more. This product can also be used as homework!

Check it out and please be sure to leave me some feedback so I can continue to improve my products in order to best suit your needs! 

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Happy Saturday!

I have finally decided to start trying my hand at selling products for TpT (TeachersPayTeachers).

I just opened my store, and you can get my first product FREE.

Please check it out and leave me some feedback! Thanks!

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Our Classroom Rules

During the first week of school, we read a book about a character who is not very good at following the rules and discuss the consequences of such behavior. There are a few books that work really well for this topic, but I usually choose one of these three:

After reading the book, we talk about the importance of having and following rules and then I introduce our very own classroom rules. The rules that I use came from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten Classroom Management Freebies. Thanks to this wonderful resource I was able to create this cute little display.

Just like Mrs. Ricca, I like to use the Whole Brain Teaching Method to help the students memorize our classroom rules. They think that these are hilarious which is great because they end up having all of our rules memorized by the end of the first week. Unfortunately I can't find a video of this method right now, but it is pretty much a series of hand motions that go along with the rules. We say each line together while doing these motions:

Rule Number One (hold up one finger) 

Listen (Cup hands around ears)

When someone is speaking (make chatting mouths with hands)

Rule number two (hold up two fingers)

Follow directions (Make a fish swimming motion with hands)

Quickly (shoot pointer finger up in the air as fast as you can)

Rule number three (hold up three fingers)

Raise your hand (raise hand)

to speak (make chatting mouths with hands)

Rule number four (hold up four fingers)

Be a caring friend (give yourself a hug)

Rule number five (hold up five fingers)

Always do your best work (Make a muscle with your arm)

We ended our discussion by sorting good vs. poor choices which you can read more about in my First Week of School post!

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The First Week of School

Now that our school year is in full swing and the kids are starting to be able to do some independent work, I am looking back at the first week of school and laughing. I was so overwhelmed, stressed, tired, frustrated, etc... I read somewhere that first few weeks of school are similar to childbirth - they are excruciatingly painful, but once you get through them and your kids know the routine you love them so much that you forget the pain they brought you on their way into your world.

I could not agree with this metaphor more. In fact, I loved my class so much last year that I completely forgot the painstaking days of practicing entering the classroom, unpacking, turning in homework folders, finding spots on the carpet, learning to listen, learning to raise our hands, learning our classroom rules, holding a pencil, using a pencil, holding scissors, using scissors, holding a crayon, using a crayon, lining up, moving around the room and the school, following directions, packing up, etc...

I came in on the first day expecting them to get down to business and was slapped in the face with the reminder that before I could expect them to do so, I would have to teach them how to get down to business. So, I scrapped my plans for the first few days of school and recreated a plan that worked for my brand new Kindergartners.

Here is a copy of my lesson plans for the first week of school. Just about every single activity was inspired by another Kindergarten teacher and I will do my best to give you links to their resources and give them the credit that they deserve!

As the students entered the room each morning, I asked them to stay in line and model the correct procedures for unpacking our backpacks one at a time. One by one they would walk to their cubbies and place lunches and snacks inside, turn their homework folders in by placing them in the designated bin, walk outside to hang up their backpacks, and quietly find their seats on the carpet.

Everyday

Morning Meeting: Our morning meeting every day consists of saying a prayer, the pledge of allegiance, singing good morning to each other, taking attendance, and discussing the days of the week (Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow), the date, weather, etc...

Morning Work: For the first week I found cutting practice pages here and made tracing worksheets here for each student to practice writing his or her own first and last name.

Monday

All About Me Graph: I introduced graphs by having the class help me make one of how many boys and girls there are in our class. After we did a few different graphs (favorite colors, shoe color, hair color, etc...) I explained that they would be making a graph filled with information about themselves. They LOVE to share about themselves, and it was a way for me to get to know them a little bit better so this activity worked out nicely. We used this cute "All About Me" graphing worksheet from The Primary Chalkboard's Back to School Survival Kit.

Chicka Chicka Name Craft: First we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, then sang the ABC's forwards and backwards (Instead of, "Next time won't you sing with me," we say, "Next time sing them backwards with me Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T...Now I've sang my ZYX's, bet that's not what you expected!"). Next we completed this really simple craft:

I didn't find a template online for this one, but, as you can see, all you need is a brown rectangle for the trunk of the tree and three green leaves. I told them that they could use different colored crayons and write the letters in their name climbing up the coconut tree just like the letters did in the story.


B.O.Y. Writing Samples: I got this wonderful idea to collect student writing samples at the beginning, middle, and end of the year from Heidi Songs. This has been a really good resource to use at parent teacher conferences. It's also pretty awesome to see how much progress the kids make in writing from day 1 to day 180. I'll share more with you later about how much I LOVE these writing portfolios! You can find the portfolio pages here. 

*I tell them to try their best, but that if all they are able to do is write their name then that is enough for the first day of school. They usually end up looking something like this:

Tuesday

Roll & Graph Back to School: A Teaching Mommy has a great Kindergarten Back to School packet which includes the template to make a dice with different school supplies on it and a corresponding graph to record how many times the dice lands on each item. *If they can handle it I sometimes let the students take turns rolling the dice themselves. 

Brown Bear Craftivity: We read the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, reviewed the different colors we could see around our classroom, and made these cute little puppets from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten. You can find her template here.

Wednesday

Shapes: We used these shape poems and pictures from Miss Kindergarten to look at and practice the names of each of the shapes.

Behavior Sort: After learning our classroom rules (more to come on that!), we completed this pocket chart activity which required the students to sort pictures of actions into categories - "poor choices" or "good choices". You can pick the pictures up from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten blog here.

Thursday

Chrysanthemum Craft: Since my kids had been practicing cutting every single day, I thought I would give them a chance to put their skills to use and cut out the heart shapes that we needed for our Chrysanthemum craft. They did a great job and their chrysanthemums ended up looking really cute! You can find the template for the craft and other Chrysanthemum related activities at First Grade W.O.W.

Friday

Numbers & Ten Frames: On Friday we did a lot of reviewing - lining up, walking around, walking through procedures step by step, and so on. For math, I used these cute number and ten frame cards made by Fran Kramer to introduce one-to-one correspondence and to play a game of "I have...who has (my ten frame)". 

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Wish Lists

Our Kindergarten morning message today: It is way too hot!

This week has been ridiculously hot. We've had temperatures over 100 degrees every day since Sunday! I can't complain too much about the heat though because we had "minimum days" (a.k.a. half days) as a result of the extreme heat and humidity yesterday and today -one of the few, no only, benefits of having no air conditioning at school. 

Anyways, that's enough complaining/bragging. Today I was SO excited to receive an item off of my wish list from one of my student's parents. If you are a teacher and you do not have a wish list you are missing out big time! 

I was afraid to make a wish list when I first started teaching because I work in a Catholic school and I was worried that the parents would complain about being asked to spend more money than they already do on tuition, uniforms, supplies, etc... However, I decided to be brave the next year and created a wish list on Classrooms by Walmart. I shared the list with parents but made sure to tell them that they were not obligated to buy anything, but that any contributions to our classroom would be greatly appreciated. I ended getting just about every single item that I requested and am now a huge advocate of classroom wish lists.

My list on Classrooms by Walmart was definitely helpful, however, this year I decided to branch out and use Amazon to make a wish list and I am loving it. Once you create a wish list on Amazon you can download the "Add to Wish List" button and add anything from anywhere on the internet. When I discovered this, I went a little bit crazy and start adding everything I have ever wanted for my classroom to my list. I shared the link to my Wish list on Back to School night and have already received about twenty books for my library, book bins, and my newest gadget that I mentioned being super excited about - my own personal, thermal laminator!!!! 

Of course, I had to try it out immediately! It took about five minutes to warm up and as soon as I got the blue light, I laminated everything within arm's reach and took pictures to show you how amazing this thing really is. 

Go check out my wish list and make your own! 

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My Classroom

Every year I say I am going to leave my classroom the same and save myself some time, sweat, and tears. Of course, every year I change my mind at the last minute and decide to completely change everything and end up scrambling at the last minute to get everything done. It's not that I didn't like the way my room looked last year it's just that, like a mother bird, I need to "nest" every year and create a new home for my new kids.

Here is a before picture i.e. the condition that I found my classroom in after being gone for a very short two and a half weeks between summer school and our report date for the new school year.

I, naturally, saw this as an opportunity to start from scratch and decided to empty out and reorganize my entire room. Yes, including my classroom library and all of my closets. I have a problem. So, I put everything out in the open and got down to business. 

 I had SUCH a hard time arranging my room this year! I must have moved the furniture around at least fifteen times before finally settling because I needed to stop worrying about arrangement and focus on preparing for final registration day (when parents and students get to come visit our classrooms). I have some really great pieces of furniture to work with in my classroom, however, some of them are built in to the wall which limits my options for changing things up.Nonetheless, I made it work somehow and moved on (for now). Here is my after picture of part of the room. I will share more later!

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