Puppet Center

This year with my new reading program (Lucy Calkins Units of Study) we have been reading books for a week and focusing on various strategies with the book. Each week we do a readers' theater with the book so the students get to act out the book through puppets for the characters in the books. This reemphasizes the "Students talk like the characters" point in the reading program. A colleague of mine found a pin on Pinterest for a simple puppet center so I thought I would give it a try. 

You can view the blog the original idea came from here:

http://www.teachpreschool.org/2010/03/stick-puppet-stage/

Here is my step by step process: 

Step 1: 

Buy a trifold board,border, decorative tape, pockets, and spray paint (optional)

Step 2: (optional)

I did not want a white trifold background so I spray painted the board black. I just used the 97 cents spray paint from Walmart. You could easily dress up your board with any color. 

Step 3:

Measure a square for the cut out. As the blog stated, many young students enjoy getting to see the audience's reactions to the puppets instead of hiding behind a wall with just the puppets showing. Depending on how old your students are should influence the size of the hole you cut in the trifold. I have kindergarteners so I made the hole large enough for the students to see the audience on the other side. 

Step 4:

Hot glue the border to the outside of the trifold to add a little color/detail.

Step 5: (optional)

I covered the area I had cut with green duct tape to add more color and to protect the area while the students are playing. 

Step 6:

Add pockets for the puppets. Depending on the puppets will depend on the size you will need to hold them. Most of my students' puppets are on Popsicle sticks so I used small pockets I found at the dollar tree. I just hot glued then to the trifold board. I did however hot glue a large envelope on the back side for larger puppets. 

Once you glue your pockets and add an optional title to the top you will have a puppet center ready to be enjoyed by your students. 

For the Love of Reading

This year my school has started using a new series for reading from Lucy Cawkins. My school is a big supporter of Lucy Cawkins. We started using the Lucy Cawkins writing units about two years ago and we have seen great success in our students' writing. Since we've had such success, we decided to try out the BRAND NEW, just released Lucy Cawkins Reading Units of Study. Our school was actually the very first school to purchase and receive training on the kits due to the persistence of our fearless leader!! We are so excited to see what this year brings with these kits and we are already enjoying the different parts of reading it incorporates. 

If you are interested there is all the information you will need at this web link:

http://www.unitsofstudy.com/teachingreading/default.asp

Our first unit/book is "We are Readers" which focuses on helping students find a love for reading and understanding the foundations of learning to read. The kit includes some GREAT resources which I LOVE!!! It includes trade books which are considered "mentor texts"that help reinforce learning throughout the units and provide great examples for each teaching point. The kit also includes large post its which stick to chart paper for the anchor charts that go with the lessons. The post its include pictures which help students refer to the chart even when they aren't able to read the words yet. They are super easy to use and help in prep time! There are also small post its that include questions for read alouds (which are the trade books included). This makes it very easy as well. 

My students have really enjoyed the different parts of the kits. The kit includes: read alouds, readers' workshop, shared reading, and small group reading.

Right now we are reading "old favorite storybooks"so my students are enjoying reading and retelling the stories. 

This picture also shows one of my students using another one of my reading tools. Blaire is using one of our "whisper phones" which helps her hear herself read and emphasizes on phonics". The phones make reading more fun for students and they are super easy to make. 

If you are interested in making some "whisper phones" of your own here is a link to another blog which goes into more detail. 

http://teacherificfun.blogspot.com/2013/02/diy-whisper-phones.html

We also use technology during our reading time. At my school we use Starfall to learn reading and phonics skills. 

You can visit Starfall.com to see all the fun learning opportunities for K-2 students. 

That's all my reading insight for tonight. Hope I helped someone learn something new today! :) 

Behavior Clip Stick

After many request I have decided to repost the behavior stick I am currently using with directions and helpful tips for those who are interested. 

The concept came from the clip up clip down method that's popular now.

Here is an example from TPT:

My colors were a little different since I was trying to stay as close to our school behavior colors as possible. I chose: 

Orange for "Super Student"

Pink for "Great Job"

Green for "Ready to Learn"

Yellow for "Think about It"

Red for "Teachers Choice"

Blue for "Parent Contact"

The thought behind using a stick instead of simply posting it on the wall in my classroom is the concept of it being moble. The stick can be taken anywhere in the school and students immediately see the results of their actions, whether positive or negative. 

 

Directions on how to create the behavior clip stick:

You will need: 

** a yard or meter stick

**Multiple colors of paint (with a primer base to ensure only one coat is needed)

**a clothes pin for every child in your room with their name printed on it 

**permanent marker or print outs for each sections title

Step One:

Create one clip for all your students with their name printed on top. (You can spray  paint the clips before printing their names to give a nice look to your stick.) I chose to do two different colors, one for girls and one for boys. This was just a visual for some of my competitive students to see who was doing better and also makes it easier for me to locate the student on the stick as I move them. 

Step 2:

Place all of your clips on the yard stick starting at 0. Alternate the clips on both sides of the stick for the shortest amount of space. After placing all the clips on the stick write down how many inches your whole class of clips takes up. This will help in determining the amount of space needed for each color on the stick. Green will need to be large enough for all the clips since that is where every student will start. You decide based on the class size and amount of colors how large each section will be. As you will see on my stick, the positive areas are much larger than the negative to encourage positive behaviors. Deciding this before painting will ensure each color has an adequate amount of space on the stick.

Step 3:

After deciding how much space each color needs, you are ready to paint. Start at the top of the stick (0) and work your way down, painting according to the measurements you decided on for each section.

Step 4: 

After paint is completely dry, write the title of each section on the color such as "Super Student". (You can also print out the titles and glue them if you don't want to write it out.)

Step 5:

Clip all students to green and you are ready to use your behavior clip stick. Remember that any behavior plan is only as good as the understanding of the students you are using it with and the consistency of the user. 

Finished product will look something like this:

My Newest Find: Bouncy Bands

While surfing blogs today I found the perfect thing for my little "fidgeter" this year. They are called Bouncy Bands. This is probably not a new thing, but it is the first time I have seen it so I was super excited to try it! I don't know about you, but I have a student in my room that simply can not be still no matter where she is. I am going to try this to see if she can focus while working. 

         

According to the website: "Bouncy Bands for Chairs help students move while they work. Children enjoy bouncing their feet and feeling the tension to relieve their anxiety, hyperactivity, frustration, or boredom. The support pipes attach to the Bouncy Band to prevent them from slipping off the chair legs and becoming a nuisance."

For those of you interesting in this product, they can be found on Amazon from around $12 each. The blog I found them on was using Donors Choose to fund getting them for all her fidgeting students. Just a thought in case some of you have too many "fidgeters" to fund bouncy bands for. 
I'll be sure to blog again about my new find after I've had a chance to try it out!

First week and a half...

Well the first week went by as fast as it came and my students are starting to learn the routines and expectations of my classroom. This year our school is starting a new behavior plan that allows students to earn their way back when misbehaving and also allows students who always do well to get to move up. I decided to use a yard stick to make it a mobile visual that we can take anywhere we go. 

Here is my behavior stick:

Also this week we have been working on our color words while learning our group expectations.

Here are few students working in those  groups:

Matching color and color word

Building the color words

That's all for tonight! Until next time!! 😊😊😊

Meet the Teacher Night Signs

While trying to get ready for my parents to come in on "Meet the Teacher Night" next week, I decided this year to use signs to help the traffic flow stay organized until orientation starts. Even though Kindergarten includes a sit down orientation, there are still things that need to be completed separately such as sign in, transportation, etc. 

Here are the signs I created to use for my classroom. You can use them too by clicking on the picture below. 

     

Kindergarten Camp

We had a great turnout at HES for Kindergarten Camp this year! We had about 40 out of 80 kids come which is pretty good considering parents have to come and stay with their child. We had 40+ parents getting involved in their children's education which is great! We had lots of fun singing, reading, interacting with new friends, and learning new things. Parents were able to take resources home to use to practice Kindergarten concepts with their students and got to enjoy time in the classroom with their kids. I love getting to see how parents interact with their children and being able to help show them ways to help their child be a better student. Such a rewarding experience! 

Classroom Updates!

I haven't had a chance to post any of my latest adds to my classroom so I thought I'd take a second to share.😊

I'm still not finished but it is presentable since K camp is TUESDAY! (Hikes!) 

Finally finished my new word wall from a Pinterest idea. I forgot over half way through to take a picture, but you can see I just had the neon index cards with words. There are many more words in the first picture because we switched word list this year in my county. Anyway here's a semi before and after pic:

Before:

After:

I found some cute owl lanterns on Pinterest also. I already had the green lanterns and our theme this year is owls so I thought I'd try it. Here's how hey turned out.

And here they are hanging:

I also redid my filing cabinets this year as you can somewhat see in the picture above. Here's what they look like up close:

My wonderful sister and brother in law came to help me today for a little while and helped place my shapes for my math wall. Here's their cute door decor:

I'm sure there's something I'm missing in the room but that's all I have for today. Since I'm sharing I thought I would also share my folder ideas for the year. This year I'm incorporating owls with my frogs (a little strange I know but I have soo much frog stuff I had to use it too). I always have a folder in their agendas for things that need to go home and also a folder at their seat for them to keep up with their work. (I know it's Kindergarten but if you teach them from day 1 and make them accountable it really does work out for them to manage their work.) 

Here are this years labels for their take home folder: 

I used a simple layout from Avery labels I got at Walmart and added my own font and picture to match my theme. Super easy! 

The other folders that they keep at their seats I usually buy from a school store online but they are VERY expensive so this year I decided to get smart and create my own. I plan to print and paste (you could buy whole page labels though). 

You can purchase the resource folder pages plus printable labels to match on my TPT account. 

Check it out at: 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/My-Resource-Folder-1943709

The pages are $7 but the folders with all these resources are $40 so I figured that's a much better trade. Just get the 15 cent folders from Walmart, paste, and laminate. 

I guess that's all for today. I'm sure I'll be back with more soon since time is winding down for school to start.😊

Newest Additions!

Today I rearranged my room, took the desk down and add some small touches I won't have time to do later. 

Organized books on the bookshelf:

The side of my filing cabinet : )

Dressed up the filing cabinets

Still messy but we're making progress

More to come...

Today's Progress

I got a chance to go work for a couple hours today in my classroom. Here's a couple of my newest additions in the works...

Reading shelf given to me by my sweet husband. 

My new listening center minus the CD player and headphones.

I also redid a shelf to make it cuter. It went from plain white:

To zebra striped:

I'm excited to see some more changes as I continue to work.😊 #moretocome #lovemyjob

Target Finds

Here's my Target finds from the lovely dollar section this week! : )

A planner, alphabet stickers and poster,owl cutouts, bright puzzle border, Dr. Seuss stickers, and a really cute chalkboard banner! So excited to see how these look in my room! 

An Idea Worth Re-Sharing!!

I found this on a blog the other day and loved the idea so I thought I'd re-share it.

 Dollar Tree Finds

$3 .three instant centers!

Matching opposites

Sorting digraphs

I decided to use the paint can and brushes for number practice.

 But if I wanted to use them for math practice instead, all I would have to do is write over the permanent marker with a dry erase marker...

 and viola! All is well in the world again ;)