First Week and Friendship Salad

I can't imagine a better start to a school year than the one we just had.  I am pretty sure I have some of the best kiddos, to ever set foot inside of Wooster! We have been busy learning procedures, exploring our new classroom and getting to know each other this week. In our room we have dancers, singers, artists, ropers, Cardinal baseball players, Minecraft champs and more! 

We also have friends! With our friendship salad recipe, we explored what it means to be a good friend---honest, caring, loving, and hard working just to name a few!  These qualities were represented in our salad with yummy things like fruit, marshmallows and yogurt.   We decided on things friend would never do, such as be mean or rotten (like the black banana.)  We will keep those things out of our classroom just like we kept the rotten banana out of our friendship salad. Friendship salad was mighty tastey. 

BTS Blog Hop and Giveaway

Whew!!!!! I don't know about you, but I think that was a great bts sale on teacherspayteachers.  I was able to purchase many new items for the upcoming school year and even snagged a couple freebies.
After all that fun, I am so excited to keep it going with a give away and bts blog hop!  Enter the Raffelcopter for your chance to win, prized from all these great sellers.

To enter, just check the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Then, check out Dropping Knowledge's blog to find even more giveaways and freebies. http://droppinknowledge2.blogspot.com/2015/08/back-to-school-blog-hop-giveaway-time.html


http://goo.gl/XhI50i

All things bulletin boards

I am so excited for the up coming school year.  I will be moving from teaching Special Education in an inclusion setting to teaching first grade.  I am saying to myself, "Yikes and Yay!" all at the same time.  One very excited part of the upcoming school year is having my very own classroom to decorate, organize, and make special for my students.  I have already been working many hours in my new classroom cleaning, organizing, planning and more.  Not to mention, guess what is smack dab right in the middle of my room?!?!?!  A bulletin board!  I only have one in my classroom so I wanted to make very good use of it. 
I considered several things as I was thinking about what to do with my bulletin board.  I thought of math vocabulary posters, a behavior chart, class jobs, and more-the ideas just kept coming! Today though, I finally decided on (and created) Drum roll please.........A spelling and sight word bulletin board.  I know, that is not very out of the box, so why did I choose to use my only bulletin board in this particular way?  Well let me explain.
First grade is a huge year for many students.  With CCSS in use in my district, first graders begin on day one building on the literacy skills they learned in kindergarten.  We will practice our letters, sounds, spelling, phonics, phonemic awareness, and more each and every day.  I will have a whole classroom of visual, kinesthetic, auditory, and hands on learners.  So how do I grow those literacy skills in so many different ways? 
We will start by looking at simple cvc word patterns.  These patterns will be right in front of us every day on our....?   That's right bulletin board!  The spelling words chosen each week will intentionally pull out a certain pattern that students will study not only in spelling but also in writing, small group reading, whole group reading and more.  By studying a certain word pattern in just a few spelling words, students will hopefully generalize that pattern across multiple content areas and outside of the classroom to develop well rounded literacy skills.  The patterns will grow in complexity of course throughout the school year. 
With the spelling words being front a center, students will have ample opportunities to visualize those words each week.  In addition to visualizing the words, we will clap the spelling patterns, cheer the spelling patterns, stamp them, play games with them, rainbow them and more all week long.  There will be an activity for every type of learner throughout the week and an assessment on Friday.     
Here is how my bulletin board turned out.  All it needs now are some spelling and sight words. 

Welcome to our giveaway!  I am so excited to be a part of the Big Heartland Big BTS Giveaway.  We want you to be prepared for your upcoming school year so we are giving away lots of products to get you all set.  Enter the rafflecopter below to win my Addition and Subtraction Fact Fluency Unit, created with a cute fishing theme.

This unit is full of addition and subtraction strategies (for problems within 20) ideal for 2nd grade.  This unit also has fluency quizzes that an be used to measure growth all year long.

After entering the raffle-Check out my tpt store!  August 1,  I will have my forest classroom decorations on sale for 1$.  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Special-Adventures

Thanks for visiting and I hope you have a wonderful 2015-2016 school year. 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

An InLinkz Link-up