A peek at my week...a little late

Linking up with Clutter Free Classroom again for a peek at the week ending 10/21.

My week was a short one.  We had a planning day on Monday (Yeah! I got my report cards and awards done).  Then we had a staff development day on Tuesday (Yeah again! I love collaborating with my team.  We shared a lot and I got a lot of good ideas from them).  So then the kids come on Wednesday after a nice long weekend all rested up and ready to get back to learning.  They were great all day. I really do have a great class both academically and behavior wise.  We finished up our unit on Friends at School and went outside to use sidewalk chalk with our friends from a couple other K classes.  What Fun!  On Friday we were able to sit on the curb in our bus lot and watch our High School's Homecoming parade.  They parade lines up on the street behind our school and then the start by driving through our bus lot first before going on to town.  It is really a treat. The kids love getting out of class and seeing the firetrucks, floats and especially the sirens.  It is a big deal for the whole town.  :)  All in all a good short week.

Here is a look at some of the great writing I have been getting from my cuties.  I am really impressed with how much they are learning.  Of course I have several who still need much guidance, but I thought these were shareworthy.

The pig jump in the mud. The pig (got?)    I don't think she finished  her sentence.

My horse likes (with the x on the next line for the /ks/ sound on the  next line) to play outside.

The kid (meaning a baby goat) fell in the mud.

The pig walks around the farm.  

Also, I created a little reader for one of my guided reading groups and I gave it to my 31/2 year old twin daughters just to see if they could grasp tracking the print and they did it!! I was so happy I made a video and posted it on Facebook.  I love seeing kids learn, especially my kids.  :) (My own kids and my school kids!)

Look at them tracking that print!  Love it!  The idea for the book cam from Fran Kramer @ Kindergarten Krayons!

Big Confidence boost!

Hey all!  I am sorry I have not posted in a little while.  I have been busy at school and home dealing with my little darlings.  Things are going well and I am feeling great about our routine.  I am already seeing such great progress.  I have had great success with my Writers Workshop.  They love following the 4 rules of writing as inspired by Kreative in Kinder.  Also, I had a chance to share what I have been doing in writing with my team at our last meeting and I got a really big compliment from my grade chair.  She is like the writing guru of our team, so it means a lot to hear her say she loves what I am doing.  :)

Another great big kuddo from my principal came this week too.  As part of some staff development, the whole faculty watched several videos of some of our staff teaching a small group math lesson.  It was great.  I love learning from my colleagues.  I received an email today from my principal asking to video me teaching a small group reading lesson to show in a faculty meeting.  I feel so honored that she asked me.  She is the kind of principal that you really want to impress.  I hope it goes well.  :)

I am working on a few things to upload.  I hope you will keep coming back.  I will get some more pictures up this week.  :)

Tawnya

Let's hear it for WRITING!

Look what I did today thanks to the wonderful inspiration from Crystal @Kreative in Kinder.  I loved her posts on Writer's Workshop and the 4 rules of writing.  I decided to do the lessons with my class.  It was great and I am hoping to see some better writing from them.  :)

Don't laugh at my drawing, I know it is not great, but they liked it.  :)

Peek at my week ending 10-7

Thanks again to Clutter Free Classroom for the link-up!  I love seeing what you all are doing.  Don't forget to check out all the other classroom peeks on her page.

The biggest thing that happened this week is that I was observed.  YEAH!  We have a great principal and I really enjoy working for her. I love that she has high expectations for us and we all work hard for her.  BUT, she makes me nervous when she comes in the room.  Luckily, everything was going well.  I was doing guided reading with my small groups and the rest of the class was working away at centers.  I had 2 parents in the room at the time and I think that helped cause one was giving AR tests and one was monitoring centers for me. I was working on fluency with the sight words with my higher groups and building CVC words with the letter tiles with the lower group.  Later in the week, she gave me a compliment that my small group reading lesson was really great.  :)  YEAH!  I love when I get positive feedback from her.

Most of all, I love teaching my students to read and write.  Here are a few things we did this week.

Scarecrow writing

"My scarecrow is silly"

Putting pumpkins in order by size

Our Family Tree project from last week, I forgot to take a picture of.  :)

I love my Environmental print chart.  I put them on velcro so the kids can take them to their seats and  use them in their writing.

Putting the numbers 1-10 in order without talking...Shhh!

A couple are still out of order, we are still working on it.  :)

Now we got it!

Using magnets to spell our sight words.  I think we ran out of t's for the word two.  :)

Overall, another great week in the Busy Bee classroom.  I love watching them learn and grow so much everyday.

Thanks for peeking and I would love some comments.  I'll be sure to hop over to your blog and leave a comment too.  

Box Tops!!

I love collecting Box Tops and even have the girls trained to look for them on all our groceries. (I don't have daddy trained yet.)  I found an awesome announcement on Surviving A Teacher's Salary that Ford is teaming up with General Mills to give Box Tops to schools.  It is super easy!  It takes all of 10 minutes to earn 35 for your school.  Just register and watch 5 videos and request a brochure.  The videos are no longer than 2 mins. each.  Did you know they have a car that you can set parental limits on the radio volume and the speed for your teen drivers?? They also have a car that you can use buttons on the steering wheel to respond to a text.  I love these new safety features.  If I hadn't just bought a new car this summer I'd seriously be considering a Ford.  You also can get 250 Box Tops for buying a new Ford.  They a.re also having a sweepstakes to give away 250,000 Box Tops.  You get three entries for referring friends and you can refer 3 per day.

Awesome!  Spread the news!!

Click Here to start earning.  

Week Peek - 9/30/11

Here is a peek at my week...

Make sure to hop over to Clutter Free Classroom to Link up and see many more peeks into our colleagues plan books.  I am loving seeing what others are doing and I am learning so much about how to improve my craft.  Even after teaching 15 years, you can always learn something new.  I am a lifetime learner just as I strive to encourage my students to be.  :)

My students' behavior has been really great this week!  (knock on wood)  The "Rainbow Clip Chart" as I like to call it is working fantastically.  I usually use the traffic light system, or a flipping card system, but always had trouble with rewarding the kids who are good all day everyday.  This chart helps me use positive praise as a motivator for those who do get a little off track.  It also makes me pay more attention and be on the lookout for those positive behaviors I want to encourage.  I like that the really good kids don't have to wait till Friday to get a treat.

Look at all the sparkling jewels on those clips.  :)  They get a jewel when they get to pink.  Once they have  3 jewels, they select a reward from my Best "Bee-havior" Catalog.  It includes things like eat with the teacher, bring a stuffed animal, etc. Free things that are not candy.  A colored clip means they have already been to pink 3 times and get a new clip.  They love it!

We worked on some word families this week.  During whole group reading we started with writing "hat" on the board and then changed either the first or last consonant to make a new word.  Then we wrote word family words on beautiful fall leaves and glued them together to hang from the ceiling.  It really made a gorgeous decoration for the room and we learned something too.  :)  

Please excuse the chairs being up, I took this after the kids were gone.  

In Reading we finished up our unit on Families this week.  I really enjoyed talking to the kids about their families and getting to know them a little more.  I love reading books about families sharing love and helping each other.  Their favorite book was "Bee-Bim-Bop"  about a little girl who helps her mom cook dinner for the family.  At the end they put all the food in a bowl and mix it up like crazy.  :)  The kids love it!  We made a family tree to finish up our unit.  I failed to take a picture of it, but if you look really hard in the top left corner of the picture above you can see one.  :)  We cut out a trunk and green tree top, then glued them on a blue paper.  The apples had family names on them and they glued them into the tree.  They added details like grass, clouds, sun and flowers.  They turned out cute.  I will add a picture on Monday.  :)

Here is a picture of watercolor painting activity we did as part of  our  Healthy Foods unit in Science.  I have never liked painting cause of the mess, but they did really well with it.  I was pleasantly surprised.  

In math we are finishing up our unit on the numbers 6-10.  The series we have wants us to go straight to adding and subtracting next.  (I know crazy right, they barely can count consistently and you want me to teach them to subtract!! That is a later in the year skill)  We are going to skip a few chapters and go into shapes and patterns next.  I think that is a smart choice for us and the kids.

In writing we are working on writings about our family.  We are using sight words and trying our best to write the sounds we hear for at least one word in the sentence.

"I go to the bech." - pretty good!

L - "I go muding."  R - "I go srfing."
I had an "-ing" word on the board and directed them to look there for the letters that make the /ing/ sound.  I love that they are getting capital at beginning and period at the end.  We need to keep working on spacing.  :)  

That is our week!  Thanks for peeking!  I can't wait to come see yours!