A Peek at Week #2

Our first full-ish week of school starts tomorrow and I am seriously regretting not going into work this weekend. Anxious teacher is very anxious and while I did have a much-needed fun and relaxing weekend, I am wishing I could have set aside a few hours of my time for the classroom so that my Sunday night worries would be more in control.

This next week includes more procedures, especially when it comes to our workshop model. I love teaching in small groups and am chomping at the bit to get going. However, I need to remember that my first graders will need a lot of repetition when it comes to modeling our expectations and routines. 

Here's what I have going on for week two:

Enjoy your week!

A Peek at My Week: It's Go Time!

Well, the first day jitters are about to be in full swing in first grade! Tomorrow is our teacher inservice and Tuesday is the real deal first day of school. While I am definitely excited to go back, I am already overwhelmed by the huge list of routines and procedures and expectations that I need to make sure to cover in these first few days. Here is a look at what we are doing this week:

Happy back-to-school week!

Peek at a Short Week

Last week was the calm before the storm. It was a short week with our day off on Monday and our fun-filled field trip to the pumpkin patch on Friday. {Teacher fail of the century: I didn't manage to get a whole group picture! So sad!}

This week, however, will not be as smooth-sailing as last. Because not only do I have some pretty big assignments due for my grad classes, but we've also got parent-teacher conferences Thursday and Friday (cue panic-induced music).

Parent-teacher conferences can definitely be a stressful time. Luckily, I found a fantastic, editable freebie by Jodi Southard to help me organize my conferences, which I think will save me a lot of time in preparing for 25 different conferences! Last week, I had my kids fill out a simple self-evaluation. On the back side, there is space for me to comment on their strengths/areas of improvement, what we will work on while at school, and how parents can support at home.

Because of conferences, I did not have to do as much instructional planning this week. Here is what we have going on:

First quarter was all about small moments. Now that we are into second quarter, we need to say goodbye to narrative writing and hello to, well, something else. In order to wrap up narratives and give my students a good opportunity to show what they know, we will all be writing about our fabulous trip to the pumpkin patch last Friday. We will also be making these cute little pumpkin guys found on Kacey's blog to accompany our writing out in the hallway.

Second quarter is my favorite because I get to teach all about story elements and retelling! We will begin discussing characters and character traits. I found this fantastic post from Sarah about great fall-themed books to teach characters and picked up some free graphic organizers as well. The post came just in time and I am so excited to delve into characters this week!

We are so, so done with nouns and verbs. And we've become pretty good sentence-writers. Now it's time for some adjective fun! As I was going through my resources, I was so excited to find some adjective-related activities that fit perfectly in with the fall theme I've got going on. We will begin by describing a pumpkin and end the short week describing different candy corn "characters". Does it not tie in almost perfectly with my character trait lessons? (Big teacher-win).

Another thing I love to teach is fact families. They can be such a huge lightbulb moment for so many of my first graders! While we're not quite to fact families yet, we are getting ready for them by discussing related addition and subtraction facts. 

Finally, we will finish our pumpkin KWL chart we started prior to our field trip last week. We will label a pumpkin, discuss the pumpkin life cycle, create a pumpkin life cycle craft, and finish up with an interactive emergent reader that students will read with partners.

'Tis the season for conferences, so I'm sending positive thoughts to all who will be conferencing along with me these next couple of weeks! Oh, and don't forget to head on over to Deedee's blog to link up with everybody!

A Panicked Peek at Week #6

Weekend are notorious for quickly slipping away from us. Every Sunday I find myself wishing I had just one more day to finish everything I somehow didn't do between 3:00 on Friday afternoon and 9:00 Sunday night. I'm used to this feeling. C'est la vie - that's teacher life.

BUT something feels different this Sunday. I feel panicked. Anxious. What is happening?! I felt like I was doing work all weekend. But when I went into school this morning to get things done, my to-do list seemed to quadruple in size. Holy cow, where did all of this stuff come from? And why am I feeling unusually anxious about it? Apparently I am in need of some good vibes this week - please send any extras my way!

Apparently when we discussed the story hand last week, I accidentally taught all of the lessons in German. Okay - that's not quite true, but that's definitely how I felt when Friday rolled around and only like three of my friends could tell me how we use our story hand! Talk about yikes. So this week we will review our friend the story hand, talk about the "heart" of our stories, and I will model how to make sure we are really done with our stories.

After weeks of discussion/modeling, we are starting our Reader's Workshop/guided reading groups this week. I am so, so nervous since many first graders are far from independent at this point in the year! Our mini-lessons will center around the strategy of making text-to-self connections.

Word study this week contains more short vowel word families and working on writing quality sentences. I am hoping that at least part of what we do during word study transfers over into our writing!

We will finish up my least favorite math topic of all time - understanding subtraction. There is just something about this topic that makes it extra challenging for my first grade friends. They are so frustrated with me as I flip everything they know about addition upside-down and ask them to apply it to this whole "subtraction" deal. Luckily I dug out some great hands-on centers to use this week and am optimistic that it will contribute to their growing understanding of subtraction.

Then we've got our map skills. So far, so good. We will practice in our map skills book, draw a map of our classroom, and finish our week off with one of those adorable "Me on the Map" craftivities.

Hopefully you aren't feeling as anxious as I am about the upcoming week. Show off your fantabulous plans over at Deedee's blog!

A Look at my Plans {Week 5}

Confession: I am so not ready to go back to work this week. My mom visited me this weekend and we had lots of fun together - I just don't want it to end! The highlight was definitely walking around a local broom corn festival. We ate fair food, browsed through the special vendors, explored antique shops, and bought some amazing homemade coffee cake and fudge. (Side note - Who knew broom corn was an actual thing?)

You'll notice that I have Tuesday blocked out in this week's visual plans. I've been put on our district's science curriculum mapping committee and our first meeting is all day this Tuesday. While I am so excited to have the opportunity to work on this committee, I am so not excited to prep for a sub.

With Writer's Workshop, we've been practicing getting our stories down on paper. This week, I will introduce the term "narrative" and model how to focus in on a small moment. I will also begin introducing our word attack strategies during our Reader's Workshop mini-lessons. We will have our first attempts at our center rotations, too! Wish me luck!

Our afternoons this week consist of writing sentences, learning about maps/globes, and understanding subtraction. Bring it on!

A Peek at Week #4

We are slowly but surely progressing through the first weeks of first grade. Thankfully, mostly of my little ones have realized that school is here to stay - their game faces are on and they are ready to learn. Now if I could just get everyone on board with this learning thing we're trying to do, that would be fantastic!

Speaking of fantastic - it's Sunday and I'm sitting here in bed with my two kitties. No Sunday anxiety. Praise the heavens for the little gift known as Labor Day. It could not have come at a better time.

By the end of week three, we've built our writing stamina up to almost 20 minutes. I am seriously so, so impressed with these kids! Now if I could only have more time in the day to work on their handwriting (yikes). Our district does not explicitly teach it and I have some very interesting penmanship coming over from kindergarten.

Also on my to-dos for this week is to introduce the overall structure of our reader's workshop. My workshop spells out READ which stands for Read with Technology, Enjoy a Book, At Your Seat, and Discuss with Teacher. The technology component is new this year and I can't wait to see how it goes. I am also going to try out book baggies for each individual student where they can self-select 2-3 books to accompany 2-3 books I have selected for them at their just-right level.

I am most nervous about introducing the "At Your Seat" component. This includes everything from hands-on centers to fun printables that incorporate a variety of reading skills. It was very rough during the first few months of school last year - I have such a huge reserve of activities and the kiddos come in really lacking the independence needed to pick up an activity and tackle it without teacher guidance. 

Short /e/ makes its entrance this week. We will also spend time practicing the word work activities that I have already introduced to the students. This has worked out so much better than it did last year (hooray for little teacher victories!)

Next up for math is understanding subtraction. This was a tricky topic for some of my kiddos last year who still struggled with understanding addition. We are really going to dive into my Fun with Number Bonds pack to give my visual learners a chance to really see the part-part-whole relationship!

Last but not least, we will wrap up our living/nonliving unit of study. Students will get together in groups and create posters using images found in magazines. This activity was a huge hit last year and I am so excited to introduce it to my students this week!

Alrighty, you know the drill - head on over to Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten and share your week with us. Huge shout out to Deedee for keeping us all accountable :)

A Peek at Week #3

I can't believe it's already time to plan for another week! 

Last year, I felt that my early writing lesson plans were a hot mess. I've always loved to write but did not realize how challenging it can be when many first graders come in with very little writing knowledge. I made the mistake of trying to jump right into narratives before my kids were ready, so this year we are starting slow with Deanna and Deedee's Writing Through the Year Unit 1: My Pictures Tell a Story. So far so good - their units are fantastic for beginning writers!

Another new thing I am trying this year is slowly introducing my word work activities one day at a time. I'm hoping this will help more kids become independent quicker since they are explicitly taught each activity and are not presented with too many choices off the bat. View my word work activities bundle here.

On a final note, both my Commutative Concentration and Cookie Addition products are offered for free at my TPT store! 

Another Peek at my Week!

In order to help keep myself accountable, I've decided to link up with Deedee again to show you what I have planned for this upcoming week. Last week was a lot of readiness/routines, so I am ready to dive into some "real" teaching this week!

Be sure to link up with Deedee, too, so we can all see what wonderful things you have planned!

A Peek at my {First} Week!

First thing's first: I have got to get back on a regular sleeping schedule! Tonight's attempt failed miserably - I was asleep before 9:00 but then woke up at 12:30 and have been awake ever since. So here I am at 2:41 in the morning working on my first ever set of visual plans for the first week of school (did I mention we start in just two days?!)

These plans are part of Mrs. Wills' "Peek at my Week" linky. Bear with me and my first sleep deprived attempt!

Morning:

Clearly not enough space in my visual plans to write down every procedure/expectation that I need to go over in the first week! I am already anxious about making sure I cover everything the kids need to know, especially since they are coming from a new building.

I am loving my back-to-school writing plans this year. Even though we are starting small, I am still giving students opportunities to get their ideas down on paper right from the get-go.

As you can see, I still need to plan for Thursday's reader's workshop time. By this point, we will be done working in our back to school packets but I am hesitant to begin teaching workshop procedures at such an awkward time in the week (especially because they are bound to forget everything by the time Monday morning rolls around).

Afternoon:

Our afternoon contains more readiness activities. The first day time capsule was one of my favorite activities of my first year. In addition to filling out the sheet with their interests (and very inventive spellings), I have them write "Today is the first day of school" on a piece of paper. The fun part comes at the end of the year when we repeat the activities and I hand back what students did on the first day of school. I have never heard my kiddos laugh as hard as they did when they saw how much they had changed since that first day of school. Memorable moments:

1. One of my students wrote he wanted to be a puppy when he grew up.
2. My lowest student, who on the first day said "I don't know how to write so I'll just draw this flower", wrote the last day of school sentence flawlessly :')

In addition to the time capsule, will learn/review short vowel sounds this week, as next week we jump right in to our short a word family spelling list. 

I'm prepping my students for our first math unit by reviewing concepts such as number order, counting objects, and adding small numbers. Friday's fun activity has students explore different math manipulatives in centers.

Finally, I decided to take time at the end of the day to review behavioral expectations, both within the classroom and school-wide. We look at examples/non-examples of good behavior with the Sweet & Sour behavior pack of activities and also dive into the district's social-emotional learning program.

Phew! Is it the first day yet?