School Transfer

The school year has started!  My room is set up, we're learning our routines and we are in the 2nd week!  Annnnd I'm being transferred.  With all schools in the district offering Full-Day Kindergarten this year, a lot of families left my school and our enrollment dropped.  Two of us Kinder teachers have to move!  I'm being transferred to another school that had to open another Kindergarten class due to increased enrollment. Fortunately, I'll still be teaching Kindergarten, thank goodness!

So after the 2nd week, and lots of back-and-forth with the district office, it's official.  I spent my Saturday clearing out and moving my classroom.  It's sad to take everything down, I feel like I just hung it all up!  I'm really worried about how my kids will feel coming into an empty room on Monday, they were finally starting to feel comfortable!

Our last day was a sad day!  I loved my school so much and had such an amazing Kinder team.  The staff had a little good-bye party and our kids brought us flowers and cards, so sweet!

K3 Classroom

I am loving my room setup and wanted to share some pictures!  This is my second year at my site and I feel that I fixed the kinks that were bothersome last year.

I have a pretty big classroom but this wide shot makes it look huge!

Above is our Focus Wall with all the ELA weekly posters and vocabulary words.  Below is our Writing Wall.  I hang students' writing each week.  I love that this wall is right next to the door because visitors always see our best work!

Above is the Word Wall, a great reference for student writing.  Below is our Dictation Wall.  Each month, we do themed dictations and I take students' pictures.  This has been great for all my EL's because we have the opportunity to talk about and relate to the different months, holidays, and seasons.  My students love seeing their pictures up on the wall and it's perfect for memory books at the end of the year!  I love looking through them at the end of the year and seeing how each student has grown.

This is our classroom library and Calendar Wall (don't mind the extra tables, they will be moved soon).  This is also where extra work or art projects are hung, and we have a little graph area where we graph our favorite things throughout the year.  I am LOVING my new Calendar Wall this year!  The actual calendar set was from the Target dollar spot and the month signs have themed decorations!  Another great thing for my ELs and so much more fun than my boring month signs from last year.  I also downloaded some of these calendar pieces from Wild About Firsties.  We count the days of school with the ten frames and the hundreds chart.  I use dot stickers to count each day and dry-erase markers to write the numbers and the date.  I used different colored dot stickers to help kids count and see the different parts of ten.  I love having the ten frames to count the days because it exposes students to ten frames and teaches them to count by fives and tens.

First Day Pictures

The first day of school is always so exciting and the kiddos always look so nice!  I love to take their picture on the first day and throughout the year, so we can see how they've grown throughout the school year.  This is a fun activity because the students' perception of themselves is really interesting.  I give them a blank kid template and tell them to draw/color themselves, then, I put it next to their photo.  Their pictures are so cute and it makes for a great beginning-of-the-year bulletin board!  You can download the kid template here!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

It's the first week of school and we have been reading lots of stories and practicing different classroom routines.  My students have been loving the story, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?.  Every time I read the story, the kids love to read aloud with me, they just can't help themselves!  We have also been learning how to do partner talks, and this is a difficult concept for my new kinders.  We do partner talks throughout the day, everyday, so it's really important that they master this routine.  I thought I could incorporate the story into a partner talk lesson, since they are so comfortable with the storyline.  We made puppets with the characters, then students took turns telling each part of the story.  I originally saw the puppets in action in Miss Kindergarten's classroom and just had to use it in my classroom!

I was so excited with how well they did!  They took turns with each character and the partner talk concept just came naturally with the taking-turns part, amazing!  The best thing was watching my spanish-speaking students, seriously, these kiddos do not know any English!  They were retelling the story to their partner and with so much confidence.  I was amazed and so excited!  You can download the puppet template here!

Shoebox Centers

We use Shoebox Centers a couple times each week, usually at the end of the day.  I love these because they help students practice the reading and math skills we have been learning.  At the beginning of the school year, some centers help students with their fine motor skills.  We practice our social skills too because they are forced to work together and share.  They are so focused on their center and I rarely have any behavior issues because they are so engaged!

Students can chose the activity they want to do and I allow 2-3 students at each center.  I may assign a student to a specific center if there is a skill they really need to practice.  They take their center and find a working spot in the room.

Pictured above is a center that practices fine motor skills.  I found it at the Target Dollar Spot!  Both bottom pictures are counting centers that use clothespins or beads to practice math and fine motor skills, a two for one!

 

Direction Cards

I got these picture direction icons from Miss Kindergarten and I love them!  They are a great visual for my students, especially my EL's.  I printed mine to make cards with magnets on the back.  They are also a great recap for after I model an assignment; as I give the directions, I post the picture.  Today, we practiced numbers and I modeled a worksheet, then used the picture cards to recap what students were supposed to do.  When students forget what to do next, they can look at the board to see the next step!