First Grade Fresh: 2013

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

New look, New year!

I have been patiently waiting to show you my classroom pictures when my blog face lift was complete! Thank you Kerri from Cutest Blog on the Block for the makeover. My blog needed a little 'blogger botox' to perk her up, and I think we definitely accomplished the "fresh" new look!

So without further ado... Welcome to my room!

This year I decided to change it up in my classroom. I was over the neon and Rockstar theme and needed a change. My goal was to go for a more preppy nautical look this year! With a few details missing, I like how it turned out! And I apologize in advance that some of the pictures are blurry, it took me a while to get a hang of the new camera.

Classroom Hand signals:

Student Mailboxes:

Read to Self Book Bins:

Word Wall:

AR Quiz Line and Math Tubs:

Classroom Library:

Writing Work Station:

Pocket Chart Station (which is missing a lot):

Student desks:

Listening Station:

Poetry Station (ignore the poems, I just hung something up for the picture):

My small group/ desk area:

Student Work Board:

Behavior chart, rules, and portable work stations for literacy (which after looking at this picture I realized I hated how it looked and needed to make changes):

So glad this blog post is finally up! Now hopefully I can start posting more often!

Cheers to the start of a new school year!

Friday, June 28, 2013

Five for Friday

1. I am so excited to celebrate my husband's 30th Birthday this weekend! I could not be more blessed to have him!

2. I have been prepping for my new classroom theme. I seriously stay awake at night because I will get a new idea. Eek! Next week we are allowed back in our classrooms, so I can finally put my vision to life! Hopefully it all comes together.

3. My new planner came in! Holla!

4. After my planner came in it was totally necessary that I go to Office Depot for a special trip to get new pens right? I am obsessed with these pens! I started using erasable pens last year again. Can we say 3rd grade flashback. We had to use them when we were learning how to write cursive, and we loved our big kid pens! I forgot how amazing it is to have the erasable feature. Nothing bothers me more when I mess up writing in my planner. Then the page is doomed to be ugly. Supper annoying. Well, not anymore! These pens are amaze, and they even come in cool colors. Score!

5. Is anyone going to the Debbie Diller Conference at the end of July in Houston? I will be there and I would love to know to look for you!

And please follow me on Bloglovin' if that is how you read blogs!

Button by Melissa

Have a great weekend!

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Throwback Thursday

Hello Lovelies,

I am excited to link up with Cara over at The First Grade Parade for a little Throwback Thursday Linky Party! I love to look back on activities I have done with my littles! It's also nice when you need a refresher on previous activities you did with you students.

My throwback post is from January 17, 2012. This was before I moved to another city and had to change schools. Therefore, it was a nice little walk down memory lane of my old school! :)

Workstation Revamp! {& Silly Sentences}

It's about that time of year again where my students {and I} feel *blah* about workstations. Although the kiddos are still excited to go to workstations (duh), their attention span is minimal and some of them seem to forget the rules.

What to do?

- Introduce some new and exciting things into the workstations.

- Review rules of workstations.

- And if it's not working... change or omit it.

Enter here Silly Sentences!

I always like to introduce these into the pocket chart when my students are independently reading! The kids go *bananas* for this work station!

I keep all of the parts of the sentences in one container. {Now let me be honest, this took a while to cut and laminate, since its such a big packet. However, you could pick and choose which words you would like to add to your Silly Sentence Work Station*

My directions are hanging beside the pocket chart and, I place the colored numbers at the top for students to use to make their sentence! This makes it SUPER easy to follow the directions! Which is what my bambinos need!

Below you can see some pictures of the constructed sentences using the color coded strategy!

So simple, yet TONS of fun! It's a great opportunity not only to construct the sentences, but to read as well! My students create the sentence, read the sentence and then record the sentence! The best part about this is their are SO many possibilities for sentences!

If you would like to check it out at my TpT store click here!

I also finished up my new writing station re-do. There is now a must do sheet which you can learn more about at First Grade Jungle. Ms. Thomas shared these fill in the blank pre-writes with me which I LUSH! The Littles have been having the HARDEST time staying focused and producing quality work from this station. It was time for a change!

via First Grade Jungle

Monthly words for writing via Busy Teacher Cafe

Do you have the writer's eye? via Cara Carroll at The First Grade Parade

Now I have NO idea where those charts came from or the ones below! But whoever did them, THANKS I love them! If you know please let me know! They have been saved on my computer for a while (before pinterest)!

*Update: these posters can be found here:

http://mrsgilchristsclass.blogspot.com/2011/08/writing-center.html

Now I have more for my revamp of my ABC/ Word Study, Work Work, Word Wall Station…. check back for that tomorrow! But here is a sneak peak of one of my new Word Work Stations, found on pinterest! Hopefully this excited the littles!