Hello everyone!
I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus from the blog. As many of you know, I transferred schools and grade levels this year! What a whirlwind! I’m doing a different type of class this year and I’m excited about working with the young men that will be in my third grade classroom. Have any of you ever taught a class of only boys? Welp…that’s my life! 🙂 Hee hee hee! 🙂 Lots of testosterone and books on things like germs, bugs, boogers and UNDERPANTS! LOL! 🙂 They will keep me young, I think! 🙂
My first week was pretty quick, to be honest. We had pre-planning the first two days of the week, and then had the first three days to get to know the kids and work on procedures. For the first week of school, I tried to keep things pretty basic. My new school is implementing the Covey Habits and Morning Meeting, so that was a prominent part of my week. Establishing the culture of my classroom with those two elements is a HUGE part of what I’m doing the first four to five days of school. Each area of my plans features a design question, and you’ll see the codes for that at the bottom of my plans. Want to see what I did more closely, click on the photo and you can download a PDF of what I did my first three days.
One of our goals at our school this year is to help students understand where they are with their academic progress. We do this with rubrics. The student friendly language helps them identify where they are now, and where they should be as we move forward. If that sounds like ‘growth mindset’ to you…my new school is big on that as well! 🙂 I have a pirate themed classroom, so I created some pirate themed understanding rubrics for my students. As we work on each habit, students will understand where they are in relation to the goal at all times.
I made ones with office supplies and another with superheroes for my teammates. They came out nice! 🙂 I also have a few vocabulary words for each habit. Those are also displayed on my bulletin board for morning meeting. I thought that working on some handshakes would be cool since I have all boys. I came up with a few to do with the kids and added them to my bulletin board. Part of our morning meeting always involves handshake greetings! 🙂
Besides working on building community, I also needed to weave in a few procedural things as well. We talked about riding the bus and what kind of behavior was expected there. We also talked about the difference between riding the bus today and years ago. The students were surprised to know how times have changed.
We reflected on that reading with a writing craft about buses! 🙂 We may not have much time later on to make a little something, but I thought it was a great way to ease into school! The craft was quick because I wanted to focus on the writing component. These will make a great addition to my good work board later this week!
The last thing I worked on was a framework for my small group plans. I mentioned them on instagram and several of you said you were interested in my plans, so here they are! 🙂
We’re starting out with four centers. Fifteen minutes each center. I have eight day plans for both my teacher center and my differentiated fluency center. When I was teaching alone, I rotated these plans in the teacher center. Now that I have a para, she will do the intervention work and I will do the on grade level work.
If you click on the Sunday Night Planning picture you will see the things that I do on each day. They are fairly open ended, but it’s just to guide my discussion at the teacher time table. It’s not meant to be explicit. I do that if I’m going to need a substitute for the day. 🙂 It’s not editable or anything, but you can at least get an idea of things. 🙂
Well…that’s all I have for you today!
I need to get my plans together for this upcoming week! 🙂
Thanks for reading!
