A Few Classroom Pics!

Hi friends!  Wow.. what a BUSY September it's been so far!  There's no tired like beginning of the school year tired. :)  I wanted to share a few pictures of my classroom this year.  I haven't taken pics of each individual area yet.  That will be coming soon.  It's gotta get that nice "lived-in, first grade look" first. :)

 

When you walk in...

 

Class rules and center/math tub rotation charts.  I was waiting for the kiddos to write the rules up there so we could construct them together.  

 

Our class pets: Kit Kat and Pickles!

 

 

All ready for Meet the Teacher night. :)

  

And this was when we were only 2 days into read to self!  I'm not doing daily 5 exactly this year, but I am keeping a TON of the same concepts!  I will blog about it soon and the reasons why I'm doing it a little differently this year.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures of our home away from home!

This is how we do it: Read to Self!

Five for Friday (on a Saturday!)

Hi Friends!  I'm linking up today with Doodle Bugs for the Five for Friday linky party!  (Even though it's Saturday... oops!)

1.  We've been working hard on reviewing letter sounds, especially beginning sounds!  This was one of our morning sheets this week.  I heart DJ inkers clip art! :)

2.  We have also launched daily five in our room and have started reading to self time.  We were up to 12 minutes! (Then went back down to 7 on Friday - thank you, Friday the 13th!)

 

{The 3 ways to read a book sign is from Shine on in Kinder and can be found here! :) }

We did the "shoe lesson" (from the Daily Five book) for using "I PICK" to choose good fit books.  (I thought these shoe anchor chart pieces were from First Grade WOW but now I can't seem to find them!  If anyone knows where they are from, I will be sure to give credit!)

 

 Here are our book boxes.  I let my kiddos choose 5 books for their box.  They also have their poetry binder they can read during read to self and they can also use their whisper phone (pvc pipe!).

3.  We also started math tubs this week!  I wanted some easy-ish tubs for the first week to ease into how we do math tub time.  :)

We worked on patterns (from my Welcome Back to School Math Center pack).

 

 

Roll and Write (top) and Sort It Out (below) are both from Julie Lee's All About Me pack!

 

Roll, Add, and Cover... from my Watermelon Wonder pack!

 

4.  We talked a little about September 11th this week.  To them, since it was before they were born, it seems like "forever ago."  To us, it seems like yesterday!

 

 

 5.  And since I didn't share a picture of my teacher space when I showed classroom pictures last week, here it is!  It was nice and clean, so I snapped a pic! :)  I do make sure it looks like this when I leave each day.  I can't walk in to a messy classroom in the morning!

 

 

Happy weekend everyone!

Free CAFE strategies for primary grades!

Hi friends!

Over the summer, I've been reading The Daily Five and CAFE to implement in my classroom next year.  I've been so excited to read these and can honestly say they are filled with lots of amazing ideas!  Last year, I conducted my centers similar to how the sisters suggest in Daily 5.  I'm hoping this will help me to transition into using both CAFE and the Daily 5 next year!

To me, the original CAFE menu seemed a bit overwhelming for primary students.  (Although I know a lot of teachers use it with great success!)  There's a CAFE menu for emergent readers that looks like it would work wonderfully in a K classroom.  Then I looked at the menu for transitional readers and I believe it's perfect for a 1st grade classroom!  This is the menu I will be using with my firsties for next year.  I created all of the strategy cards for this menu, complete with cute clipart!

Click the cover page below to get your freebie!

As I continue reading the Cafe Book, I may add a few more strategies from the original menu.  If I do, I will be sure to update my freebie pack!  If you have any suggestions for more strategy cards to add to this pack, let me know in the comments or send me an email.  :)