My challenge (to myself) last week fell short of a day or two. In all fairness though I should've counted out a Friday night post. That's the one night I allow my brain to shut down and not think school...mostly just because I can't. I can bank on falling asleep (passing out) on the couch either with kids or shortly after they go to bed. Needless to say, I tried posting from my phone after waking up briefly but have yet to master that.
So...here I am now. Sunday night...prepping for this week.
Contrary to my usual posts, this one will be brief. Still have more to do and a bed calling my name. LOUDLY.
Later this week I'll be uploading some new products I've made to go along with several of our upcoming units and themes. Here's a sneak peek of what's in store.
For our literature unit, I'm launching one of my favorite books.
A couple years ago I read this for the first time to my first grade class and was astonished at the interest levels of my littles. They loved it which in turn made me love it more. Of course, there needed to be some thorough explanation of certain dated concepts in the story and also higher vocabulary but they never seemed to mind. They asked some great higher order thinking questions and a lot of terrific conversations were had. I'm excited to start our chapter book this week as we dive into some of our comprehension strategies. More to come about that later this week.
In addition, we are wrapping up our Science unit about the
Five Senses
We integrate all of our Science and Social Studies units into our Language Arts time. Having an Early Childhood trained brain...I was programmed to think in themes and units. I enjoy creating lessons based on a certain theme and developing Reading, Writing, Word Study, and even some Math lessons around the units. This week I am finishing up my unit on the five senses. You can snatch up some great five senses activities later this week, also.
And closer to my heart...this week we will be celebrating...
Patriot Day, September 11th.
As a proud American, and a teacher who had a class full of third graders that day, I feel the need each year to honor and remember the events of September 11th in an age-appropriate way with my students. We focus on talking about America and doing activities to show our patriotism...
as well as teaching what patriotism is. :)
Tomorrow I will be sharing those activities with you if you are interested in using them in your classroom this week.
And lastly...tomorrow I will also share our new daily calendar we will be starting. Even though school has long been in session for us, we have not been able to do our daily calendar as has always been our routine. This year our district adopted a new Math series and we have been asked to follow it in it's entirety without supplementing or modifying. It's a pretty extensive daily lesson from start to finish and we are barely finding time to finish the whole activity each day.
So, while I've never been a lover of calendar time (boo! snore!), I know it's essential for students to know the days of the week and months of the year. I've recreated my entire calendar time to be more time efficient and work into my morning routine. My calendar time has always been student led will continue to be with even less interaction from me (besides the initial modeling and training).
We are launching it tomorrow. After my guinea pigs, er...I mean students, test it out tomorrow, I will make adjustments and changes where needed and then post.
Phew...it's already shaping up to be a full week.
Be sure to check back in for goodies throughout the week.
Happy almost Monday!
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