September 19, 2015
Two weeks
down! I’m exhausted! It’s tough finding your way in a new school,
but some positives are: my class of 21
is wonderful!, and I have a full time
EA, who is a real doll!
Here is a snap
of books I read to start the school year off.
Some others, that didn’t make the photo shoot, are Stand Tall Molly Lou
Melon, Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun
I start my day off with prep this year. I’m finding it difficult to get used to with
grade 1. I had it first when I taught
grade 8 (it was a double prep every other day), and it was fine. With the little ones, it feels odd not to
greet them first thing, take attendance, and collect agendas/notes. But, I’m sure I will get used to it soon
enough. Once a week, I get a double prep
first thing. Too bad I couldn’t just
sleep in and come at 10:45. J
When I do come
in the room, we start with our Morning Meeting at the carpet. Because it is the start of the year, we
review our 5 Wonderful Classroom Rules, from Whole Brain Teaching. Most of the kids have fallen right into the
pattern of it, but I have a couple that just sit there… I try to come up
with new ways to make it more exciting each day, to keep the energy and
motivation up. I will say that this
year, I am doing much better with the Scoreboard. Our tallies are racking up. We count up the previous day’s Smilies and
Fownies, and see who won. If the Smilies
won, the class gets a point towards Friday’s Mind Soccer. More on that later. Next, we move on to the Calendar. The second week of school, I assigned the
classroom jobs. One person does the
calendar all week. This makes it easier
than trying to figure out who hasn’t had a turn, etc. They sure do love using the pointer and
reciting things. J
The next part of our meeting is Power Pix. We review the ones we have done, and if I
feel they know them well enough, I introduce a new one. We are going slowly at this point. We have done four: Sentence, Noun, Title, and Days of the
Week. I will then wrap up our carpet
time with a little story from out Kid’s Bible, say a little prayer, and off for
a snack and then Recess.