Organizing Writing Supplies!

Just popping in to write a quick post about my plan for organizing Writing Workshop supplies for next school year! As you saw in my recent post about my Target haul, I bought some really cool mini-drawers to organize things.

Well...I decided to get a little crafty! (Shocker!! I'm not one who is typically very crafty...) Enter hot glue gun stage left.

 

 

The next step was to start cutting out each little tiny label from the "Supply Labels for Your Writing Center" pack from Teachers Pay Teachers.





I got each one cut out and then organized them by how I would glue them onto the drawers. I decided that three different colors in a drawer would work well. We will see...

I also decided to include a drawer for erasers, date stamps, glue sticks, and scissors, since the students would be using those items frequently during Writing Workshop. Speaking of date stamps, check these out!! (Ignore all the practice stamping... I couldn't resist!)

Okay, back to explaining my Writing Workshop drawers! After I organized them by drawer, I got my hot glue gun out and ready to go. Needless to say, I burnt my fingers at least twice. Okay, maybe three times. Don't judge me!

Here's the final product! Drumroll, please?

Yes, the date stamps one is wonky. I need to see if I can make it cute and matching. Ignore the date stamps one. At least I used my nice handwriting instead of making it too sloppy. And there you have it! Simple drawers for the students to use while they're working on writing their lovely stories of dogs, rainbows, and unicorns!

Thanks for reading! I am linking up with Tara's Monday Made It for this post, even though I'm late to the party. =)

My Teacher ALWAYS says...

I saw this linky from Forever in First, and I couldn't pass it up! During my first year, I realized that I repeat some of the same things over and over to my students. As the year went on, the students were able to say my quotes before I even got a chance to say them! It's amazing what they pick up.

Our school really focuses on teaching students to be helpful, kind, and considerate of others. Many of you have probably heard this called "being a bucket filler." Whenever I see a student who needs to be reminded that he or she should try to be kind instead of yelling back at someone, I would say, "Be a bucket filler!" Works like a charm. I even had a time at the end of the day where the kids would share who filled their buckets that day!

This one just popped out of my mouth one day when I was explaining an activity they were going to work on. One of my boys asked, "Ms. Adams...What do you mean 'a piece of cake?'" I thought they all knew that idiom already! From that day on, anytime we had an assignment, they would go, "Will it be a piece of cake?"

Every time we would come back from out class or lunch or recess, I would get their attention in the hallway and tell them where to go. They got to the point where I didn't have to say it anymore! I switched it up sometimes and asked, "Where do we go?" They all would say "GO TO CARPET!"

When things weren't going their way, I would pull this one out. I would shrug and say, "It's cool," if I couldn't find something I was looking for. When the kids had to leave recess early, I would say, "It's cool" to show them that they don't need to get all worked up about it.

This was a hard one! Whew! Some students love to report to me. I would always ask, "Did you talk to him first?" to see if the student had tried to solve the problem before reporting to me. If they said no, I would have him go talk to the person and explain what bothered him. Usually, the problem worked itself out. If not, I'd step in and guide the confrontation. I need a recording of this quote so I can just click play instead of wearing my voice out repeating it!!

Let me know what some of your most used quotes are! I'd love to know what you tend to say often. :)

I'm Back! (Summer Bucket List and Lessons Learned)

Can I just say... WOW! I've been gone for a long time. Sorry to all those who were following me here and enjoying my blog posts. It's now summertime, so I have more spare time than before. I finished my first year of teaching and LOVED IT!

Here are some of the things that I learned:

1. There will be challenging times, but talking to a veteran teacher about problems or concerns really helped me get through them. I am blessed to be working alongside a veteran teacher and dear friend (she taught me in 4th grade!!) that really understands me and wants to guide me.
2. Don't be afraid to be firm. I had a hard time at the beginning of the year with classroom management, but once I stepped up and was very firm, the students responded well. I had one girl who cried daily for almost the whole first semester. When I stepped up to the plate and was consistent with her, it was almost like magic!
3. Saying goodbye is hard. Enough said. :(
4. If you don't have a good organizational strategy for tackling the constant paper flow, you have to spend an eternity cleaning your classroom at the end of the year.
5. I take way too many pictures of my sweeties. Seriously!

Obviously, I've learned a whole lot more than that (like don't-trust-email-to-inform-parents-about-field-trips-because-it-will-go-to-junk-mail-and-the-parents-will-be-confused-the-day-before-the-field-trip), but I want to get to the fun part of this post. The linky party!! 

Yay! Here's my SUMMER BUCKET LIST!

--- Sleeeeep! Waking up at 5:20 everyday is NOT COOL.

--- Start grad school to begin the path of getting my Master of Education - Reading Specialization

--- Train for the Run or Dye 5k

--- Clean the horrifying mess of a classroom that is left after this whirlwind of a school year. Here's a terrifying, horror film picture of it. I hope it makes you feel better about your own classroom and/or gives you a chance to share your awesome organizing tips to help me out... It's a bit embarrassing to post this, but the first step to fixing a problem is owning up to it!

--- Use up all my awesome gift cards from super sweet parents.

--- Buy and label some Sterilite storage shelves and ACTUALLY USE THEM FOR SOMETHING this year. The one you see hiding in the corner back there in the picture? See it? Yeah, it just held all my junk and didn't even help me out this year. Woe is me!

--- Go shopping for new teacher clothes! :)

--- Read for enjoyment and for professional development. Mainly for enjoyment.

So that's it! I've missed all the interaction that I received last summer from you guys. Your advice helped me out tremendously this school year. I will post some cool stuff I've done and some ideas that really worked later on.

What's your favorite way to manage paper flow in your classroom? Is it even possible!?

Monday Made It! (and other news)

My wonderful followers, I did it! I Monday made it! 

I've never linked up to this fun party, but now I can actually show you something I made for my classroom. I'm going to go in and work some on my classroom this Wednesday, so I'll have at least one crafty thing to hang up in my room :)

I made these with my Silhouette Cameo! (My first ever project!!)
If you don't have a die-cutter, you need one. 

Like now.

I got the idea from Kim at For the Love of Kinder Garden.

She told me that one of the things she puts up every year is a collection of question words. I thought it was genius! SO, I created these. I will point at the words when I have the students ask questions. I want them to understand what the words LOOK like and not just how they sound.

Seeing the print is great for connecting the sounds to text. PHONICS! Labeling everything will help students grow their schema, so I figured that those words are super important to label. They use them on a day to day basis. (Especially "WHY??")

I also cut out these fantastic schedule cards from Barbie Roper's TPT page. They're too stinkin' precious! I think I love them!

I love the snack one! The kids are dressed as a Lettuce and Carrot! :)

I'm thinking about doing the Sterilite bins tutorial from Kinder-Craze. She's awesome, and totally inspires me. I got a 5-drawer bin last week at Walmart. I couldn't resist. It was calling to me. This last week I shopped till I dropped.

Here are some of the things I bought for my classroom!

Calendar kit with cute monkey number pieces from Lakeshore!
I RAIDED that store. Seriously.

Uppercase Letter magnets, a large stamp, color words
poster, and a Magna-Doodle!

A 6 foot tall palm tree for my wall. I may just end up
using the trunk!

2 sets of border and one PURPLE pointer! Oh my goodness!

I love shopping with gift cards!

In other bloggy news, I will be posting my technology tutorials on WEDNESDAYS from now on. I'm sorry I skipped last week. I had a lot going on, so please don't be too disappointed! I will post up this week's tutorial on Wednesday. You're going to LOVE it. You may already know the tool, but maybe it will help refresh your memory!

Name idea: Web Tools Wednesday?

Do you have a better name idea for my series of video tutorials on web 2.0 tools for teachers? Comment below! If you haven't seen one of the posts, you can find them here. I made a little handy link for you to click and take you to all of them! :) You can also look in the Tech Tutorials tabby page at the top of my blog.

Thanks for reading!

Make sure you click the follow button on the sidebar OR follow by Facebook! I'd love for you to stay a while and see what other goodness I have planned for this blog.

Thank you to 4th Grade Frolics for hosting this linky party. I love getting all those wonderful ideas for my classroom! It's such fun!

Oh, and please leave a comment! I love comments! It's similar to the feeling of opening Christmas gifts early. I will take the time to reply to each one of you, too! :)

Next Year's Plans

I hope that you are well! I'm excited that I'm writing this new blog post on the big blog hop day! Teaching Blog Addict is hosting some great linky parties, so I thought I'd contribute some of what I've been thinking.

Recently, there's been a ton of talk about Whole Brain Teaching. I think I'm going to try to implement a couple of those concepts! The main one that I want to implement is the WBT Rules.

Students tend to behave better when they have positive rules in the classroom. Some teachers like to make the rules WITH the students. I'm not sure if that's what I'll do my first year, but I do plan on discussing the importance of the rules that were selected. We need to be sure that we do not put "Do not" in front of each rule. As an adult, I know that I can't stand when someone tells me "Don't do this" or "Don't do that!" It's much better if someone asks for me to do something with a kind tone. Using the magic word helps too.

SO this year...I'm implementing WBT to manage behavior in a loving manner. I hope that someone who has done this before can give me some tips. Leave a note in the comments on how WBT has worked/not workd for you!

This rule is the one that really seems to be the kicker in my mind. The students need to learn how to choose to do the RIGHT thing! Guidance is definitely going to be necessary in the kindergarten year. Even in the students' senior year of high school! Positive reinforcement, kind words, and a compassionate heart are what will guide these kiddos to the right path in terms of behavior. Oh, and being firm. CONSISTENT! (Can you say, "buzzwords?")

So since this is a blog hop, I thought I'd give away my rules slideshow. I made it on Beeclip! If you want to learn how to make a cute slideshow like this, you can watch my first ever video tutorial on Beeclip. It's a video tutorial, so it should help you a lot.

Click the picture below to take you to the FREEBIE! Or click this link right here.

My video tutorial this week may not be up until Sunday! Please forgive me! I'm really busy for the next couple days, and not many people check here on Saturdays..

On what day do you want to see the video tutorial?

Mystery Blog Hop!

I'm excited to introduce you to this fantastic new linky party idea.

It's new. It's innovative! It's...TECHIE!

I couldn't resist.

When Ms. Fultz asked for people who wanted to participate, I jumped at the chance.

Here's the scoop:

This new linky party is a QR code blog hop! Can you believe it?

You can scan any of the codes in the linky with a QR reader and jump from one page to the next.

Cool, huh?
If you don't have a smart phone to use the QR code, you can just click the picture of the code.

I love it!

I hope that you try out a few and do what we all do best...

BLOG HOP! :)

By the way, if you haven't liked my Facebook page yet, you should!

I post there way more than on my blog.

Click my picture below if you'd like to go like my Facebook!

OKAY!

Get your hoppin' shoes on.

It's time to linky party!

Tweet

Currently...JULY??

Oh my goodness, It's JULY!

I can't believe it.

This year is going too quickly...

And I'm getting really nervous about teaching in August.

 I mean, I can't WAIT to meet my littles, but it will be MY classroom.

It'll be my responsibility to teach the sweet children how to read and love it.

Does that ever scare you?

I know there's a lot of you veteran teachers out there who have taught 10-20 years.

Give me some advice! I'd love to hear some wisdom from you!

This is the first time I'll have linked up with





and I'm loving the idea of a Currently post!
I hope you enjoy it!
Here it is:

If you haven't caught my video tutorial, here's the video!

You can also watch my past tutorials by clicking the page link at the top under the header.

I put it there just for you!

Take care!

The Daily Five - Chapter One!

I read chapter one! YAY!

It took me a while because I'm taking a grad course in Educational Tech (which requires way too much homework time). Nevertheless, I'm going to give you my short and sweet response to the chapter. I want to come at this book from a different angle sort of. My experiences have been very different from the amazing veteran teachers who are linking up to this books study, and here's why: 

I haven't taught a kindergarten class yet!

I know! I am so excited that I get to teach this next school year!! This book is really helping me see what I need to start doing from the beginning instead of hanging on by a thread, hoping that I'm teaching my sweet littles how to read.


 

1. How do I teach new behaviors?

That is the question, isn't it? I've heard it's best to model and model and model some more. The book actually says that it's the best way to go about it. Kindergarteners need consistency, so I plan on spending a great deal of time from the beginning working on how to behave in school. I hope that I can achieve that third column on the behavior instruction area.
 

2. How do I teach expectations?

 The beginning of the year should be dedicated to setting up expectations, and the authors claim that starting the Daily 5 right from the beginning is helpful. I feel that kindergarten can be flexible in that area because they're just starting school. I feel that the teacher really needs to make sure that the students KNOW what the expectations are, and the teacher needs to make sure that the expectations are HIGH!
 

3. How do I monitor student behavior? whole group? small groups? individual?
When I did my student teaching in kindergarten, I noticed that I was doing the "daily frantic dance" that the authors mentioned. I had to give pencils, check each student's centers work, and make sure that nobody was crying throughout centers time. What I really wanted to do was work with my small group intensely. I feel that all three of those are required for an effective classroom, though. There's a time and a place for all!

4. What do I do when a student is not exhibiting desired behavior?
Wow. When I read this part I was really struck by it. In most of my elementary classes I've observed, I saw the card-pull system. I thought it was helpful and effective, but really it's a negative system. I want to implement the clip chart system in my first classroom. It's great for positive reinforcement. I like how the authors use recess time as a time for them to practice the behavior over and over instead of just standing against a wall perfectly still! (Which is what was done at my student teaching placement.)

5. Whose classroom is it?
I would like to think it will be my students' classroom. In my first year, that may be difficult to set up, but I feel that I can do so with the help of veteran teachers. :) I thought that classroom jobs were the norm and the best way, but the authors once again challenged my belief on that subject! It may still be helpful for kindergarten to have assigned roles for the students to give them a sense of responsibility. What do you think about this??

6. Locus of control?
In my experience, candy and treasure boxes are the way to motivate. It's hard to break that mentality of using those tools. I hope that I can try to get my littles to become intrinsically motivated. My only question about that is: How can I do that? I know that it's the best way to have students hold each other accountable, so I want to make sure I do that! 

7. Where are supplies stored?
Should kinders be allowed to actually use staplers? When I was in kindergarten years ago, one little boy decided to staple his thumb. It was a nightmare! I think that some supplies should definitely be available in a common area, but others may be too dangerous for 5-6 year olds. It's all about understanding the level of maturity of your students, I think.

You can join the fun and read along with us! Just read chapters one and two to get caught up! You will be blown away. It's looking like such a great book from what I've already read.

QOTD: How you do try to get your students to be intrinsically motivated?

Here, There, and Everywhere

This blog post may be a little bit random, but I thought I'd join up with April at Wolfelicious and post a couple of my favorite e-card memes. I know, I know, I do linky parties so often that you're probably sick of them.

I'm putting a poll in the sidebar for the next internet tool that I will feature, so VOTE ON THAT while you're here so that you learn some new tips for integrating technology into your classroom!

Here goes:

SO true. I love those two. Especially as a teacher, I feel like those fit the best.

I want to give away some freebies soon, but I'm not sure what people need or want! Especially since I'm not even sure what I personally need for my classroom.

What types of freebies do you find that you download the most?

In case you missed it, I made a fun Web 2.0 tool tutorial for Beeclip (which is absolutely F-R-E-E to use!) Please watch my video and let me know what you think! I'm going to start doing free web tool review every week if possible, so I'd love suggestions for that endeavor.

I want to mention is that I am only TWO Facebook page likes from THIRTY! Oh my goodness! It's blowing my mind that I'll have 30 Facebook fans and 20 followers on here.

 Thank you SO SO much for taking the time to read my posts! You are amazing, and your constant comments and likes give me warm fuzzies inside. I hope that soon I'll be able to put something together to give back to you in return.

My Question of the Day (QOTD):: Should I pursue a Master's degree? I'm thinking of going for Curriculum & Instruction with a focus in Technology. Thoughts?

My Favorite FONTS!

Okay...I'm a little obsessed with fonts.

When I saw that there was a linky party for it...well, let's just say the Queen of Fonts could not pass it up! I probably have over 200 fonts on my computer. (Maybe that's a slight hyperbole, but go with me on it.) 

HERE are my top 10 fonts that I'm loving right now:

I hope these help you out. I hyperlinked all of them to take you to the place to download! You're welcome :)

Join the linky party at Teachery Tidbits by clicking this picture below! I'd love to see what fonts you use.

Which one of these ten is your favorite? Do you use one of these fonts already?

I'm doing this right before class, babysitting, and then VBS. Today is going to be killer!