I say SCHOOL, not WORK

 There are many, many rewarding aspects of my job, day in and day out.   I can't speak for other teachers out there, but I personally struggle in day to day conversations to say "I'm going to have to stay at work late tomorrow,"  or "I'm going to bring this table into work,"--whatever the general conversation regarding my job is, I find it hard to say the word "work".  Instead, I find myself saying "school".  I had a recent conversation with a friend of mine who called me out on this one day, and asked why I say "school" instead of "work", because really, it is my work, my job.  I had to think about that for a second and told her that I think it is because my job doesn't feel like work.  Don't get me wrong, it is work, it takes work to keep things new, fun, exciting, hands on, all while needing to hit all the standards for the all of the different levels your students may be at, those aspects are not always easy.  However, when I walk into that classroom, and I'm greeted by those bright, shining faces everyday, it does not feel like work.  I'm not at "work", I'm at school, and my students are part of my second family.  Together, we embrace each day as a day to be our best, support each other in our academic progress, and be a team.  At what other job do you get to sing, dance, play tag at recess, roller skate (or in my case attempt to  :)) with the class in PE, get pictures and notes daily from them, start my day with several hugs, & see so much growth in your students throughout the school year?  THIS, my friend, is why I don't say "work". :)

Since I last blogged, it has been really exciting to see the writing and reading of the class just take off.  This week, I sent home our Monday Morning Journals so parents could see the writing improvements their child has made since September.  I am always amazed when I look at these.  These journals start with the students remembering something they did over the weekend that they would like to share.  I write their sentence for them until approx. October.  Then, I make them choose 1 word to pick out from their sentence and write.  For example, if they say "I had a soccer game", I have them try to sound out the word soccer.  A few weeks later, we build short sentences in their journals with sight words (popcorn words) they have been given.  It may look something like, "I like to _______." This progresses and progresses throughout the year and in the 2nd semester, we add in a greater stress for the mechanics to writing--such as finger spacing, lowercase letters, details, etc.  Right now, I have several students writing 3 full sentences at each journal entry.  All students have progressed and it is amazing to see, so I wanted to share those with the parents as well.  The parents wrote back nice words of praise for this progress and I read those to the students on Friday.  They beamed--and they should--I'm so proud of all their hard work!

Part of our writing progress is due to learning to break those big words up into syllables and then spell each syllable.  It is less overwhelming.  Here we are practicing our syllable counting/clapping in one of our centers.  

Part of our Language Arts lately has been working on digraphs (ch,th,sh) and finding word chunks.  We practiced --ing words and made headbands "King of _Ing" words, then wrote different _ing words on the headbands themselves.  

Mrs. Dugan made some fun slime for a center and we put digraph pictures in it.  They had to pull out the card and find it on the sheet, filling in the ch/th/sh.  

In math, we are working on measurement.  We measured length with blocks, and the height of all the classmates with yarn.  Come and see how tall KB is by looking at the chart right outside our door.  :)

It looks as if I am cutting this child's hair-- :)  I promise I am not, I am cutting the yarn showing how tall he is.  

Here we are working on our number crosses.  Using the hundred's chart as a resource to filling in those missing numbers.

In Religion, we have been focusing on Lent, and forgiveness.  We are getting ready to start our Holy Week study this coming week.  

These leaves flap up with God the Father, God the Son, & God the Holy Spirit on the inside, with our illustrations of each also on the inside.

We have since covered our Lent poster with specific ideas of things we can be doing to help us grow during this Lenten Season.

Thanks for stopping by to see what we have been up to.  'Til next time...

Reading Group Activities

We are back from Christmas break and the class is ready to go.. (I hope!)  I love teaching for many, many reasons; one of them being that I meet my hug quota for the day by about 9:00am each day!  I love it, and definitely missed all the hugs while I was on break.  :)

One of my favorite times of the day is our Guided Reading time.  We separate into groups and it gives me as the teacher time to work with each group a couple times, teaching/fostering/reinforcing specific reading skills and applying them to our particular text.  The class loves the small groups, the one on one time, and the fun activities that go with our lesson.  

In one group, they were focusing on our "magic e" words that make the vowel say it's own name.  They used Wiki Stiks (a popular favorite) to go find magic e words in their texts.

Below, a group used the reading strategy called Chunky Monkey to decode a word, by finding a word inside of the word that they were already familiar with, then helping them to sound out the rest of the word.  

Pay no attention to my lack of artistic ability here...and don't tell the students, but here is the idea behind the strategy "chunky monkey".  The class cracks me up--I am NO artist, cannot draw to save my life, but they seem to think I need to hold my own personal art show!  They are sweet and I just smile and giggle to myself when I hear them compliment my drawing! :) :) :)

 Spotting the word "an" to help decode the word.

 She found 'ants'!  

In another group, we worked on spelling CVC (consonant/vowel/consonant) words using our knowledge of letter sounds.  This skill is used in reverse when reading.  

Here is another group working on short "a" words.  That was the focus of their particular guided reading book.

The below game was a hit!  We used sticky hands to find particular sight words, then they had to swat it and pick it up with their sticky hands.  

This group was working on how to change your voice based on the particular punctuation at the end of the sentence.  

Here is another group working on CVC words:

In Math, we learned a new favorite game to play with addition reinforcement.  Maybe you can play with your child at home.  It is called Rock, Paper, MATH, and follows the concept of rock, paper, scissors.  You and a partner say, "rock, paper, math", then show 5 fingers or less and they do the same.  The first one to add up your number with theirs, wins.  

That wraps up this post, but we are fast approaching Catholic School's Week and the 100th day of school.  I'm sure we'll have many more pictures that week, so be sure to check back for that.  

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas....

Hi all!  We will begin our last week of school before Christmas break, and we are in the Christmas Spirit here at SPPCS.   Here are some pictures of our "The Birth of Jesus" books.  These are in my TPT store for any educators who are interested.  They are perfect for the little ones--with a lot of picture prompts.  

We also worked on Mix-It/Fix It sentences, Christmas style.  We wrote each word on a circle (oranament), then mixed them until the sentence made sense, then we recorded the correct sentence on the paper.  The kids are really, really liking their Interactive Notebooks this year, it is fun to hear their excitement when we work in them.  

Last week was Gingerbread week.  We did some beginning writing booklets.  

I would run to the "attic".  (I love how they labeled the boxes :) )

I would run to the "bedroom"

 We have been spelling CVC words with fridge magnets on the smart board.  It's their new favorite!

Below, we began this at the start of Advent.  It is a checklist of good deeds your child can do.  If/when they do one, they color in the flame.  

 This is on the back side of the "Let Your Light Shine" sheet.  We have colored it and add a flame every Monday we return to school.  

Oh no! Has it really been about a month since I have posted on the blog???? Shame on me! It is a time consuming, yet rewarding task. I like to provide a window to my classroom for parent's to see. It does motivate me to hear from you all, so I know that the site is being read/looked at though, so always feel free to leave me some feedback. Ok, so let's go back to October. During our spider theme, we worked more on our _at word families. Here's a look at an interactive QR code game, that the kids play with the tablet. They have to match the _at picture to the text, to the QR code text.

We have been working a lot on beginning sounds in our centers. We introduced ABC order, and _an word family as well.   Here are some of our activities:

We started our reading groups, we use Reading A-Z for many of our stories.  After this particular one, we made a grocery list of what you would need to make YOUR sandwich.  

In Math, Mrs. Dugan came up with a great Thanksgiving Probability center:

We made our pilgrims with what they were thankful for... this one makes my teacher heart happy!  

Thanks for stopping in!