Snowman Day!

We decided to celebrate winter by having a snowman day!  We started the day by reading Snowmen at Night and practiced retelling the story. We then focused on finding the main idea of the story by looking at everything we retold.  We used the information to find what the story was mostly about.  The kids did an awesome job retelling it!  I mean sometimes their memories amaze me because they remember things I don't at times.

Once we finished the story and wrote the main idea, we made our own snowmen at night.  I LOVED this project.  It has been all over Pinterest, and they turned out so much cuter than I thought they would. 

It started like this. I drew the circle with a white crayon to give them an outline to follow. 

Then they worked hard to fill in the circle with white pieces of paper.  They added snowflakes with white crayons and added the eyes, nose, and mouth with construction paper. 

They turned out adorable like this!

Here is my hallway display. :]

During writing, we wrote how to make a snowman.  Students completed their own snowman book with words and drawings.  We focused on using transition words. You can grab your own copy here!

During handwriting we practiced writing our names correctly using only capital letters at the beginning of our name.  We wrote them on snowmen!

Then, we took our snowmen and practiced graphing them to see who had the most letters in their name and who had the least letters.  You can see us lining them up on the floor and tallying them.  We completed a sheet that shared the most, least, and the difference between the two.

Here is our hallway display of our snowmen names.  I think they are really cute!

I hope you've enjoyed learning about Snowman Day!  Please share below if you do anything fun with  snowmen in your classroom.  I'd love to hear it!

Behavior, Behavior, Behavior

Behavior, behavior, behavior...ugh do you ever get tired of finding the "perfect" behavior management tool?  It is always something that I am trying to perfect.  I LOVE class dojo, but I was not allowed to use it this year in my classroom - so I used a clip chart instead.

Since the school I am at has always had blue as the highest option, I kept blue at the top (which drives me crazy because I wish it was in rainbow order).  I have it posted at the front of my room so that we can see it all the time. 

Each child has their name on a clothespin and the pin can move up or down throughout the day.  They get the opportunity to clip up after they have made a mistake.  Everyone starts on green.  If they clip up it is because they have been exceptionally well-behaved. If they go below green, then they need to work on making smarter choices. As I said, if a child clips down, he/she can still clip up if he/she starts to turn their behavior around. 

Blue is the highest - they get a certificate telling their parents that they have earned a "blue day" and a prize from the treasure box!

Pink is the second highest.  When a child is on pink they get to visit the principal to tell her how good they were that day.  My kids love telling her the good things they do!

Purple is right above the starting color.  If the students are on purple they get a sticker at the end of the day.  It seems small, but they love stickers! 

Green is the color everyone starts on each day.  This is the color that shows that they are behaving that day. 

Yellow is a warning.  This tells the child that he/she needs to start making better choices. A student is typically given 1-2 warnings before he/she is moved to yellow.  

Orange means their behavior has continued to not improve.  Then, he/she has to walk laps during recess.  

Red is at the very bottom and means that there needs to be parent contact for the child's behavior.  Depending on the severity of the behavior, I either email or call the parents.  Occasionally we have a meeting to discuss the child's behavior.  

At the end of each day, whatever color the child is on that is the color I place in his/her folder.  This way parents see their child's behavior each day.  I also keep the calendars at the end of each month to keep track of each child's behavior throughout the school year.  

How do you manage behavior in your classroom?  I would love to hear what you do!

Shared Reading and Writing

It's a brand new year, and I'm ready to get back into my blogging!  I have missed it so much - I'm sorry for my absence.  I've been so overwhelmed at work, and unfortunately, I had family illnesses.  So, I am determined to make 2016 my best blogging year yet!

I hope your new year is off to a great start.  I thought I would share with you part of my morning routine.  Every day my class participates in shared reading and writing.  You may be wondering, what is shared reading and writing?  Well, this is when you and your class read stories or poems together as  a class and then create writing pieces together as a class.  I like to use this shared reading and writing time to do things a little bit different.  
I always end morning meeting with our shared reading and writing.  Every week we have a new poem.  This is our shared reading portion.  I introduce the poem on Monday and the students listen/repeat to learn the new poem.  Then, we make the puppet to match it!

On Tuesday, we read the poem again as a class (a student always points while we read).  Then, we color the poem and place it in our poetry folder.  We use this folder during our independent reading time.  Students are given time to read their look books or their poetry folders.  They also use their puppets at this time to read their poems. They love it!

Here is the schedule for shared reading the rest of the week: Wednesday: Read the poem, student points, find words that start with the letter of the poem If the poem is focusing on the letter K, then we look for all the words that start with K or have a K in them. 
Thursday: Read the poem, student points, find sight words We often use wiki sticks or dry erase markers to find the sight words.  I write the poems on chart paper and laminate them for durability. 
Friday: Read the poem, student points, practice fluency by reading the poem using different voices We might use a robot voice, a cowboy voice, a whisper voice, a deep voice, a squeaky voice, etc. 
The students learn all 26 poems of the alphabet and at the end of the year we have a poetry palooza and share them with our families!
 Here is the book I use to get my poems:

Our shared writing of the week consists of us learning 3 new vocabulary words each week.  Then, we practice learning these words by placing them in sentences for our shared writing.

I always pick a picture that will go along with the vocabulary words.  Then, we write sentences to match the picture and use the vocabulary words in our sentences.  Finally, we read the writing together as a class.  This is our shared writing time each day. 

Once we learn the vocabulary words, I place them on our door where we continue to review them during line up time.  We have learned so many words!  You can find the words that we have learned so far by clicking here.  

I hope you have learned something today.  If you have shared reading and writing, please leave a comment below explaining what you do each day - I'd love to learn more!

Secret Santa Blog Hop {with the Elementary Entourage}

It's a fun secret santa exchange with my favorite blogging friends!  I received an amazing gift from Amber over at Peppy Zesty Teacherista.  She gave me TOMS!  Yes, I said TOMS.  I LOVE them!  They are my favorite teaching shoes.  They are the only ones I can wear all day and not have achy feet after school.  She even got me an adorable design!  Thank you so much!

Now that I have shared my extra special gift, I've placed one of my Christmas items for free until Christmas day!  You can check it out by clicking on the picture below.

This is a fun unit that teaches Christmas traditions in different countries, as well as reading comprehension and non-fiction reading strategies to your students.  My kids loved it, and were so excited each day during reading.

Here are some photos of activities from the unit.  This was when we were learning about Christmas traditions in Sweden.  Students learned about St. Lucia's day and how it all began.  They also created the candle wreath to wear around their head just like they do in Sweden.  All of these activities and crafts are included in the unit!  Be sure to grab my Christmas gift to you while it is free. :]

Merry Christmas everyone!  Be sure to check out the other posts below.  You won't want to miss all the awesome gifts for you!

An InLinkz Link-up