All of a sudden, summer was gone, the weeks to the start of school were getting fewer, and I was still trying to organize my thoughts for planning. Now with a week and a half under my belt, I feel like I'm back in the groove of things, so I planned some time to blog. YAY :]
First, I created my theme for my classroom -- MOVIES. Every kid loves movies, right? My room is sprinkled with movie posters, all of them relating to a novel or book choice. We have popcorn, tickets, and lots more around to enhance the theme. I even bought a red chair from Walmart and painted a yellow star on it for a director's chair. It's a very stimulated room, but so far, it's been a hit! Hopefully, I will be able to change my boards and still keep my theme. These pictures are from the start of summer; I will have to take pictures of it now, so you can see the whole room! :]
So far, I have done very little of content teaching. Thanks to A Teacher's Treasure I've been trying to implement the S.T.A.R. interactive notebook. The interactive notebook with tons organizing and note-taking skills. I personally love it. I messed with it during the summer and have hopefully found a procedure that works. I've even convinced another teacher at school to use it too. It's been a hit or a miss with the kids. It's a VERY new concept for them, and a lot of them aren't so great with change...even if it's at the beginning of the year. I told them to give it a grading period, and we will evaluate it then. I've taught how to take notes and the fun times that go with that, and most of them have caught on very quickly. They had a ball decorating their covers and even creating their first reflection. I have a strange hunch that this will become second nature to them, and they'll love it too.
Lastly, I've started a few new things this year. I found scratch-off tickets from Simply 2nd Resources thanks to pinterest. I was a bit hesitant that this was going to be a bigger project than it looks, but it worked really well! The instructions were easy to follow, but the color was so thin that it had to be coated over at least 4 times to hide the prize underneath. I think these are going to be extra incentives when we play review games or have interactive bulletin boards. I'm excited for the kids to see them.
I think that's caught up enough. We will see how this week smoothly goes. I am trying to coordinate Race for the Cure team sign ups and set up my blogs this week. I'll clue you in on KidBlog and Clash of the Classes next blog. :]
