1. After 13 years teaching in Kindergarten, Susan has moved to 2nd grade. Having taught (and LOVED) second grade many years ago, she knew this was a move she would like to make when the time was right. This was definitely done in God's timing, because it worked out perfectly. Little did she realize that changing grade levels and starting up a blog/TpT store at the same time would make for a crazy summer. There are a lot of products in the works as we collaborate to develop them around her new curriculum. Below are a few pictures of her new classroom.
The beginning of a "The Crayon Box That Talked" bulletin board. Self portraits of each student will go on the colored squares. More details will follow once all the activities are done.
The back wall of my classroom. This is our calendar/morning meeting area. I am excited about many of the higher level math skills that I am going to be able to cover during this time.
Love the Brag Tags idea. We are working on many new tags ideas.
We wanted to track students AR (Accelerated Reader) in a way that puts them all on the same playing field regardless of their reading level. Many charts track points. A lower reader, who may never earn more than 2 points, would always be at the bottom of the chart. Using percentages allows all students, regardless of their points goal, to make it "to the top".
Many hours were spent switching my classroom library from theme/author bins to AR levels. The new book basket labels are a big hit.
The theme for my classroom this year is from Philippians 2. Our goal and expectations come from this verse...to "shine like stars." We will talk more about this later. We love the way the classroom expectations turned out!
2. One of the reasons we began this whole adventure was because of our need and desire for a new sight word program at our school. After listening to students stumble over basic words and reviewing many writing samples, we began to notice a breakdown in the consistency, frequency, and method in which sight words were being taught. Our goal was to create a fun, motivational tool that could be used K-3rd grade to ensure proficiency with sight words. Sight Words Super Heroes was born!
3. In anticipation of the move from Kindergarten to 2nd grade, we wanted to create a reading comprehension tool that would make it easy to ensure students were being challenged with higher level questioning techniques. "Put Your Thinking Caps On" came about as a result. It is a simple tool that can be used anytime, anywhere and with any book.
We made both a cards and strips version. Check out both to see which would work best for you.
As we threatened promised, there is more information to come. We hope some of these items will help you get your year off to a great start and make sure it is one that is...
