BACK TO SCHOOL FUN

Howdy! I hope you're all having a great back to school!

 My husband and I went to beautiful China for vacation during late July and regardless of what people had told us to expect, we had a fantastic time and loved every corner of it! The food, the people, the scenery... everything! Of course, we did a lot of research before going to avoid bad experiences. Here we are being goofy at the Chinese Wall:

                   

Anyways, I usually get started organizing my room one or two weeks before school starts, but this time I obviously couldn't; so when we came back I was rushing to finish decorating and organizing my classroom in basically two or three days. The good news is that I managed to get almost everything done with the help of some extra hands. Besides, I try to reuse as much as possible and be as practical as possible so that helped a lot. You can see some ideas [HERE].

One of my best friends, helped me decorate my door, look how beautiful it is!!You know she saved me about 2 hours of work here. I couldn't have done it by myself on top of everything else!

This year I feel blessed to have a fantastic class and we are having so much fun together already! I'll be self-contained this year (to which I'm still adapting to) so you'll be seeing some of that but I can tell you that I'm already loving having 18 kids instead of 44. Classroom management is so much easier!!

We started the year off with some ice breakers. My favorite was passing a roll of toilet paper around and having the kids get as many squares of paper as they wanted. Then, they broke down in groups and had to share facts about themselves according to the number of squares they had. It was easy, no prep and tons of smiley faces. The downside was that some kiddos only got one square and didn't share as much about themselves, next year I'll probably  ask them to get 3 or more squares. 

Later on,  they did a cute "All about me" sheet, then sat in a circle and shared facts about themselves to the class. They enjoyed finding similarities among themselves. The next day we connected this activity to a writing piece...

(All About Me)

(Writing piece)

(Later in our bulletin board... Cute right?)

... then we connected it to math and graphed all the data from the "All about me" sheets. I helped collecting the data, then modeled one example (food because it had the most variety in the answers), then broke them into groups to work on colors, pets, age and what they want to be when they grow up...

After all the excitement about getting to know each other, I read David Goes to School by David Shannon... I know, I know!! It's not 2nd grade level!! But the funny thing is that half of my students had never read this story... Isn't that weird? Anyways, for me this should be an all-ages-book, besides, I love to read this story because all David's no-nos are my introduction to our yes-yes (rules). They got a little confused at the end when he gets a sticker and a "good job" from her teacher but it was a great opportunity to discuss the reason behind the teacher's actions. After the read aloud I posted a poster asking "What did David do wrong?" then gave them a post it to write one rule he broke. See? I'm adapting this story into a deeper reflection more appropriate for 2nd grade. They came up with great answers, although I have to say that the food fight and chewing gum had a great impact on them, so I helped with the ones they missed. :-) 

After reflecting a lot on David, we compared a good student versus a bad student because I really think they don't know what it takes to do good in school. They try to fit everything in the category of "be good" right? But what does 'be good' mean? I feel like it has to be clear and it helps to set high expectations. We had some interesting debate about a few items, for example losing supplies, they thought both good and bad students lose stuff , which is totally true, so we focused on who loses supplies all the time and who is more responsible about taking care of their supplies. Then they were able to categorize this behavior. By the way, if you want to read more about how I manage supplies in my classroom and save some money, you can read more [HERE]. Here is how comparing behaviors looked like:

After comparing good and bad behaviors, students were ready to write a letter to David and give him advice on how to be a good student... We reflected so much before introducing the real big thing: rules, rewards and consequences. I just realized that I forgot to take a picture so it will be coming up soon lol... 

2 days later, here there are a few favorite writing drafts, (please pay attention to the "no chewing gum" part in all samples.. love it!)

Now, the next part is where I got totally out of my comfort zone but it totally worked better than I thought. Every year until now, I had basically lectured kids about the rules, asking them to remember them for the rest of the year, but this time I'm doing something different. I've been reading some books  about good instruction and one about discipline. I'm trying to put it all together by making things more interactive and engaging. So I involved the students in the "decision making" when "creating" our rules. They broke in teams and brainstormed about 5 rules they wanted to have in our classroom. We came together as a whole group and ended up with 21 rules, then we voted for the most important ones until we narrowed the number down to 7 rules. (Phew! I'm glad we ended up with the rules I had in mind lol). Being out of my comfort zone has paid off so far because when a little friend breaks a rule, instead of me being the only one person in the room  knowing the rules and their importance, I go back to say "Remember when we created the rules together? Can you tell me what rule did you break? Why is it important that we follow that rule?" I literally kiss my brain every time I hear something like "Well it's important to listen to other people when they talk". These are our 7 rules:

Once we created or agreed on our rules, we wrote the rules in our journals and related these rules to Classdojo. We added their names and I (for the first time ever) allowed them to choose their monster. Then I input the good points and the bad points explaining that when they break a rule there could be a consequence (or bad point) just like when people break the law in real life. Above on the right, we decided that when they get 3 points it means they did Awesome, 2 points means they did a great job, 0 or 1 point means they came ready to learn (but could do better). Then, one point off means they need to think about their behavior,  -2 points there is a consequence such as losing privileges (no treasure box reward), and -3 points means i need to call their parents to get help correcting bad behaviors. I have the English version of these posters in the back of the Spanish ones. You can get them [HERE]. With this guide on how they did, they can color a face in the behavior calendar and take it home. They have to get 15 points per week to open the Treasure Box where they can choose a prize on Friday if they met their goal. I buy the Mega Deluxe Toy Assortment online at Oriental Trading, the toys last about a semester.  [By the way, I'm working on creating Reward Passes to add to the Treasure Box, I'll let you know when they're done]. 

Example of how we transfer points to the calendar. 

To continue reinforcing the rules, on the second week we started connecting the rules to real-life comprehension activities, you can get them [HERE] where the students read about a kid who broke a rule then answer questions about it. I noticed by some of their answers that in some cases, my students were not understanding the questions, so I brought the questions to discussion groups and deepen understanding. This is definitely helping a lot!

During the second week we also started setting up and getting started on Learning Stations/Centers and Daily 5. It is going well but I haven't taken pictures so I will explain more step-by-step on another post. I have also been assessing my kids individually to see where they are at. I created this assessment that tells me if they know the sounds, letters and syllables (in spanish), I do this in addition to a fluency check. You my friend, can get that assessment for free in [HERE].

So as you can see, we've been really busy in "Mi salón" but we've been having so much fun as well. I hope you enjoyed these tips. If you did, please remember to share this post with your colleagues. Also, if you are interested in getting some or all of the materials I mention above, they are all available in English and Spanish, except for the student activities and the All About Me, those are just in Spanish. Also, my followers on Facebook got most of these products absolutely for free because when I post something on TPT I release it for free the first 12 hours and I announce it on Facebook. So if you'd like to ALWAYS get my new products for free, follow me [HERE]. You can find these resources here:

Bundle

Las reglas/Rules

Calendarios de comportamiento/Behavior Calendars

Posters or Posters

Actividades sobre las reglas

All about me

I hope you have a great school year and get to enjoy your students as much as I'm enjoying mine! If you have any comments or questions please let me know! See ya next time!

FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL

As I'm getting ready to start a wonderful school year, I am creating stuff for my classroom, especially for the very important FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL!! Before you read this, please let me wish you all teachers out there an EXCELLENT SCHOOL YEAR! I hope you enjoy all the learning that you will bring into the classroom this year!

Like all of you I have some excitement and jitters mixed together about starting this year, my classroom is ready for my second graders and I promise to post a picture later (yes I forgot to take a photo of my own classroom!!) but am I ready? I feel that us teachers are never fully ready, we are always preparing, creating and designing new ideas, new lessons, new techniques, etc. Oh well! Our mind clearly never rests until we are off to a good relaxing summer! But summer is over and we better be prepared to bring joy and wisdom to every life we touch. If you are preparing, like me, here is a list of suggestions to survive the first week of school.  

ALL ABOUT ME

The first activity I like to do is an ALL ABOUT ME writing activity. First I start by helping the kids brainstorm fun facts about themselves using my own All About Me sheet that you can download from my blog if you click on this link ALL ABOUT ME, then we write a small draft and everyone writes their ideas down in a small paragraph. At this time we don't edit or revise our draft, we go directly to publishing our draft because at this point we don't want to intimidate anybody right? Also, I let everyone share their sheet and add to it if they want, that's great for oral communication I actually encourage students to find someone with things in common; something I want to try this year is making a graph and although I'm not a math teacher I think it will be great to make connections for skills such as Compare and Contrast or Graphic Elements later on the year. 

GOOD STUDENT VS BAD STUDENT

Instead of talking immediately about the rules, I'm going to reflect about what good behaviors and bad behaviors look like. I read David Goes to School by David Shannon. I know! You are thinking that this book is not grade level appropriate and I agree; but I love to use this book for my first mini lesson about behavior, besides it's a book that both my english speakers and my spanish speakers will understand. I give it a couple tweaks to make it more rigorous: 1) we reflect about the rules that he's breaking (all grade levels do), 2) we write about it using the prompt "What Would Happen If David Was a Good Student?", 3) we classify good behaviors and bad behaviors  and 4) we sign a student contract that promises good behavior. The next day we'll set our classroom rules (which of course I lead students to suggest my rules ha). You can get my REGLAS Y COMPORTAMIENTO packet on TPT, I include the contract and behaviors we are going to classify among other things. 

RULES:

We talk about the rules on the second day of school after comparing good vs bad students. As I mentioned before, I lead my students to brainstorm the rules I already have for the classroom hehehe. As we create my suggested rules, we talk about CLASSDOJO which is the system I use for discipline. This year I will let them choose their own Avatar, then we'll talk about the behaviors that I have already set up. What I love about Classdojo is the positive reinforcement system, you can praise the students immediately. After we create a password for every student and choose Avatars, we talk and model my point system which is very simple: Each student has to collect 10 points or more to get a prize from my Treasure Box which is full of assorted prizes from Oriental Trading. 

STUDENT GENERATED ALPHABET:

In my district, our language department requires that the bilingual classrooms have a Student Generated Alphabet in english and in spanish. There are several ways of doing this activity; some teachers like to post an alphabet and add words with illustrations learned throughout the year, other teachers like to cutout magazines and find words with each beginning sound, teachers in upper grades should write sentences using the words. I like to take care of this at the beginning of the year then I add to it. So we fold a manila paper in small squares and kids write a word with the beginning sound of each letter of the alphabet then draw an illustration for each word.  Then I pick the best ones to display. This activity could take the whole week, so during this time I assess my students individually to start grouping them for Small Groups. 

LABELS:

Labeling your room helps English Language Learners acquire vocabulary, in my case it does the same for Spanish Language Learners. So labels in both languages are very important, in K-2 is important that labels have an illustration, it helps students process a new language. I let my students help me label everything. I give them a label with tape on it, then give them about 5 minutes to go around and stick the label in the right place in the classroom. 

JOBS:

In some classrooms jobs are a privilege, in my classroom jobs are responsibilities. I love to talk about how we are a Learning Community and make sure that students understand that my classroom becomes OUR CLASSROOM once the school year starts, so everybody is expected to help out.  I assign a job to every student  from each desk cluster (4 desks = 1 cluster). Our jobs are: Police Officer, Captain, Passer and Cleaner. Police officers are in charge of monitoring voice levels and keep everybody in their table focused on their work, Captains are the ones that go get materials from the teacher or any location in the room, Passers are the ones who pass papers and materials that the Captain brings to the table, the Cleaner is the one who takes papers to the trash and put away material when needed. Additionally we have 2 Line Leaders and 2 Messengers. My Line Leaders put sanitizer on everyone before lunch, then when transitioning in the hallway 1 goes in the front and one goes in the back, they also watch the line during bathroom and water breaks. My Messengers take stuff to the office or other classrooms. We PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE each job that first week of school.

DAILY 5:

Although some assume that by 2nd grade students are already Daily 5 Pros, I like to go over the I-PICK chart (reading interests) and the 5-Finger-Rule on the first week of school to re-teach them how to pick a right-fit-book. I still model all the components of Daily 5 and all Literacy Stations in the following weeks but on the first week I focus on choosing a good book. There is nothing better than seeing students actually reading during independent reading time right? so it's actually worth helping them choose great books. If you are not familiar with the 5-Finger-Rule it is simply a rule to count how many difficult words they find in a small text (1 or 2 pages for example). If they count 0-2 difficult words in a page they shouldn't pick that book at all, it's too easy; if they count 3-4 difficult words it's okay to pick that book because it's challenging but not too much; 5 or more difficult words mean that they are choosing a very difficult book, they shouldn't pick this book either, it's way too hard.

These are just a few activities that I enjoy to do at the beginning of the year and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. What do you do?