A Look into My Cart

Hi Everyone! I'm so excited to link up with the  Blog Hoppin' ladies to share what I bought during TPT's back to school sale!  I'm so lucky my husband was in a good mood last night because when I laid my total on him he didn't freak out on me.  I'm so excited about all my new products!  

I'm hopeful Haley's First Days in First Grade will help me put together an amazing first week for my incoming firsties! I had originally bought Holly's Superhero unit for camp but fell in love with it so much I will be using it in class during the 2nd or 3rd weeks of school.  I have done bucket filling with my classes in the past but found it a little hard to get off the ground last year.  I am hoping Cheryl's Bucket Labels, banners and notes will make it easier.  My good friend Meghan sent me Pink Cat Studio's Owl Punch Card and I just had to get it.  I'm not sure yet how I will use them but I can't wait!

Last year Meghan and I decide to do science experiments with our classes on Friday's but I found it hard to keep looking for new experiments that were age appropriate yet engaging.  With Meghan moving to 2nd grade I was worried I wouldn't be able to keep it up, because she was totally more science and math than I am.  Thankfully, Kim's Science Blasters! are just what I need to keep myself excited and stressed free for this year's "Sci-Fries".   

I'm pretty sure I own more than enough reading and writing units but then again can you ever!  First off I must say I am so sad that Lyndsey is taking a teaching hiatus and her products are always on point and save me from several D5 jams.  I had to pick up both her Be a Reading Expert and Be a Writing Expert units.  The pamphlets she provides for parents are great and will definitely make an appearance at my Back to School Night.  This will be my 3rd year using the Phonics Dance in my classroom and because Ginny does such a great job anchoring the vowel teams and other hunks and chunks to picture I knew I wanted to pick up Katie's Blends and Diagraphs Packs to do the same.  I am a big believer in Phonological and use a wonderful year long curriculum but was surprised at the end of last year when one of my best readers wasn't able to think of rhyming words during our poetry unit.  I'm sure it hasn't held him back but when I saw Elizabeth's Dust Bunnies Book Companion Pack I was all about it!  I have all the supplies to make dust bunnies ready to go!  Cara's Year Long Work on Writing bundle was my splurge but I am hopeful it will keep me from being at school for several hours on Sunday afternoon looking for new activities to fill my WoW station of Daily 5. I sold it to  my husband as an investment in our family time!  

I love anything having to do with Campbell's labels.  Maybe it's because my daughter's middle name is Campbell or because the coolest, sweetest nicest girl in my grad program was named Campbell and carried a Campbell's Soup tote to class whatever the reason I love anything Campbell.  So of course I HAD to scoop up Hope's Organize My Supplies Labels, now I just need to start thinking of ways to use up some canned food.  Even though I have my own system for organizing my guided reading materials I still had to get Michelle's Teach and Keep Track forms.  The word work chart is AMAZING and sure to be a huge time saver!  

Last night while at barre the idea of my beginning of the year bulletin board came to me and I had to start picking up things to make it happen.  The Lego clipart and papers.  I am going to use one of min-figs from this freebie by Glitter Meets Glue Designs for each of my students.  I plan to title my bulletin board Everything is Awesome Everything is Cool When You're Part of 1A! Since I am using their freebie I felt I had to support their shop and picked up these great papers!  Finally I picked up some superhero clip art to use at camp and God know what else.
Be sure to link up with Blog Hoppin and share what you bought!

Guided Reading Organization Part 1 (The Binder)

I'll start off my by telling you that I am NOT an organized person.  For the most part I know where my things are and their placement makes sense to me but probably not to anyone else.  So I'm guessing if anyone who knows me in real life would read this they'd be laughing their tail off.  It's not that I don't want to be organized, I do, it more that I typically can't find an idea and stick with it. I blame it on my ADHD but who knows.  Last year all my rearranging and trying new things led me to the perfect GR organization method and thought I'd share... I'll start off my by telling you that I am NOT an organized person.  For the most part I know where my things are and their placement makes sense to me but probably not to anyone else.  So I'm guessing if anyone who knows me in real life would read this they'd be laughing their tail off.  It's not that I don't want to be organized, I do, it more that I typically can't find an idea and stick with it. I blame it on my ADHD but who knows.  Last year all my rearranging and trying new things led me to the perfect GR organization method and thought I'd share how I keep myself organized for my favorite part of the school day. Today's topic will be my Guided Reading Binder 

This is my binder from last year. It's seen better days and I can't wait to slip all my resources into a crisp new binder.  I like to keep all my lesson plans and lesson materials in one place. I keep records of all the lessons I've taught my groups and any notes I took during each lesson, guess you could say I'm pretty paranoid.  I found the best way to keep everything together is in a binder. I recommend a 2 inch binder. 

The first thing I have inside is my schedule of when I meet with each group. 

I keep this in a sheet protector because I update it every quarter and like to keep track of prior quarters. 

Next I have my groups laid out. 

Behind this I keep my class reading level chart. 

I update this every quarter as well.  It helps me see where everyone is all at once and form my groups.  

The next section is where I keep my blank running record score sheets and cheat sheet. 

I try to keep at least 15 blank sheets so I always have one available. These are what I use to when I take a running record on one of my students cold reads during our lesson. I use leveled readers for this, I only use the benchmark books for my quarterly benchmark assessments.

The final section(s) in my binder are for my actual plans. 

I have a tab for each group and keep all their lessons behind each tab. 

This is a lesson plan template off Jan Richardson's website and as you can see I wrote all around it. I can't wait to put the lesson plan templates I made this summer to use!  

In the inside pocket of my binder I keep my anecdotal notes labels. 

I have the originals in the back and the actual labels, at least 5 sheets, in the front.

And that's how I keep my Guided Reading lessons together. If you're interested in my running records sheets checkout this freebie in my TPT shop, the lesson plan templates are also free here, and everything else is in my Guided Reading Goodies file.  

I would highly recommend reading The Next Step in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson if you want to use my templates.   My favorite TPT files on guided reading are by Lesson Plan SOS and What the Teacher Wants. 

I'll be back tomorrow to share how I organize my guided reading area!  

Penguin Unit

I have been doing a penguin unit with my firsties for the past few years, but decide to step up my game this time around, with help from all the ideas I saw on Pinterest and TPT.  When the kids returned from Christmas vacation they found our door decorated like this.  I saw something similar on Pinterest, I only changed to say 2012 instead of winter.  The kids loved it!  Then I used Lindsey's Penguin Fareebie to introduce the unit.  The kids filled out their information about what they knew and wanted to know.  Through the month of January we read several penguin non-fiction books and watched The March of the Penguins.  I also read several stories with penguins as characters to the kids and to start our own penguin stories we watched Happy Feet.  This turned out to be a great way to help the kids brainstorm for ideas for the template Lindsey provides in her packet.  We also completed centers that were penguin based during D5 time.  The kids LOVED all the ones I got from Made for 1st Grade on TPT.  With our 4th grade buddies we made glyphs from Jennifer's TPT store.  I used the cute daddy penguin and the bonus glyph to create this hallway display.  We had the penguin buddies walking towards an igloo labeled Holy Redeemer and 3 larger penguins with our names.  Along the way we posted a speech bubble saying you can talk the talk but can you waddle the waddle it take faith, academic and service, which was this years theme to Catholic Schools Week.  They looked SO cute!!! 

As the final part I had the kids make their penguin reports.  I got this template from The Mailbox about 3 years ago and I love it!  I love how cute the penguins look all line up.  For these the kids just have to write one fact per page and then illustrate their fact.  I use this to discuss non-fiction text features.  I think the reason I love this unit son much is because penguins are so cute and it allows my kids to use so many their talents.  This years additions made the unit even more fun and tied in perfectly for the next post I am doing...