So, now that I've started the blog up, one thing to note is that my teaching partner and I are HUGE Disney fans.  This summer we read through the Daily 5 and CAFE books to refresh our literacy.  One thing that stood out to both of us when reading those books is instilling a "sense of urgency" with the students.  Meaning, students need to know that we have a finite amount of time to prepare them for 2nd grade.  Since the first day of school, we have been counting down from 180 days of school--not to count down to summer, but to remind the students that we only have "x" number of days left to learn all of our first grade stuff.

We went to Disney World at the end of October.  I saw the antenna toppers at one of the gift shops and thought they would make great pointers for the classroom.  I popped them onto a wooden dowel and voila...fun shared reading pointer! 

"I'm thankful for..." pilgrim writing activity we did this week.   Thanks to Pinterest for the idea!
We had them up for our big Harvest Feast with families today.  The students had very meaningful things to write about!  

This week in math, the students made turkeys using their hands.  It's now a reminder on how to count by 5s.

Last week we learned about portions and what a healthy plate should look like.
We used choosemyplate.gov for a visual to show that we should have half our plate covered with fruits and veggies.
Students created their own "balanced plate" to show what they learned and what foods they would pick.

We are taking a brief break from our usual writing curriculum to do some more creative writing activities. With our nutrition unit underway, we read a cute book called, "Yum! Yuck!" about a little "Grizzly" baby who wants something else on his pizza. Momma Grizzly tries to figure it out, but all baby says is "That's what I want, that's what I want, that's what I want up there!", pointing to the shelf. (Text to self connection here...I SO relate to the mom's frustration, having 2 toddlers at home!) After reading the fun book, we brainstormed all the words we could think of about pizza. Students wrote pizza poems and published them onto their own slice of pizza.

I LOVE this book! It's one of those books that I wish I had written. Ed, Ned and Ted are dust bunnies that like to rhyme words. Then, there's Bob. Bob doesn't rhyme. (Bob is actually warning them about impending doom from a broom and eventually a vacuum cleaner.) I read this book before our Friday "chunk" chart activity to get the class thinking about rhyming words and word families. We read it twice and the kiddos begged to read it again! Every week when we're generating all the words we can think of from a word family we have been focusing on, we inevitably have a few kiddos that change the last consonant or vowel sound to change the chunk. I love this book because the kids can identify when Bob doesn't rhyme. Definitely going to read this book over and over!

So, here we go again!

I have read and followed many talented teachers' blogs lately, getting ideas and inspiration to keep me going in the classroom. 4 kids at home, 15 in the classroom, makes one a very busy teacher! I am so thankful for my job-share to help me balance life and just as important, an incredible teaching partner and friend. Since getting connected with Pinterest, it's time we start giving back and sharing some of the fun things we do in our classroom. I have to admit that this year has been heavy on new curricula from the district...some things good, some things...well, we have yet to publish a verdict on some things. With years of creativity being replaced by formal curricula, this blog can be my motivation to keep the fun in first grade and be ok with skipping a formal, published lesson (handed to us by people who work in offices, not classrooms) every now and then.
Shhh...just don't tell them ;-)

If You Want to Be a Badger...

I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I set up my first classroom as a child in my basement. My toughest students, my younger brother and sister. My top students, my big stuffed St. Bernard and white teddy bear. They always cooperated and never talked back.

As it came time to choose a college, I knew I wanted to be a Badger. A huge fan of Badger sports in tandem with my love of music, I knew I wanted to be in the UW Band. Music was my first interest, and originally intended on Music Education, aspiring to be a choral director at the high school level. After some doors opening and some closing, it became very clear to me that kindergarteners were a better fit with my personality than high schoolers. I also realized that I could very easily use my passion for music in the early elementary grades. There was something about the kindergarten grade that had me hooked: the excitement the students have for learning, the drastic growth and development in literacy and math and teaching the foundations for concepts that students will use for the rest of their lives led me to a degree in Early Childhood through 3rd Grade certification.


Despite earning a degree at one of the top rated Schools of Education and student teaching abroad in an inner city school in London, they did not prepare me for the real world of teaching. I learned more about myself as a teacher and teaching practices in the first couple years at Thoreau than I did my years at the UW. 12 years later, I am still learning, changing and modifying my teaching practices and philosophies to meet the needs of a diverse group of students.

At first, just keeping up with the changing curriculums and new literacy ideas kept me busy (I think Julie and I have at least 5 different math curriculums in our cabinet that we've used over the years!). Now, adding technology as a supplement to our curricula is another aspect of teaching that I need to try to get a grasp on. I feel fairly competent with technology in my personal life--skyping my nephews in D.C., uploading pictures and chatting with friends on Facebook, even recording my re-written version of Smokey Robinson's I Second That Emotion for our Balance and Motion unit and burning it to a CD so Julie can sing it with the class on my days off--but, when it comes to adding technology to my curricula, I feel like I'm at a complete loss at where to begin. Hopefully, this class will help me figure out how I can take what I already know and give me ideas on how to use them with my K/1 Badgers.