Fun School Activities!

I am linking up with Freebielicious again, and this time, it's Fun Friday! Time to talk about all the fun things we do in our classrooms. I went through thousands of my pictures from the past few years of teaching, and grabbed a few that show some of the ways I keep it exciting in my classroom.

 The children love to take gallery walks. Once students have finished a whole group writing or interactive notebook activity, they are allowed to get up and walk around the room, looking at everyone's work.

 Whenever learning can be turned into a game, we will play it! While the students are learning and practicing important academic skills, they are also developing and strengthening important social skills, like patience, sharing, problem solving, and getting along with others.

 Scoot keeps the children moving and learning and completely engaged. In this picture, the children just scooted to the next chair. This past year, we played without chairs, and it was even better.

 Nothing beats good old collaboration! My students LOVE to work in small groups and if we don't do it every day, I'll hear about it! The moment the words, "we're going to work in groups..." come out of my mouth, they're already plotting who they're going to work with. 

Why sit in a chair to work when you can sit on the floor, under a table, or lay out on the carpet? For most activities, I let the children choose where to sit. Within reason, of course. Children love to make their own decisions and where to sit is just one of many they enjoy making on a daily basis. Some still choose to sit in a chair, but many like to work wherever they are most comfortable.

Write the room is a favorite in my classroom, year after year. Once again, it gets the children moving and always keeps them engaged.

So, these are just a few of the ways learning can be lots of fun. Most involve collaboration and movement.

And that's they way I like it!

Who wants to go to school and sit and work alone all day?

Not anyone I know!

Now, head on over to Freebielicious and link up and/or read all the other ways to make learning fun!

Using Seat Sacks Efficiently and a HUGE Seat Sack Giveaway!

This new school year brings with it lots of exciting changes in the way I teach. The use of interactive notebooks has really been a plus and I couldn't be more pleased with how engaged my students are when we all work together to learn a new skill or revisit one already taught. They are not distracted, disinterested, or asking me how long until it's lunchtime! LOL! You can read my 9 helpful hints to successful interactive notebooking here. 

At first, I was a little nervous as to where I was going to keep my student's notebooks. I don't have any built in shelving units in my classroom and it is a challenge to find room for all their textbooks, workbooks, notebooks, etc. 

When the school year began, I was keeping the children's notebooks in this mailbox unit. The children used the unlabeled slot next to their name. It was working out well, except for one thing. There was a lot of time wasted while I called each table to get up, walk to the mailbox, get their notebook, and sit back down. I had to do this for all four tables. And then, we had to repeat it when it was time to put our notebooks away.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could do differently. How could I store my students' notebooks so that we didn't waste quality learning time retrieving them and putting them away? Over and over again!

Then it hit me!

 Seat Sacks!

I cannot begin to tell you how these seat sacks have completely changed my school day. Seat sacks are literally, the answer to my prayers.

My Seat Sacks came from The Original Seat Sack Company.

They have many different colors to choose from. I chose red, yellow, green, and purple, because those are the colors of my tables. See how pretty they look? Everything matches!

My students use their seat sack from the minute they enter our classroom in the morning, right up until they pack up to go home. When they first arrive, they put their take home folder in their seat sack. I used to collect them every morning and then hand them out in the afternoon. I had to find space to hold them all day and then waste time handing them out. Not any more!

My students keep their interactive notebook and their reading workbook in their seat sack, as well. They are incredibly durable and roomy. More books can easily fit inside, but that is all we have in there for now. Take home folder, marble notebook, and reading workbook.

Each seat sack comes with a blank label to write the children's names, which is inserted in a clear vinyl pocket. I decided to make my own name labels on my computer and the children colored them in. When they switch seats during the school year, they will just remove their name and put it in their new seat sack.

When it's time to work in our interactive notebook or reading workbook, all my students have to do is reach behind and grab their book. No more sitting quietly, waiting for each table to go to their mailbox to get their book. And then wait again while the books are put away.

At the end of the day, I no longer have to pass out take home folders. My students quickly and easily grab their folders from their seat sacks to color in their behavior calendar. Then, they empty their mailbox and pack up. This is all done in 5 minutes. 

I kid you not when I tell you that these seat sacks have really helped to eliminate wasted time. My day runs very efficiently. And, as an added bonus, my classroom looks bright and beautiful. The seat sack colors are gorgeous! 

If you would like to try seat sacks, I highly recommend these from The Original Seat Sack Company. They have many different colors and sizes to choose from. If you order the Seat Sack Classroom Pack, it also comes with a few other goodies, like a Read-n-Go Book Bag and a Hand-e-Sack Stick and Store!

I am incredibly pleased to announce that The Original Seat Sack Company is allowing me to give away a Seat Sack Classroom Pack to one of my VERY lucky followers! The winner will receive...

 25 seat sack chair pocket organizers

1 Read-n-Go Book Bag

1 Hand-e-Sack Stick and Store

25 Name Tags

This contest will run for one week. 

Please enter with integrity, using the rafflecopter below.

And the lucky winner is...

Kauni! 

Congratulations to you!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Classroom Reveal 2014-2015

One of my favorite things to do is to look at photos of classrooms. So, I thought I'd share my classroom photos with all of you. I have a small classroom with no built in furniture, so everything in there is out in the open. There's just no where to hide anything! LOL!

I don't have a classroom theme. I never had one in all the years I've been teaching. I just like bright colors and organization.

Here is the view from the door.

Here you see the writer's notebook station on the left and the sight word station on the right.

I always display some transition words for the children to use when they are writing.

My students don't necessarily complete their work at this table, though. They are allowed to go anywhere in the room to work during station time.

This is my phonics station.

You can find the colored blends posters here.

This is my work on writing station.

Hanging up and ready to go are my August/September words for writing and some noun and verb cards from my Fun With Parts of Speech. You can see I have two activities ready to go. Making a list of school words and making a book about school. Both of these can be found here. I'll be hanging up my writing menu soon too!

This is my classroom library.

My character trait posters can be found here.

The reading skills and strategies posters can be found here.

I keep extra supply bins here.

This is my Super Improvers Wall. The left side is for kindergarten and the right side is for first grade. I haven't put up names for kindergarten yet. I decided it was easier to put the children's names up instead of labeling each new star they earn.

This is my focus board. I teach kindergarten and first grade, so that is why you see two sight word labels.

You can find my alphabet posters here.

And I have some of the focus board labels here and here.

This year, I brought all my Journeys files and activities to school, and they now live in this HUGE file cabinet draw.

I have everything I need for each week inside a labeled folder.

 I am nothing if not organized! :)

I hope you enjoyed my classroom reveal. I am very excited to begin the new school year on Monday. And it's my birthday this week! Double the fun!

I'll be back soon to do another AWESOME bin giveaway!

Pocket Chart Station

This week, I added a new station in my classroom for kindergarten and first grade. The Pocket Chart Station! It was a huge hit! And it's really easy to set up and, the best part of all - I don't have to make copies, or collect work to grade! It's a win/win!

This week, my first graders are working on long a. At the pocket chart station, I have some long a word family header cards and lots and lots of word cards for the children to sort.

I am so sorry about the quality of these photos! There was a terrible glare and I couldn't seem to get rid of it. I don't have any pics of the children sorting the cards because I was conducting reading groups at the same time. After the children sorted the cards, they practiced writing the words on white boards. I am not using recording sheets because I want the pocket chart station to be a place where the children work collaboratively to read, sort, match, etc. I also didn't add pictures to the words (except for the compound word pack) for two reasons. First, I want the children to focus on actually reading the words, not matching them to pictures. And, second, I was able to add tons and tons of cards for each phonics skill because I didn't have to worry about finding pictures to match the words. 

The cards you see above come from my new Pocket Chart Activities series. 

This is the long vowels edition.

All the popular long vowel word families are in this pack. Just print, laminate, cut out, and use the cards all year long. I put mine in labeled baggies and I store them in a plastic container.

I also made a contraction edition because contractions are not something you teach once and forget about. I feel that it is important for the children to practice contractions all year long. I love knowing I have an entire collection of (cute) contraction cards to use whenever I need them.

There is also a blends and digraphs edition.

I bought a blends/digraphs pocket chart set at my local teacher store and was so disappointed that not all the blends and digraphs were included. No worries here! I included all digraphs, l-blends, r-blends, and s-blends. And since I didn't include a clip art image of each word, I was able to include tons of words. Students can sort blends and digraphs all year long. 

And, finally, here is the word families edition for kindergarten.

We've been working on sorting short a word families.

The children sorted the cards and then wrote some of them on white boards. This set includes all the word families known to man. Again, I bagged them and store them in a container for quick and easy access. No more hunting for cards. 

Now I have a very comprehensive system for teaching CVC words/word families. You can find most of what I use here. There is a good mix of whole group activities, small group activities, worksheets, games, and more!

And, last, but not least, I made a set of compound word cards for the pocket chart too. This is another skill that needs to be taught all year long. Since there are 111 compound word cards, they can easily be used all year long.

And I'm not done creating pocket chart activities! I have a few more editions up my sleeve. Can you think of any you'd like to see? Leave me a comment with any suggestions you have! Thanks!

My Kindergarten Reading Block

I received a lot of great feedback about how I run my reading block in first grade. Thanks for all the comments and emails! My kindergarten reading block is very similar, so this post won't be as long. Maybe...

Once again, I do not do stations on Mondays. I use this day to introduce all the new skills and our read aloud for the week. We usually complete some activities together, to help the children practice the phonics skill for the week and the new sight words.

We do stations Tuesday through Friday, pretty much the same way as in first grade. While the children are going to stations, I am meeting with my four reading groups.

We work on phonological/phonemic awareness skills, sight words, reading skills, and writing. I find that teaching these skills during small groups is so much more effective. You can really see who gets it and who needs more help. And some groups will move quicker through this instruction and some groups will need more time with one skill over another. You can really differentiate instruction with small groups.

Last week, I introduced the -at word family. Some of my groups practiced -at words using this simple, predictable book.

And then we practiced reading from our leveled reader.

And I try to fit in some kind of guided writing, as well.

While I am meeting with reading groups, my students are going to stations. They use the same station board I showed here, except I replace the Grammar Station card with a Play-doh Station card.

These are my kindergarten stations:

Word Work

Play-doh

Work on Writing

Writer's Notebook

Read to Self

Puzzles and Games

As in first grade, my kindergartners choose the stations they want to go to each day. When they are finished, they move to another station. Some kids visit more stations than others. In between each of my reading groups, I stop everyone for a brief moment, and do a quick check to make sure everyone is doing their personal best. I see if they have any questions, and then I begin my next group.

Here are some pictures of the stations my students worked on last week. You'll notice that each station has more than one activity to complete. They don't complete more than one a day so that they can go back to the same station several times during the week.

Word Work Station

Turkey Rhymes

Beginning Sounds Book

Sentence Puzzle (or here!)

Here are other activities the children do at the Word Work Station:

My Little Books

Sight Word Activities

Play-doh Station

The children practice their sight words or beginning sounds.

Click here for more images.

Work on Writing Station

Write the Room Freebie

I can Draw and Write Words

(The students use the word/picture cards from the above link or from here.)

Thanksgiving Shopping List

Here are other activities the children do at the Work on Writing Station:

Writing Activities

Writer's Notebook

Students follow the same procedure outlined here.

Read to Self

My uncozy library! *sigh*

Puzzles and Games

I have a great mix of games here. The children practice all kinds of language skills, as well as, social skills.

This is the station checklist my kindergartners use. It is almost the same as first grade, except this one has numbers. In case the children can't read the name of the station, they can easily match the numbers since I numbered each station. (Check out the 3 at the Writer's Notebook Station in the picture above!)

This checklist is important, as it reminds them where they've been each day and holds them accountable for visiting all the stations each week, as many times as possible.

And that's how I run my kindergarten reading block. It took a while to get to the point where I could trust my students to work so well independently. It does not happen over night. You really have to instill a strong work ethic and sense of urgency in your students. As well as, give lots and lots of encouragement and empower them to become independent. I really love this routine because it allows my students to move at their own pace. It also allows for lots of differentiation and flexible grouping.

Please feel free to leave your comments and questions below. I promise to get back to you!