Teaching First Grade Tips!

Hi friends, it's SEPTEMBER! School is back in session!

I saw an awesome post from Mary at Sharing Kindergarten about Kindergarten tips and I thought {and asked her permission} I could use it to start a "First Grade Teacher Tips" blog. So here are my 3 tips for a successful first grade classroom!

First graders have the attention span of a gnat {pretty sure I do too...}. This means you only have about 6 minutes to get your point across and MOVE ON. Thankfully, I'm a bit ADD myself, so if things are taking too long, I get bored {sometimes I have to entertain myself}. The rule of thumb is, kids have the attention in minutes as their age {example, if a student is 5 years old, he/she has a 5 minute attention span}. 

This does not mean you have to change subjects EVERY 6 minutes. BUT you as the teacher should not be talking solo for over that amount of time. Introduce concepts in small, understandable chunks. Once you've hit your time limit, get some practice in with activities or small groups {I know this doesn't work for EVERY lesson, sometimes you have to plow through ;)}.

I learned from the great Rick Morris {the king of classroom management}, one option is to set a timer, when it goes off, switch your activity. 

Small groups are wonderful. Their attention span tends to expand when they are working independently on what THEY want {or at least what they THINK they want to be doing, we teachers are great at making kids think they are choosing ;)}.

Catherine from The Brown Bag Teacher is the queen of small group Daily 5. You should most definitely check her posts out!

Set high-measurable expectations. Your students WILL meet them! If you only expect them to write one sentence, that's all they will write. How should they act in the classroom, how should they respond when they are upset, what does finished work look like, what does my teacher expect me to do during this time? Push your students, they need you to expect much from them! We all know you believe in your students! Expect much of them, and they will exceed your expectations.

{disclaimer: I know there are some outliers in our first grade classrooms, but some of them will not test your boundaries if you set your expectations early and strong}

This is likely a no-brainer, but entertain, entertain, ENTERTAIN. I am the silliest of silly teachers. Not all first grade teachers are and that is perfectly fine! For me though, sometimes I just have to sing a song, talk in an accent, or dance-because some things I teach are BORING and I just can't make them exciting. Thankfully Teachers Pay Teachers and Teacher Bloggers have made it a little easier to think of those crazy entertaining ideas. Ya'll, we are competing with cartoons, iPhones, etc! Step up your game ;)

Here are a couple examples of making everything engaging for FREE {and it doesn't take much effort either}:

{this is a great pinning image ;)}

Do you have some simple {& easy to implement} tips for teaching first grade? Leave them in the comments :)

Happy first days of school!

Back to School Classroom Makeover DIY on a Budget

Let's face it, as teachers we LOVE to craft, organize, and make our rooms so stinkin' cute for the upcoming school year! We think about our plans all summer, but after all of that dreaming, we stop and realize that it can cost a TON of money to change a theme/decor EVERY year! Well, good thing you stopped by because I'm here to help you save money in your classroom while giving it a total makeover! :)

I don't know about you but I LOVE having everything match. This is such an easy way to get more decor to go with your classroom theme! All I did was take out the drawers and spray paint the plastic outer part! Such an easy way to add your classroom colors in without having to buy anything new (just the paint!;) )

Painting baskets has changed my life!! I use baskets for our classroom library, turning in papers, and for each table "cluster". It's always so hard to find the colors you want! You can find these baskets at the dollar store or even in the Target dollar section! Just spray paint them like you did to the drawers and voila! 

Need I say more? I use these for EVERYTHING! 

My favorite is painting tin cans to match my table colors for the "community markers" and "community colored pencils". The kiddos keep their own crayons in their pencil boxes. 

**Not pictured** I also paint the bigger ones (top picture) to match the table colors and use those for community markers. Whenever we need markers, the kiddos grab their "color". This makes them accountable for their own markers and know that I will know if they don't keep them organized (with the caps ON! ;) ).

I found this tutorial from Briana over at Sun, Sand, and Second Grade! It's super easy and cheap and looks so stinkin cute! Check out her blog to get your tutorial! (Her picture is also WAY cuter!!)

Briana's is ROCKING! I can't wait to get back into my classroom and add some cute ribbon like she did! :)

This is another thing that has helped me stay SO organized and they are SO cheap! You can get a pack of 5 for 1.99!!

This idea came from another awesome blogger. She used PVC pipes to make small pocketchart stands! It's perfect for my small groups! I didn't get a chance to take a picture of how mine turned out but you can check out Marvelous Multiagers, who did a fantastic job of showing how to make these!!

Thanks for checking out this post and please don't hesitate to ask any questions that you may have! 

The TpT Back to School Freebies eBook is Here!

Hi, Teaching Friends!

It's Linda from Primary Inspiration, here to tell you about some back to school tips and freebies you'll love!

Are you already back at school? Or are you busy, busy, busy in a frenzy of printing, laminating, and more? Either way, everybody could use a little help, some extra inspiration, some fresh tips for new and unique ways to "get the job done"!

That's where the TpT Back to School eBooks come in! Each grade level volume is filled with pages from TpT teacher/authors. Each page has a tip for your classroom and a link to a freebie, plus links to other classroom resources. It's our way to make your transition back into school just a bit easier and also to say thanks for your support of our TpT stores!


Here's the book for first and second grade.

And here's a peek at a few of the 50 pages in this book ...

... and here's my page.

Sorry, but the links in the two images above aren't clickable - you'll have to download to get "the real thing"! :)

You do not want to miss this one, so head here to download it and enjoy! When you get to the page at TpT, you'll find links to all of the books  - please tell your teaching friends at other grade levels!

Best wishes for a happy and successful school year!

Thinking about Back-to-School

Hi!  Lesley from Practice Makes Perfect here.  One thing I think about when planning back-to-school activities is quickly getting children into the routines of the day.  One of my morning activities is to have the children do a little proofreading practice.  In this post, I will outline how I move my firsties from me guiding them through the completion of the activity to them doing it independently in the morning.

First, I want to share with you the story behind my resource, the why I made it and how I use it story.  In our reading series, there is a section called "Daily Proofreading Practice," where you put a few sentences on the board and the children fix the mistakes in them.  I was using the ones suggested in the teacher's manual, but they didn't make sense.  There would be two totally unrelated sentences, like these,

  Dad sate on the mat.  We like tew nap.

Well, that's nice, but what does dad sitting on the mat have to do with us napping?  So I started making up my own to put on the board.  Then I thought, hey, I can squeeze in some grammar practice as well with these.  So I started writing sentences with no capitals and no end marks.  Now, I had something that looks like this,

     

        the fat cat sat  the fat cat sat on the mat

With the advent of flippable and interactive notebooks, I designed a way to use these daily proofreading practices as part of my morning work time that would last for one week.  

After the first few weeks of doing them with the whole group of first graders, the children were easily able to transition into assembling the flippables on Monday, and then completing the work themselves in the morning. We check them together Monday - Thursday, and the kids make their own corrections to their work. I believe they learn more correcting their own work than if I correct them.  On Friday, I collect the booklets and check to see if they are applying the skills we practice.

I loosely follow the scope and sequence of skills laid out in our reading series.  These are designed as a progressive series, so each month, I put more errors in the proofreading for the children to find and correct.

Here's a sample of what the kids were correcting in March.

And this is a sample of the last page we did in early June.

By the last few months of school, the kids are able to correct mistakes in verb tenses, subject and verb agreement mistakes, i.e. June is instead of June are, as well as spelling errors. 

The design of the flippable allows them to easily refer back to the original sentence.  This is much better for some of my students who really have a hard time copying off the board.

So there you have it, the story behind my Daily Grammar and Spelling Practice:  Grammar Goofs and Spelling Spoofs.

My August Grammar Goofs and Spelling Spoofs is now free for you to try out this great resource.  The subsequent months are available for only $2.00!

click the picture above to download your free August Grammar Goofs and Spelling Spoofs.

Have a great back-to-school experience and get those kiddos into their daily routines quickly

Show-n-Tell Saturday: First Week in First!

Hi first grade friends!

Jen here from Sparkling in Second :)

The school year is coming up quickly! I wanted to share with you what we did in my classroom last year, so have a read:

It was the most successful first week I've ever had. Not because I over planned and had 1,000 things ready to do and only did 3 of them. Not because we sang so many songs, danced so many dances, and  GoNoOdled our hearts out. Not because I gave so many praise compliments that I no longer have a voice. No. Although I consider all of those things as successes. But here's the real success:

NO ONE PEED IN THEIR PANTS OR CRIED THE ENTIRE FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL!

now that is success

Can I get an amen!?

{yes I had one student who decided to shout out every 5-minutes the last part of Friday, "IS IT TIME TO GO HOME YET? LIKE WHEN DO I WALK TO SEE MY MOM?? I HAVE TO PICK UP MY SISTER FROM KINDER!"--okay mister, calm yourself down, just because you're in first grade doesn't mean you are responsible for another life.}

Well, I sure was jittery to be at a brand new school, in a brand new district, in a brand new grade. This read was SO perfect! If you don't have this, get it now!

We did a little mapping of our feelings for the first day of school. It looks like some of us were pretty scared... {NOT me...}

We also had a nice discussion about recess rules from The Recess Queen {along with our modified Whole Brain Teaching Rules for the classroom}. The red is what Mean Jean did before she met Katie Sue, the green is how Mean Jean changed after she met Katie Sue. 

We took some first day pictures. This was actually my first year doing the frame! Yes, I'm WAY behind the times. I know, I know, people have come up with bigger and better.

Side note: I LOVE NAUTICAL! Check out my classroom reveal! I think it's my best classroom yet!

  

I took this awesome idea from A Brown Bag Teacher. RACE TO 120! {She has some great posts on working with the 120's chart: HERE, HERE, & HERE} One of our CCSS is to be able to count to 120. So we started right away! I used this little sheet to test my kiddos and see how far they could get. I spy this little guy writing a pattern first ;) We've been practicing this almost daily since & they actually like it! 

{We also did a RACE TO Z, not picture, same deal but with the alphabet}

You can grab my Race to 120 & Race to Z freebie templates here!

Or click the pictures.

I took this snazzy idea from Reagan Tunstall over at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits. We went over what our morning routine looks like and we practice each morning, with this flow map reminding us. {Since then, I promise I have fixed the fact that there is no arrow from 3 to 4 & there is no #4....}. 

Oh & our morning work is an amazing daily powerpoint from Teacher's Clubhouse. I had it in 2nd and I knew I had to have it in 1st!

We started right off the bat with our "Eye" Spy Jar for whole-class incentives, inspired by Katie Knight from Teacher to the Core. You can check out her post on that here or my post on it here {same idea, different ways}.

Love love love these Listen Up Activities from the ladies at Fluttering through First. I could tell right away who my good listeners were and also who were my ELs. It was a fun way to start the students listening correctly the first time.

We had an...interesting time....putting together our All About Me Flip Books. First time cutting and pasting a booklet together and it was in the first week of school? I think I'm crazy. But some survived, like this one picture :) I hung them all up on our writing wall as our first writing assignment! The Melonheadz clipart really does the trick doesn't it? *swoon*

I've been dying to do this for a year now. I first saw it from Amy Lemons from Step into Second Grade. The student-made alphabet! We had such a fun time drawing pictures and coming up with words for each letter. Now they are hung all around my room and the kids are so happy to see their work. If you like my Striped Alphabet Template you can grab it here {I also have a matching smaller set for word walls}.
{Note to self: have students write the words in marker}

Once we settled into class a little more, we were assigned our numbers. I loved this idea that I saw on instagram & cannot remember what brilliant teacher thought of it! I cut out little jerseys and had the kids decorate their number to help them remember it!

I got a sweet little present over the first week! {Thank goodness too because the heat MELTED almost all of my student crayons...yes it's been hot}. Read more about how you can get some free goodies to start your year off right HERE.

Holy moly we had a birthday on the first day of school! All I do is give them this supply bin of birthday fun they can use throughout the day. At the end of the day, they can keep the sparkly pencils & new box of crayons. Then we take a few minutes at the end of the day to read the birthday boy/girl's favorite picture book! Visit my inspiration for my birthday procedures from A Brown Bag Teacher. I love it, so simple, easy, and sweet!

At the end of this crazy long day, I prepped my "Welcome to First Grade" post cards and sent those off to my new babies. You can snag these cute post cards here. 

Anytime's a good time for a little note :)

And I just wanted to #keepitreal here with this picture. Not every day is perfect. Sometimes we cut our hair off...

I hope this gives you a little inspiration as school approaches!