Getting Spacey!

As I mentioned in my last post, going with a classroom theme is kind of a rule-breaker for me... but I'm having too much fun! I put on my alien headband that I made and got to work.

See? I told you space was kind of my thing... It's all over my house!

My first projects, if you didn't catch them, were my Voice Levels chart and name plates:

Click to download!

Click to download!

Then I added my new Scrappin Doodles clipart to my classroom rules, too. 

Click to download!

Now for some new ideas. I found an excellent post about Super Improver Walls here, and it finally clicked! The different names and colors for each level overwhelmed me at first, but not when they're spacey!

Click to download! 

Each student starts off on the first level and must earn 10 points to move to the next level. I will use foil stars to keep track of the points on colored card stock stars, like Mrs. Shipley advised in her video tutorial. Students earn points by showing improvement in behavior AND academics. Their improvement goals will become very differentiated and meaningful as they redefine what "growth" means for them. Genius!

When the student collects 10 stickers on their colored star they get to take it home and travel to the next planet, or level. I'm so tickled that my levels, including the sun and our moon, makes for an even 10!

The neatest part about the Super Improver Wall (gotta get on board with the acronyms... The SIW) is the photo op at certain levels, denoted on my version with a picture of a satellite.

On this level I take a picture of the student with some friends and put it under their star. The picture is posted FACE DOWN. The student must advance off of Earth in order to take the picture home.

I think my SIW will be a tremendous metaphor for my kiddos as they track their personal growth. Mrs. Amanda even suggested that if you run out of levels, add more! There are so many possibilities... comets, far-away planets, galaxies, nebulae...

The Orion Nebula has always been my favorite to look at.

My last new idea has to do with my tables. I have trapezoid tables this year, and I'll probably put them together so I have groups of 6 students at a "table".

I want to have an icon at each spot to use when giving directions, getting supplies, and dismissing from tables, even. If I need someone to get paper for their table I could call out an icon and away they go.

I would run the icons off on colored paper (they'll be colored inside, of course, not white). I really hope this system works because I want to give students many opportunities to be helpful and "in charge" of something instead of relying on one or two kids a week as a classroom job. 

I also ran to the toy store yesterday and got a space puzzle for my 100 Days of School project:

And last, but not least, is a new friend. I've been keeping him in the back of my head for a month now and today I finally got him. 

Meet NomNom. :)

Breaking Rules!

I took all summer to get crafty... and that's far too late! I'm back in a *new* classroom this week and with the new space I'm breaking some old rules in this Monday Made It.

I scored big at some garage sales two Saturdays ago and found a rocking chair for $10, among other things.

I never thought I would be a rocking-chair-gal! I always thought they took up too much room and made me look like I was on a throne. When I saw this one, however, I thought I would shed this rule, even though I'm in a tiny portable. Besides, the kiddos will think it is SO cool to sit in it for sharing or whatnot, right? 

I think it's cool with a new purple paint job and... wait for it... GLITTER!!! Which is another rule-breaker... never was into the stuff until now. I know, I know... I'm weird.

Sealed on with spray gloss, of course! There will be no glitter on my booty, I hope!

My next craft breaks yet another rule... classroom themes. I cheered out loud during a training when Debbie Diller advised to stay away from cluttered themes in favor of choosing one or two colors for classroom decor. I've always thought themes were silly and prided myself on the matchy-matchy color scheme I used instead.

Well, my new campus is adopting a school-wide theme of "Reading Takes You Places." There's tons of options for hallway bulletin boards and fun pet-names for things relating to this theme. I already knew I was going to recreate this board from my very first year...

Maybe I'll say something like, "Ms. Bueno's Class is going places!" instead

And I got to thinking... I LOVE space! It's always been a motif in my life so why not *finally* in my classroom? So I ran out... clicked over?... and got some clipart from Scrappin' Doodles and started on plugging my new theme in...

My Voice Levels Chart:

Click to download!

Student name plates:

Click to download!

And more to come!

I also have been mulling over what I would use this year as a visual for the kiddos when I am busy with a small group or testing. I'm learning that themes can make some decisions easier!

Alien headband! 

I can't help putting it on throughout the day and looking at myself in the mirror. I can already hear the kiddos saying, "my teacher is an ALIEN!!!"

Beg, Borrow... and... steal?

You know how it goes... creative teachers do an awful lot of creating, but their fair share of borrowing ideas, too. I hope my attempt at some good ideas are looked on as compliments, not stealing!

I've been following Herding Kats in Kindergarten for a while and love seeing her "Where the Wild Things Are" theme pop up in her Monday Made Its. She had a great idea of using place mats on student tables instead of taping down name plates. Genius! I borrowed her idea and made my own.

Click to download!

Another idea came from pinterest, as all borrowed ideas come nowadays, but I'm struggling to find the pin! The blogger explained that she's a little tired of the colored clip charts that keep track of student behavior. Her do-gooders knew they were doing better than the others and the ones who had to sit out never could remember what it was they did wrong. Her idea for this year was to place a rule card from Whole Brain Teaching by the students name so that both she and the student would remember what needs to be worked on. She discussed removing the clip chart altogether, but I may combine the two some how. 

At any rate, I borrowed her idea of making small rule cards by shrinking my rules posters down. 

Click to download!

I'm kicking myself that I didn't pin that idea to any of my boards! Seriously, I've looked around for about an hour for it. 

This last idea has been tossed around by just about everybody. I made it last year and I'm STILL getting requests from Scribd to share it so I thought I'd just make it a Goggle Doc (why didn't I do that in the first place?) Click to download!

Can you tell I love me some Scrappin' Doodles? And I'm lovin' all the good ideas!

Is it OK for me to feel this way?

Goodness... It's hard enough for me to keep up with my kiddos, lesson planning, creating and giving unit assessments, worrying about their performance on computer-based assessments, parent conferences, and a whole list of NON-NEGOTIABLES outlined by my principals (wish I could gripe about this more)... so I apologize if blogging is last on my list!

I'm feeling worried. It's only November and I have to admit I am feeling BURNT OUT. I feel like I've got so many things to worry about (remember those "non-negotiables"?) that I'm not really good at any one of them. It's not hard to see why so many young teachers leave the profession after just a few years. It's not the kiddos or the curriculum... it's all of the extra STUFF demanded of me.

I'm sure you could tell me this is "normal" and to hang in there... so please do! I don't know what else I'd so with myself other than teach... but I'm not so sure I'm a good teacher sometimes.


Now that that's out of my system!

I am grateful that my students and I are really connecting this year. I enjoy being with them more than most of the adults at my school! I have some great activities planned next week around a Thanksgiving theme that I know they will love.

Here's what I plan to do for graphing. We've made several class graphs as a whole group... now it's time for us to create and interpret our own!

We'll start with a cut-and-paste graph of Thanksgiving foods.

Then we'll taste cranberry and apple juice and graph our class data!

Then I'll make sweet potato fries and mashed potatoes the night before so we can graph our favorites the next day!

*update* I fixed the "classed" typo... Thanks, Mrs. I for catching it!

Annnnd I'm TOTALLY making mashed potatoes in a crock pot at school Wednesday... it's so much more fun to cook WITH them! :)

My kiddos are sure to love these activities! Here's to one more week then a well-timed break from it all. 

Yakety-yak...

Guess what came in the mail today! My Yacker Tracker Deluxe!

I am so tickled that it came with smiley stickers. It seems to work well, but I can't make as much noise as the kiddos can. We'll see how it goes next week.

This week we did model different voice levels and were able to remind each other of what voice to use for each activity. After I used far too loud of a voice one little boy said, "Ms. Bueno, you're using an outside voice, please use your teacher voice." Needless to say this chart made a difference! Click on the image to grab yours.

The cute clipart comes from Scrappin' Doodles!

Musical Monday: Jivin' Gestures!

I did it! After one workshop or another (I forget!!) I wanted so badly to make my favorite classroom songs into movies. So I finally did! Took the better part of my day, but I just finished it! I needed this song to have visuals to remind us of the gestures I want to use.

Here's the Powerpoint I made, too. Just click through the slides as you sing along! I'm going to make posters of the letters as I introduce them. 

*update*
Ah! No sooner than I make this post do I find HarryKindergarten's version! AND AND ANNNND he uses SFA's Fast Track Phonics like our campus, too! Not as fun for gestures, but at least it's consistent with my mini-lessons!

...trying not to FREAK OUT!

Oh geeze... school starts Monday and I have so much left to do! I met my 18 kiddos yesterday and can't wait to see how they grow... but I wish I had another week. WHERE did my work days go?!

Right now my boyfriend is fixing me up some dinner while I take a moment to share what I've been up to! Keep scrolling... these are good'uns! The cute clipart is from Scrappin' Doodles!

Nameplates!

Rules Posters!

Can't forget this one!

Take Home Folder Labels!

A handmade poster for my Denim Calendar set!

And then I updated my Schedule Cards so you can download them faster (I hope)! 

Whew! :)

Scrapdoodlin' away!

Ok... I made that up.

But I'm so excited I finally found Scrappin Doodles! I have KinderTastic and her fabulous Daily 5 posters to thank...

All laminated and ready to go!

...that and being up FAR too late last night thinking of my ever-growing TO DO list. So somehow I found the Stick Kids collection and went shopping! I bought 6 collections for $20... I'd say that's a steal compared to other cliparts.

THEN I made these...

Schedule Cards!!! I'm just beaming with pride over here. I can't wait to use them! As you can see I incorporated KinderTastic's posters on my Daily 5 card!

*Update* Click here for the *arrival* cards, here for the blank enrichment cards, and here for the rest!

I left the enrichment/specials/whathaveyou cards blank because I plan putting those teachers' pictures and names on them. I also experimented with including some of the Conscious Discipline and Capturing Kids Hearts strategies in my schedule like the morning greeting, I Love You Ritual, and launch. The font I used is called Thick Chocolate if you want to give it a try.

Yay! I feel like a real blogger now! Let me know what you think!

What a find!

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa... Just like A Place Called Kindergarten I am blown away by the freebies on this blog!

You simply MUST check out KinderTastic's awesomeness!

She has the assessment sheet of my dreams (literally, I have been thinking about it all summer and viola! she made one!), sight word journals, Daily 5 posters, and the cutest alphabet flashcards and charts!

Need Book Labels?

Time to share the love! I have always wanted a place to share freebies, and here's my first one! Now lets see if can do this right...





Ok, I did it! Now here's an explanation, because I think this deserves one:

I so enjoy getting ideas and materials from other teachers but one of my disappointments is that I can't fiddle with the document because they're saved in pdf.

Some of these labels won't work for you at all, and that's as it should be! My book collection is about 90% school books and only 10% my own so I'm kinda stuck with what I have for now. I also wanted to make sure the text was readable for the young child and the pictures communicated meaning, too. I'm pretty picky! If you need different labels because you have a completely different classroom library or like using a different font then you will be able to fiddle with this freebie!

When you download this file it's a Power Point and then you can change it however you want. There are some misplaced pictures in the viewer but I downloaded it myself and it came out OK. Please let me know if it does weird things so I can fix it.

I hope you like these! They're nothing fancy but maybe it will make your back-to-school setup a little easier.