April Morning Work

Hey, ya’ll! Computer problems…bad for me! Good for you! Living in the boonies has its advantages. Hit or miss internet connection is NOT one of them! I’m continuing to have trouble accessing TPT to upload April Morning Work…sooooo, I decided to share it with you here, BUT for a limited time! Please click the preview picture to download the file. If it is something you enjoy using, consider leaving a little love or LIKING my FB page to keep the updates coming! Pin away! =)

Thanks, all…ya’ll are the best and I appreciate every view, click, and follower. Blogging is a wonderful, creative release and connecting with all of you makes it all worth while.

Enjoy the file. It will be listed on the blog as a FREEBIE for exactly 24 hours. {Expired 04/08/14} Thank you for the sweet comments, downloads and shares! It's finally uploaded to TPT! If you missed the FREEBIE, please click the pic below to check out this item in my TPT shop!

Thanks, again!


Skills in this set include:

• Phonics
• Making Text Connections
• Butterfly Life Cycle
• Writing in Math
• Creative Writing
• Addition and Subtraction
• Comparing Past and Present {Technology}
• Wants and Needs
• Making Economic Decisions
• Easter
• Text Features
• Insects

Thanks, again!

Five for Friday~Happy New Year!

Hi, Friends! Happy New Year! Have you taken some time to rest? Actually enjoyed the time off?  As I wake to enjoy this final Friday of vacation, I’m linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for the very first Five for Friday of the year…


I’ve actually forced myself to rest throughout this break, so this’ll be a great way to kick start my teacher brain and begin to prepare for the new semester. I don’t know what it is about the spring semester of 1st grade, but I absolutely LOVE it! I suppose it may have a little to do with how much the kiddos have matured over the first semester. It’s truly an amazing time of reflection AND planning to finish the year as strong as possible.

Anywho…..let’s get on with it, shall we! {Sigh……smile.} Alrighty, well….we’ve been out of school for two weeks, soooo I pulled a few random moments of awesomeness to share with you from before the break.



If you’ve followed my little blog for even a minute, you know how much we love to doodle in Room 159. We use anchor charts a lot, but there’s not always room to create and keep them all, so some we put together on our handy dandy whiteboard. We used this super sneaky guy to introduce long vowel patterns.



This is another example of our ‘smart art’. This little cutie glued his flap book down backwards, BUT his examples of cause and effect are all matched correctly….looks like a winner to me! Causes are on the outside….effects, glued underneath on the inside.



Smart art + kiddo discussions in small groups = comprehension made fun! (Please forgive the naughty camera strap that made it into that photo!)



The ONE thing that I did work on over the break is our morning work. Every morning, my kiddos walk into a calm atmosphere of low lights, soft music, and instructions prepared on the whiteboard. The structure of our routine is consistent, but the tasks change each morning. I like finding little sneaky ways to get them reading all day long….without them knowing it! After all, we are learning to read for a purpose, right?

Unpack. Put your things away. Read a good fit book. Follow the directions on the board. When the long hand on the clock touches the 11, everyone should be at their desks completing the task of the day. That’s our morning routine. Every.Single.Day. Students have a journal in their book box that is just for morning work…and if they should need extra time to complete it, they know they can continue working on it the next morning. Quick…spiral review and no time wasted. Learning begins the minute we walk in the door.



This is an example of a reflection being completed. I love our morning work routine because students are also learning responsibility. They must read the directions, manage their time, and organize their journal. The tasks increase in difficulty as we move through the year. Most are reflections on “good fit” books, others….like this one are math applications. Cross curricular connections are made through writing about science and social studies topics too. And the best {teacher} part? I don’t have to make one single copy for morning work! Nada. Zilch. Zero….I come in, cue the computer and we’re off on our journey for the day! *LOVE*!!!


Interested in giving it a try? Click any of the pictures below to grab a sample.  These would also be great to print and use as task cards for early finishers! Now, that January’s set is all wrapped up, I’m looking ahead to February. Any suggestions for skills? Leave a comment below…

Grades and lesson plans are calling! Laters Gators! =)

Five for Saturday? ~B2S2013

Hi there! If you’re one of my FB fans, you know I posted a quick…brb…yesterday after school. WEllllllll, let’s just say that little nap turned into an all night affair! There is absolutely NO tired like teacher ‘Back to School’ tired! After gulping down the normal Friday night pizza, this teacher was too pooped to party and if I had tried to type a post, I promise you, you wouldn’t have been able to read it!


Soooo, here I am on this lovely Saturday afternoon ready to share about our very first week of school! We had a blast. I am totally and I mean to.ta.lly smitten with my new batch of firsties. They’re all just adorable and jumped right in, ready to get started….well, after they got used to having to be up so early again. That first day was a bit of a wake up call for all of us, lol! Hellllo!



We ended day one with a glass of jitter juice that helped us to be just a little more perky on Tuesday. The classroom has already started to change just a bit to accommodate the kiddos. You know all of those great plans you make, that get tweaked just a bit when the kids come in and add their perspective? Well, our daily schedule was the first thing to change!


It started out looking like the image on the left (facing out, of course), BUT the kids wanted a way to be able to tell what was going to happen next or just to know how close we were to going home! =) Sooooo, as we completed a portion of the schedule, we decided to flip it around to show how much work we’d already done. They love it and you better bet they won’t let me forget it….after all, this is a procedure they put in place!

Now, our schedule is all hashed out and looks like the image on the right….ready for us to tackle again on Tuesday. This is my first year teaching Reading first thing in the morning, but I do believe I like it! The day goes by pretty darn quickly when you’re having fun!



We also practiced, and practiced and practiced…..AND practiced building our stamina for Read to Self! They did an AMAZING job. It took us a couple of tries to knock out those first 3 minutes, but by the end of the week, we had doubled it to 6 minutes and 40 seconds! Whoop whoop! If you haven’t seen our very first anchor chart of the year, you can check it out HERE! By Friday, my kiddos were singing the expectations for Read to Self and very pleased with how well they had done building those muscles for reading!



We also successfully implemented our morning routine. We start with working by lamp light. Most of the overhead lights are dimmed and soft music is playing to create a calm atmosphere. This helps to minimize the distraction of class friends who are arriving tardy to the party.

Directions for morning work are projected onto the whiteboard. They begin very simply (see above) in order to build routine and confidence. For the first two days of morning work, paper was placed on table groups, but beginning next week, they’ll be using their journals in their book boxes to reflect on reading. The directions will remain simple for the first couple of weeks or so, but after we’ve begun to firmly grasp them, the instructions will go a little deeper into reading skills.

The dots indicate Go and Stop….draw on the left, write on the right. Green and Pink….why pink? That’s easy! I was all out of Red! Ha!!!



Though our little small group table won’t see much action until we finish learning the expectations for Daily 5, its all set up and ready to go with vowels to help our words stick together like glue! I’ve just added these little guys as the fan freebie over at the FB page {I think}…LIKE and grab them if you could use them too! If you try to download them and the Fans tab doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll come back and add the link here.

Thanks for stopping by to see what our first week was like! We had a lot of fun and did so much more that I’ll be sharing a little later! Enjoy your long weekend! It’s going to be an exceptional year!