Planning It All Out

This is one of my favorite things to do during the summer! Once the school year starts, things just seem to get so busy and I really enjoy when I have relaxed time to reflect on and plan out my school year. 

I thought I would share how I pace out my curriculum during the year and also what my daily schedule looks like.  

I integrate my science and social studies concepts into my literacy and math units to tie everything together thematically.

You also may notice that in my daily schedule I do not have math and/or literacy stations incorporated. We have a lot of specials at my campus and therefore barely have time to make all the classroom lessons fit! Therefore, I do stations once every 2 weeks during either my ELA or Math block (depends on the week).

Happy Planning!

Stations In The Primary Classroom

Stations, whether Literacy Stations, Math Stations, or STEM Stations are something that I have seen ALL over the blogging universe and it seems like something EVERYONE is doing.  When I first discovered the blogging world I was so inspired by the fun ideas and have been trying to incorporate literacy stations and math stations into my daily routine ever since!

Well, let me tell you...I have been trying for the last 2 years and it seemed like I could never completely find my grove with all these stations.  One of the biggest challenges I had was TIME! My school is so blessed to have many many different pull out times (such as spanish, computer lab, etc) that I was never really finding a good time for BOTH math and literacy stations.  

SO here is how I made time... COMBINING ALL THE STATIONS INTO ONE TIME! 

Here are some of my favorite things about this time...

What do I mean by fast finishers activities - during this time if any students didn't have a chance to finish an activity of the day then they finish at this time before they go to their stations.

I also love doing stations for the ending part of our day - my littles are often exhausted from the day that this is usually a great independent, relaxed play. The students are having extra practice and doing activities that they have previously been exposed to. 

Note: Sometimes I combine the literacy tubs & work on writing choice into one choice and then add a stem based activity.

I am LOVE, LOVE, LOVING how this works in my classroom!! How do you do stations? I'd love to hear!! 

Two Peas In A Pod {A Text-to-Self Connection}

This week we are digging deep into Text-to-Self Connections.

Today we read a class favorite and as we were reading we were reminded of our own likes & dislikes. 

After reading, we talked about how Little Pea does not like to eat candy.  We then shared one thing that we do not like.

We also thought about what Little Pea does like and what we like.

Even and Odd Spooktacular Fun!

Is it just me or does this little ghosty crack you up?! I absolutely adore him.  

This week we were learning all about even and odd.  

Back when we first learned about digits, we did learn about which digits were even and odd.  We did this by first finding a partner. Then I told them that I had different food items.  If the items were even, which means if they can be shared fairly and everyone gets the same amount, then the students could eat them.  This brought a great concrete idea to the concept of even and odd.

<<<<<Sorry! I didn't get a picture of this activity.>>>>>

This week was all about learning how to know if a number greater than 10 is even or odd. 

Here is a peek at our week...

First, we played a game called prove it. In whole group instruction, each student created a game board. Then the students passed their game board to a partner and had to prove whether the numbers on the board were even or odd.  

The next day, I let the cats out of the bag.  I told the students the story of two haunted houses where there were little black cats who loved pumpkins. In one haunted house, cats could only live there if they could share their pumpkins evenly with another cat.  In the other house, cats didn't have to worry about being even.  We then sorted the cats into the even or odd house.  (We did a couple as a whole group and then I had the students go off and prove it on their own.) After proving it, the students put their number in the even sort or odd.  Once everyone finished, we all came to the carpet and took note about patterns we saw in the sorts.  We made the conclusion that you have to look at the ones place to tell if a number is even or odd. 

The 3rd day, we read this fun story. 

We then in the spooky spirit made "Even Gleeven and Odd Blodd."  Monsters that either like everything about and around them to be even or everything about and around them to be odd. 

On the 4th day, we did a quick sunflower cut and sorting activity.  Then the students played an even and odd game. 

Finally, we received our "check point" from our Unlocking Number Sense fun.  We all worked to show what we knew about even and odd numbers.  Hopefully on Monday we will receive our clue!! 

Whew! What a week! 

Now off to a day of football watching and errand running! 

Happy Saturday :) 

More French Fun!

Today was our 3rd week of learning all about France! 

Last week, we talked about the French flag, made connections with it's similarities and differences to our American flag, and created our own French flag!

Today, we talked about where France is like on a map and what it looks like.  We then used oil pastels and decorated a template of France. The only directions I gave were to decorate it and boy, the students were SO CREATIVE! Some took what they knew about the France flag and colored their template to look like the France flag.  Others thought about the fact that France is known for flowers and they drew flowers.  

I loved this activity because of the connections they made to the things that they previously learned about France and their creativity really shined. 

We also have been learning new French words and sayings each week.  They are LOVING these new sayings.  So far we have covered...

• Bonjour - Hello
• Je m'appelle - My name is 
• J'adore - I love
• Je voudrais - I would like
• Au revoir - good bye
• L'eau - water