Common Core Posters for Math

Wow!  Many teachers in my district just finished up an intense power collaboration session to help with all of the new expectations coming in the fall.  The biggest one that we are all concerned with is the evaluation process and collecting student data.  Displaying student growth and tracking is huge, too.  Our teachers developed some rubrics and data books.  It all got my brain and creative juices flowing and I came up with these posters for each Common Core Math Standard for 1st grade.  Click here or on the picture to visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  :)   

I hope you like them and that you can find them useful in your classroom.  I'll be using this bad boys to shine up on my projector as we work through their data folders. 

Here is the freebie student data book that our team developed.  I got the go ahead to share this freebie.  :)

Click on the picture or here.  Don't forget to grab the cover!  Click here for the super fun cover.  :)

 

And now it is seriously time for some non-school related time.  :) 

 

 



 

Busy doesn't even BEGIN to Describe It!

Holy cow!  Has it really been a week and a half?!  This is the craziest my life has been ever.  School is about 3 hours short of instructional time (not that I want a longer day by no means!). 

I have been busy using all of the great products I purchased on TPT and putting some Pinterest ideas into practice in my classroom and in our hallway.  Check out the pics and feel free to leave some comments of what you might have the kiddos write/create to help fill up the hallway.  I'll post more pics as they add to it.  :)

Jam-packed Day!

Who's got 2 thumbs and stayed up until 2:45am in the morning working on anchor charts, grading, and blogging?  THIS GIRL!!!  Oh my gracious, I am feeling it tonight.  On the up side, I was completely rocking my teaching and in a really great mood-go figure.  Perhaps I should only get 3 hours of sleep every night?  NO WAY!  ;D  Check out what I made...yes, Pinterest was opened the entire time. 

 

 

My little Firsties were very happy to see my hard work.  Maybe that's why I was in such a good mood?  Or it could have been because I had a rockin' read aloud with my new book Looking After Louis.  I'll post about that another day.  Tonight it's beddy bye time.  :)

 



A Quick little Pin It tutorial

I have learned from many and here is how I add the Pin It button:

1st: Write your blog post with pictures.  Be sure to publish it so that you will have your blog link to go to.

2nd: Open your blog and click on that story that you just wrote.  That way the Pin will take the follower directly to that page and not just your home page.  (As a Pinterest follower, I get soooo annoyed when I want to learn more from a pin and I have to search all over someone's blog to try to find the needle in the haystack.)

3rd: Go to this website and scroll down to the Pin It Button for Webpage info.

http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/

4th: Add the URL of your blog to that page with your picture directly on it.  For example, I wanted my pic of Looking After Louis to be pinned, so I clicked on the Differences to get this URL.

example: http://cruzninfirst.blogspot.com/2012/11/differences.html

5th: Add the URL of the image.  You'll need to open your blog, click to edit your page, and then switch over to the HTML to view the codes. 

 

6th: Highlight this code beginning with http: and ending with .jpg  Paste this code in the URL of image to pin. Then you can describe the pin.  Doing this step opens the html code for you to paste in your blog under the picture (or wherever you'd like). 

 

7th: Paste this code in your blog while in the HTML view. 

8th: This is all there is to it!  You added your Pin It button.  :)  I have not ever added the smaller code on my page and so far it's not been an issue.  Good luck and be sure to save and publish your post.  :)

 

~Jill

Differences

I have a new little one in my room with special needs.  A few years ago I was in a classroom where the teacher read Looking After Louis by Lesley Ely.  The students responded so well and it was a great classroom building lesson.  I have been meaning to get this book to add to my very own library and now I finally have!  I am sooooo excited.  God has put a special little someone in my room every year and I have become great friends with our Special Education teacher.  (She's such a magnificent woman!) 

So, once I get my Amazon order I'll have a lesson to go along with my new purchase.  It was well worth the $ because as the years go by, my special needs population in my classroom is increasing.  I believe that the best way to deal with the "elephant in the room" is to educate all of the children.  It always melts my heart to watch the compassion and love exude from my little Firsties towards the little one that may need some extra patience. 

 

Leave me a sweet little note if you have come across any books or lessons that help to educate your little ones on a special needs topic.  :)

One of my favorite quotes:
"Fair isn't everybody getting the same thing...Fair is everybody getting what they need in order to be successful".  I will be incorporating this into my lesson I suspect. 

Frog Phonics

I am loving all of the Turkey sightings on everyone's blogs, and I am guilty of downloading and buying every little Thanksgiving theme I can get my hands on....but I'm doing frogs today.  ;)  (Actually, we did our Thankful Turkeys today, but I didn't snap any pics yet) 

My little ones have been LOVING the H Brothers and the PH cousin (I added him with all of the ph words floating around).  The Firsties are so stink'n excited about finding the H Brothers that they shout out at the carpet, interrupt my reading groups, and nearly tackle me to show me their newest H Brother find.  Clearly I have created some monsters, but at least it's all about phonics! 

With all of the excitement, I made a sorting the H Brothers activity I saw on Pinterest from Make Take Teach Blog.  Hop over using this link and you can make your own!  I love how mine turned out and it was all FREE!  I had the bins that I got in the beginning of the year from Target in their $1 section (which is all too dangerous for this teacher) and I had the frogs in an old notepad someone gave me.  All I had to do was print and laminate.  And yes, I have my own laminator in my room and I don't know how I ever lived without it! 

 

Here's my Maddie demonstrating how to play/sort.  :)

 

Back to Turkeys tomorrow! 

~Jill

Phonics and Turkeys?

Monday is always the day of the week that seems to be gone before it begins.  Is anyone else wondering where the time is going?  Yikes!  We did a great lesson that I adapted from Pinterest about the H Brothers.  I'm eager to add my little picture circles to add to our H-Brother Sort tomorrow.  It will be a great little activity to use with some of my mom volunteers. 

 

And I couldn't help but post by own 1st grader's disguised turkey.  My son, Jack loves the Don't Let the Pigeon...books.  So it seemed fitting to disguise his turkey as a pigeon.  ;)  Too fun!

 

 

Have a great day! 

~Jill

 

Honor, Pride, and FRIDAY!

This was one of those days that I love.  My mind was going a mile a minute BUT I was checking tasks off of my "to-do" list left and right.  Since Veteran's Day is on Sunday this year, we started working on some veteran themed work today and next week we will be writing our letters to the veterans to tell them why we are so thankful for them.  This ties in nicely with the presidental unit we just wrapped up.  Why you may ask?  Because we have been discussing our country and why we are so lucky to be able to choose our leader.  Discussing our veterans provides the how to our freedom discussions.  Check out the cute photos of my Firsties! *Disclaimer* I did not have spellcheck on my super fun smelly markers, so I am not completely sure every word was spelled right on my chart paper. ;)

 

 

AND....

 

Added some more skills to our our Reader's CAFE.  This is a process that I would have loved to have started much earlier in the year.  Life threw some major curve balls at me this year.  New assessments, new computer programs, new professional development, and the biggest life-changing event, my dad going home to be with Jesus.  (REALLY missing him tonight)  So, this is as far as we have gotten so far, but geez do my little ones LOVE this.  Makes me happy to meet with my little readers. 

 

 



Election Day

Yesterday was the Election Day and all of my Firsties were super excited to learn anything and everything about the candidates and the process.  We read Duck for President and that led into a discussion about character traits that a president would need to have.  Each child was then given a trait to relate to themselves.  We made the cover for our prompt, added the student's picture to make it personal, and hung them in the hallway.  It was such a fun day and I have all sorts of ideas for how I will do it different/better next time.  Now on to Thanksgiving ideas...