Do You Use Reading Street?

That’s the question I’m posing today. Do you use it? Do you like it?

Our parish uses the Reading Street series in the elementary grades and I’ve become accustomed to it. However, with Common Core starting this year, we had to include the CC alignments with the Reading Street series. I like the series because it comes with so many materials already pre-made for teachers. I also think it is a very easy series to teach. I’m not sure if we will keep the series because of CC, but I hope we do.

I have a few Reading Street items in my TPT store, and I just added another product today. The product is displays for all of the stories in all units of the first grade series.

And of course, I will give it away for free to the first 5 commenters. Make sure to leave your email!

Enjoy your Saturday! School has been so busy, but I hope to catch up with my Pin-Up Thursdays and Flash Freebie Fridays, so be on the look out!

Enrichment Behavior Management

I received an email this weekend from one of our enrichment teachers asking that all students bring their quality binders each time they come.

Umm..no thank you…

I say that because my quality binders are quite bulky and I have little firsties. Plus, walking down the hall with those binders each time is just asking for a disaster. I can see my kids dropping them, playing with them, etc. The reason she wanted the students to bring them is so she can write down when any behavior issue occur. However (because of the above stated reasons) I don’t think that will work very well.

(I hope the enrichment teacher doesn’t mind my opposition!)

So I decided to make up this simple form for all of the enrichment teachers to use when they have any behavior issues. I’ll send this binder to each enrichment rotation. In the enrichment behavior binder, I’ll slip the cover in the front and make several copies of the recording sheet. If one of my students happens to have a behavior issue in enrichment, the teacher can write it down and I will be able to review it when enrichment is over.

That’s a simple solution, right? If you are in need of something similar, just grab the PDF below and leave some feedback.

Have a great work week!

Pin Up Thursdays

Fresh off the mega TPT back to school sale, I’m in full gear at school. My school year has started, and I have been quite busy! Because many of us are getting ready for school this year, I decided to post some of my Pinterest finds related to the first days of school.

Here’s what I’ve found this week on Pinterest that might interest you for planning back to school activities. I’ve found crafts, take home items, worksheets, and more!

If you would like to link up, grab the image below and then leave your blog post url or you can just leave the Pinterest url below using the inlinkz tool.

Have a great day!

TPT Sale Starts Tomorrow

Just wanted to let you know about TPT’s storewide sale starting tomorrow.

I am participating in the sale by offering 10% off in addition to the 10% TPT is offering if you use their coupon code. How great is that?

And…in honor of the back to school sale, I am going to give away First Day Frenzy to the first 5 people who leave a comment and their email on this post.

First Day Frenzy is a collection of 20 back to school activities, forms, and other fun items that will work well for the first days of school! I am excited to use it with my firsties this year, so I want to share it with you!

If you miss the short giveaway, don’t worry! First Day Frenzy will be on sale starting tomorrow!

Classroom Update #2

My phone finally decided to cooperate and let me upload my classroom pictures. I’m doing a bee theme of course, so you’ll see that incorporated everywhere. I still have a bit more work to do, but I’m happy that I’m pretty much finished.

This is the largest bulletin board in my room. This is where I am going to post the students’ work throughout the year. I saw this idea on Miss Nelson's blog here.

Here is my focus wall for ELA and Math. You can grab it below.

Here is my quality wall. The items are included in the document above.

Here is what I’m most proud of! I’m moving away from the traditional color-coded behavior system where students pull their color (pull your green card, pull your yellow card). This summer I read about clip chart behavior and I love that it does not focus on bad behavior like I feel the color-coded system does. Our school rewards students with good behavior through PBIS but I wanted a way to recognize them in the classroom, especially when they go above and beyond what I ask of them.

Grab all of these items below. I’ve included everything you see in the picture including punch cards which correspond with “clipping up”. It goes along with the reward system I plan to use for my students. Now, the only thing you won’t see are the reward tickets. I haven’t created them yet for my classroom.

Here is my birthday wall. I saw this idea on Pinterest I believe. I’ll photograph my kids during the first week of school and put their pictures on their respective birthday month. Grab it below.

And finally, this is my AR wall. Students will put a green bee on the board with their name if they score 80% on their test and an orange bee if they score 100%. I thought about creating it as they earn points, but this will work for now! If you’d like this one, just email me and I’ll send it. It’s bee themed and I know that only a few people use it as a theme, but I would be happy to share!

Classroom Update

Whew! It’s been a busy few days for me as I prepare to head back to work. My classroom has taken over my life (but in a good way). I took lots of pictures using my phone, but for some reason they are not showing up. I’ll try to post them tomorrow. One of the things I’ve worked on in my classroom (the only picture that seems to show for some reason) is a floating word wall.

As you may know through reading my posts, this year my classroom has only a limited amount of board space. So I decided to create a floating word wall that will not only allow me to create my own space for the word wall but also allow my students to access it at any time. I put it in my TPT store here but I will gladly give it away to the first two people who comment and leave their email.

Hopefully my pictures from my phone will work for my post tomorrow, and I’ll share a lot of the freebies that I’ve created. Enjoy your Monday afternoon!