Made it through the first week!

Virginia and I started back to school this past week.  Monday and Tuesday we had Teacher Institute Days.  The students came on Wed.  We both enjoyed meeting our new group of students, but the first week is always an exhausting one.  Of course it didn't help that our playground is not ready yet for the students to play on.  On Friday afternoon one of our blacktops was free of construction material so the students could finally get out and play.  Even though it was hot and humid out it nice to finally get some fresh air. 
We are ready to start our first week now and get into the weekly routine of a weekly story, starting writer's workshop, math, science, and social studies. 

This week we also have our Curriculum Night.  Virginia found a site with reading tips for parents at different grade levels and comes in both English and Spanish.  Just click on the either one of the images below to take you to the website.  Just scroll down for your grade level.

In Spanish

 

In English

 

We will be back with more ideas to share at Curriculum Night.

 

Have a good week.

 

Virginia and Sandy

 

 

Weekly Homework

First of all I realized after I blogged about the giveaway that I had made the first task on the rafflecopter a must do.  It was like my Facebook page.  I realize that not everyone is on FB so I will be having a birthday freebie later this weekend.  So I apologize for leaving anyone out.  It was my first attempt at Rafflecopter so now I know what NOT to do this next time.  I'm sure I will have another giveaway or two before school starts. Thanks to all you have entered the giveaway so far.  If you haven’t entered yet be sure to check out the post below this one.

Homework has always been a struggle for me especially getting kids to read every night.  I was always getting excuses as to why “Johnny” couldn’t do his homework.  The past year I tried some new things and it helped tremendously.  Hardly had anyone not complete the homework.

The first thing I did was go to a weekly homework packet instead of giving out homework every night.  I have always been hesitant about weekly packets.  That would mean I would have to know exactly what I was going to teach that week.  (I’m one of those teachers that is always erasing/scratching out plans and changing them.)  But I ended up doing was keeping my homework simple.  Every week students had the same spelling activities to complete, I gave a few math sheets which were just a review of the previous week’s lessons, and nightly reading. 

Nightly reading that has always been a struggle.  This is the 2^nd thing that I tried last year that worked out wonderfully- My Reading Bookworm.  Every week I sent home a reading link sheet.  After students read they brought in their reading link(s).  They could bring them in as they read or all at once.  It didn’t matter to me as long as they turned them in.  When the student turned them in we stapled them to the bookworm that went around our classroom.  The students loved seeing the bookworm grow every day.  It was a great incentive. Of course I still had some students not read, but it was a lot less than in years past.

 Once we completed the link around the room we had a classroom celebration.  Celebrations could be as simple as a pajama day or you can tie it into another celebration like I did and we had pizza for our Winter Party before break. 

To find it on Teacher's Notebook

To find it on TPT

If you are interested in this packet it is now available for sale at my shops. 

Overall the weekly packets/reading bookworm was successful I will be implementing them again this year.  Of course I will make some changes.

This year I am trying to save on paper so I took 4 of the spelling activities that I used and I will be running the copies back to back.  Click on the image below to download in google docs. 

Does anyone else have any great ideas they tried last year that was a successful?  Leave a comment and tell us all about it.  We would love to hear from you.