Summer's end

As Summer comes to an end, a school year begins. This will be a new adventure for me. I am teaching FIRST grade this school year. I spent half the week getting my room organized, decorated and prepared for this school year. Last year my classroom theme was jungle.This year I am doing an owl theme. I'll be posting pictures of my classroom soon. Keep you posted. For all of you beginning soon, best of luck!

A Tasty Way to Teach Writing

As a second-grade teacher, I know that it’s important to make writing a concrete process for my students, especially because they will be in 3rd grade before you know it. I found a cute, tasty and understadable way to teach the writing process to my students. The best way to do that is through a graphic organizer shaped like…a hamburger!

To start a writing lesson, I use my hamburger poster  to review what every good paragragh  should have. As we start our paragraph writing, we talk about what we like in a juicy burger.

Now, we’re ready to write some juicy sentences on our hamburger graphic organizer. I have a large hamburger chart on the white board of my classroom, and each component of the burger represents an element of a good paragraph. The top bun is the opening sentence; the lettuce, tomato and meat are the three juicy middle sentences; and the bottom bun is the closing sentence.

First, I get ideas from the students on an opening sentence. Then, once we have some ideas, we talk about how juicy each sentence is. As a class, we decide which idea was the juiciest, and we write it as a class on a the board. We continue this process with the 3 juicy middle sentences, and 1 good juicy closing sentence. Then, once board is full, we read the story out loud together and talk about how juicy or not juicy it is.

Then, we go back and look at our board and make sure that our story/ paragraph has all of the key ingredients for a juicy paragraph. Once we have our sample story, I give each student a piece of paper to get started.

This is the a picture of what I have done on my board.

 Here are some other examples you may use:

Earth's Layers

Hello All!
I'm back with a fun project.

My student's have been learning about Earth and it's 3-4 layers (Some books split the core into 2 layers). They are so excited to learn about our beautiful; planet. After reading about all the different layers and what they are made up of i gave my students' a project to do. They had to create the layers of earth.

Through this website, I was able to find a great template and instructions that the kids could follow. This is also a great way to teach students how to follow directions. Here is the template: http://superteacherworksheets.com/rocks-earth/inner-planet-book.pdf

I made a model first so that the students can see the end result. Here is the how the project looks like when it is complete:

Pretty Cute huh? Hope it's helpful to you all! Parent's this can be a fun activity to do with your children at home! 

The Human Body Activity

For the past 3 weeks (2 1/2 to be exact), I have been teaching my students all about the human body, the major organs and their functions. Before I even started teaching the lessons, I knew right away what I wanted to do as their BIG FINAL ACTIVITY. I knew though, that this activity is not one I should do with the type of students I have. My students can not handle projects. They get too rowdy. None the less, I REALLY wanted to try it. Even though I regret it, some of the work the students came up with was worth the madness. Here is what we did:


First cut bulletin board paper the length of the students bodies (1 per child). I grouped the students into two's and had them trace their bodies (with a crayon). Legs were not too important in this activity.

Next I had the students color the organs and cut them out. I had the class read each organ together aloud and they had to give me some facts about that organ and show me where in their bodies was it located.

Next, the students glued the organs onto their traced out bodies. Once the organs were glued I had the students decorate their bodies to make it look like themselves a bit. Here were some of their creations.

If you plan on doing this with your class, use white paper or a light color. My TA cut red paper. It's a bit harder see the colors on red paper. Hope you all enjoyed my adventure I had with my little monsters today. 

Breaking Point!

My co-workers laugh, they think it is cute on  how hard I try to make a difference and help my students. I stress all the time over these students. I have a very low performing class and have tried many different routines and ways to help them grasp these ideas I am teaching to them. I even began tutoring a handful of students (free of charge) in the early mornings, 3 times a week for half an hour. Parents drop of their child 10-15 minutes late. It amazes me how the parents have not one ounce of care about their child's education. The children take the extra practice as a joke ( Geee I wonder why). I have 4 students who can not read a first grade level book. One of my students literally can not read second grade level books and insists that he read a whole passage in two minutes. Then when we grade all the work together they get all the answers wrong.

I spent two weeks going over counting coins with my class. The other second grade classes spent 1 week covering this information. After that first weeks test, seeing all those F's made me realize I needed to spend another week on this topic. I graded their second week tests, and was shocked that most the students, again, received F's. I called the students one by one to show them their grades. One particular student, who I tutor in the mornings, missed all NINETEEN questions (this is the same students who "read" the second grade passage in less than 2 minutes). I asked this students if he even cared about his grades. Want to know what his response was? He told me NO! That was my breaking point. During my planning period I typed a letter  to the parents that I will not be able to tutor their children anymore. The school does offer tutoring for the students, but, they have to pay. Why should I care about these kids, when the parents nor the child cares?!
One of the many lessons you will learn as a new teacher. Do not get taken advantage of. Do not focus on the kids who do not care, and their parents do not care either, because you will be wasting your time and energy.

Classroom Arrangements

If you were one of my co-workers, you would laugh every other week walking into my classroom. I have changed the layout to my classroom, well, I've lost count on how many times now. Everything they teach you in college is bologna. As a teacher you must set your room to:

1. Your liking
2. Your students needs
3. The amount of space you have to work with.

My classroom is an okay size, but not for a room full of  23 students and for a teacher who wants centers.
My students are very talkative so it is quite hard to keep the tables in pods. I currently have them in rows, which seems to be working out for me at the moment.


Jungle is the theme to my second grade classroom this year.  Here are some pictures of what my classroom looked like when I first started decorating and organizing.

The beginnings....

It is now 5 months into my first year teaching, and, like everything else in life, it has been a roller coaster ride. The reason for me creating this blog started off from an advice from a friend. Kids say the darn-est things and one day, after telling some friends about what my students say in class, a teacher friend of mine advised me to keep a journal. That's when I had my 'light bulb" moment and said, who keeps a journal these days? Evey one blogs now. So, TADA!!! Welcome to my blog and hope you all enjoy this adventure with me.