What We've Been Up To (Freebie Links)

It has been a wild week in my room! Last week our behaviors were out. of. con.trol. I was frustrated. I was perturbed. I was annoyed! I use Class Dojo {www.classdojo.com} to manage some of these behaviors and document it for parents. It did come in handy but they just didn't care about losing points last week! Today started much better though, and I have been working with my kids on simple greetings and goodbyes.

My friends lack manners. We work hard on helping them be "ladies" and "gentlemen". I realized two things this year so far, however. When I say "Good Morning" to them when they come in, I never get a greeting back, and when I say goodbye to dismiss them, I never get a goodbye back. I've been working on the morning greetings, and I just am kind of obnoxious about it!

Me: "Good morning!"

Friend: "Grunt."

Me: "GOOD. MORNING! The polite thing to say back is "good morning" when someone says good morning to you."

Friend: "Oh, good morning." 

Needless to say, these  posters have started to come in handy. You can get them in my TPT store for free! 

 We finished up our personal narratives unit in writing. I found a great anchor chart on Pinterest for writing awesome endings. I straight up copied it.

It was kind of above their heads but some of them got it. And yes, there really was a bat in my apartment building. Scariest day ever.

We have begun our study of informational text. We started with a simple text about pumpkins that I found in our library. It was a really nice example of of many different text features. Then we made a non-fiction text feature mini-book that let them cut and paste examples of each feature. This was a guided activity that you can get here at this great blog: {Plug-N-Plan}

I also made this giant anchor chart. Then the kids took it a step further and examined how a Table of Contents works.

This was their first time working in partners and I thought it went really well. I found this simple activity {here}. All they had to do was write the name of a chapter and the page it started on. Next, we read Spiders by Gail Gibbons and did a can, have, are chart to launch our study of spiders. I have done bats in the past but I'm ready to study something creepier this time of year!

I've also done a significant amount of classroom re-organizing.

I need a Mr. Sketch intervention. But its not my fault! Every year they buy me 3 boxes of them! Enablers!

I finally got rid of the Stress Inducing Mess in the corner by my table. This is now my guided reading groups stuff. It's much calmer over there. I have some ideas in mind of how I am going to reorganize my construction paper and then use the table that the construction paper is in to store all my math stuff.

Ok, I have an impatient two year old who needs me to get off the computer so I can help her clean up! Enjoy your freebie links! I hope they're useful to you!