Fun and Fearless in First

This week another school year came to a close. It was bittersweet for me this year. I really had a particularly hard time saying goodbye to this year's class. I just wasn't quite ready. They were such a smart, sweet, wonderful group!

But said goodbye I did. We laughed (and cried) on the last day as we watched our video yearbook. I made it in iMovie and this year it was a whopping 25 minutes long. EEK! I just couldn't cut anything out. The kids loved it!

After the kids left I started the loooong task of taking apart the room. This year my classroom will be used for summer school, so I really had to tuck everything away and cover it up. Luckily, our district gives us two and a half days to wrap up our classrooms.

I took these last few days to really look at my closets and classroom organization. I was able to purge items I no longer use (ahh, breathe a sigh of relief) and rearrange my (large!) closets. I also took some time to rearrange the furniture in my classroom. In the fall, I will no longer have student computers. Instead, I will have 10 iPads, woohoo!!! There are several classrooms in my building piloting this new approach. I'm so excited! Stay tuned for blog posts about my iPads in the fall.

Getting rid of four of my six desktop computers, along with the bulky computer table they came on, has freed up A LOT of space in my classroom. I was able to leave my classroom with a fantastically organized start to next year. I took LOTS of pics and plan to share my organization strategies in a series of posts in July.

And, of course, I'm already thinking ahead to my new class! In August letters are sent to our students letting them know who their teacher is. Teachers can include a welcome letter and anything else they'd like. I always send my opening newsletter, our supply list, and my "Tell Me About Your Child" parent questionnaire.

This year I'm going for a Rock Star theme in my classroom. I bought a bunch of fabulous rockin' clipart. I can't WAIT to start creating more materials like my newsletter below!

We try to keep our supply list fairly short. This year we are trying something a little different. We asked for two boxes of crayons and two of each kind of folder. We plan to label the second set of these items and set them aside for later in the year to use as replacements. I can't tell you how many times I tell students to ask their parents for a new folder in February as their folder is barely held together and a complete mess! Usually it is WEEKS before the item is replaced. By asking for two upfront, it will be easy to replace, and we don't even have to bother parents to make a special trip to the store!

Lastly, I like to get some information directly from parents about their child. I ask for this to be handed in during the first week of school. I find it to be very helpful and informative. It really highlights areas that I should look out for with my students.

If this is something you'd like to send to your parents, just hop on over to my TPT Store to download my FREE Parent Questionnaire.

{Click HERE to Download}

Even though many of you have been out of school for weeks, I can now OFFICIALLY post:

HAPPY SUMMER!!!

Colleen

We finally finished our "All About" animal information books. These babies are AH-MAZING! I have blogged before about my very mixed feelings about Writing Workshop since we use the Lucy Calkins Units of Study. I think there are many useful structures and ideas, but many of the Lucy lessons are completely over the kids heads. Plus I don't think there is enough modeling or shared writing involved.

Then I found my personal writing guru... Susan Moran at T.G.I.F. I have purchased many of her writing units, and this unit is BY FAR my absolute new favorite!!! She has a fantastic way of guiding students through the process step-by-step. The results are confident, engaged, and motivated writers in my classroom. WIN!

Find it {HERE}

WARNING: Photo bomb blog post ahead...

Our first day on the job... researching many different kinds of animals. From there, we narrowed it down to three choices of animals we would like to write about. I put the students in groups based on their interest.

Here we are writing down our Fascinating Facts. They were so engaged in the research we ended up doing this for three straight days!

Our coveted Cover Page. These look AWESOME!

Here are our Diagrams. I was impressed with what body parts the kids chose to label. There were some GREAT vocabulary words in there!

Here we are working on our Different Kinds page. Our Library Media Specialist helped the students to find pictures of different kinds of our animals.

Here we are working on our Introduction page. Our goal was to tell what kind of animal we were writing about (i.e. mammal, reptile, insect, etc.) and give a physical description of our animals.