first grade fun.

Student teaching. Oh where to begin!?!? I am having such a wonderful time in my first grade classroom! I have been busy everyday teaching and learning and I am loving every minute of it! :)

The elementary school that I am at is in the middle of construction, and lucky for my teacher and I we have the privilege of being in a brand new classroom! My teacher just moved in after Christmas break and we are working together to get everything organized and finding a place for everything! 

Right now I am planning and teaching one of our reading centers. Each week I focus on a new poem, and everyday we do something different with it in my center. We work on rhyming words, fluency, letter recognition, sounding out words, etc. The kids have a fun time with the new poems and are always exciting to do something new with them every day! 

I am also in charge of Calendar Time as well. During calendar, we have a student helper that gets to lead it, and it is always an exciting job! We work with days of the week, months, weather, patterns, counting money, telling time, working with the ones and tens place, and some basic math. 

Here are some pictures of the classroom!

 

 

 

 

Here are the student's cubbies and bag area! 

 

 This is my teacher's little file area where she puts what we need for each subject each day. It helps us stay organized!

 

Here is my first ever teacher desk!!!! Oh the things that can make a teacher excited!!!!!!!!

 

The classroom library....I have a long way to go before mine will be even close to this size! 

 

 Bathroom passes! A MUST have!!!!! Each student gets 2 passes a day...notice how many used up both of theirs that day! 

 

Class jobs! The kids love getting to help out in the class for the week! 

 

 Calendar! 

 

Storage for dry erase boards, math cubes, blocks, glue, crayons, etc.

Here within the next week or so I will also start teaching Math!! I can't wait to keep adding more and more onto what I am teaching each day! I am going to start planning a Science unit soon as well, hopefully I can get some good pictures to post! :)

And to end my post I thought I would add a few quotes from the first graders this past week that put a smile on my face: 

- "I love to read old books...because I think the pictures from the 1980's are just the best!" and sure enough...the book was from the 1980's! 

- A student was trying to pull his arm hair out and I asked why he was doing that....his response: "I am pulling the hair off my arms because I don't want to be hairy like my dad!"

- When reading the word "diary":  "Does this say diarrhea?" :) :) The whole class got a kick out of that one!

At the end of the week we had a class discussion about Stranger Danger and we got a lot of good advice, and some interesting questions...they brought up some very detailed and interesting ideas:

-"What if two strangers come into the school while we are eating breakfast and stand in the doorway so nobody can get out?"

-"If someone tries to steal you, you should lay on the ground and kick your feet a lot so that it is hard for them to grab you!" 

-"What if a stranger puts a sword in his back and another stranger comes behind him and pulls the sword out and goes after you?"

My personal favorite:

-"If someone has an x-box and they tell you that you can only play it if you get in their car and go to their house...you should NOT do it. Even if you really want to play the x-box. Because that person is a bad guy, and they will kill you." 

Oh the wonderful and detailed mind of a first grader! Gotta love it!!! :)

xoxo,

Shelbi.