A Warm, Caring Classroom Community

Start your year right with Social Emotional Read Alouds that will help you build a caring classroom community!

This is my best advice to creating a community both you and your students will love to be a part of each day. Taking the TIME it takes to read stories that teach lessons and foster rich discussions about how to treat others, solve problems, manage feelings/emotions, initiate friendships, learn manners, and build habits is SO worth it. It will save you so much day-to-day stress down the road and help your students become stronger leaders in the classroom. The students become more independent and learn to take care of each other! Parents are so appreciative when their students come home with meaningful reflections, strategies, and improve compassion. It helps set the tone for a great year!!!

After all, we've all heard the quote- students do not always remember what you taught them, but they remember how you made them feel!

I use situation cards and have students model how to solve scenarios using their MANNERS. Explicit teaching of manners might sound so basic, but it helps students reflect on how they treat each other. They make an effort to use this language and it puts a more positive spin on your daily environment. Manners cards and Posters are available HERE.

After reading The Case of the Tattle Tongue students can discuss how to solve problems. I teach them I-Messages and we practice, practice, practice!

Every week we honor a "Bucket-Filler of the Week" and that person works to be a role model all week long. Then, this student chooses a student he/she noticed was also a role model all week to be our next "Bucket-Filler of the Week." Students give their peer compliments about what he/she did well after being selected. Get your poster FREE here!

Back to School Thoughts

When do you start school? I don't know about you, but I always feel like it's such a rush getting everything ready and the first 6 weeks of the year are the most intense! I'm so excited to meet my new little loves!

I am just giving a short and sweet shout out to you as you embark on a new school year and share a few tips on my mind. I will be BACK very soon with a detailed post(s) about social emotional read alouds and activities to create the caring classroom you need! So please come back throughout the first few weeks of school.

Teaching is one of the most important jobs in the world! We spend every day lighting up the lives of others. We love our students for who they are, the unique personalities they bring to the world, and even the challenges we help them overcome. We stretch our creativity and exercise our endurance as we create loving relationships, a warm learning environment, and engaging lessons. Best of all, we have 20 some little hearts and minds in our classroom every day to love!

Relationships are the CORE of my first 6 weeks of school. Forming those close bonds with students helps set a foundation we can grow on and helps the children truly love school.

Second to relationships, I teach my students how to be really good listeners! I read them lots of books, but the best book is Whole Body Listening Larry at School. It introduces how to be a Whole Body Listener and we make our own Whole Body Listening Chart with pictures of the children modeling the core components! I also read them Lacey Walker Non-Stop Talker.  This year I am going to use Mr. Potato Head as a memorable visual of Whole Body Listening for each part of your body that needs to be engaged.

We build a caring community through more social emotional read alouds and activities! The most important read aloud is How Full is Your Bucket? We create our own poster for how to be a bucket-filler in our classroom and launch a bucket-filling system that encourages and celebrates kindness in our classroom. To find out more about this system, click HERE.

"All About Me" activities help students get to know the details of each other and have a special place within the caring community. One of the All About Me activities my students will do is "Me Bags." In the "Me Bag" the students bring in 4-5 objects or pictures to share with the class to help us get to know them. For example, they might bring a baseball, family picture, pet picture, etc. I just send home a brown bag and a note.

I always read Amelia Bedelia's First Day of School and First Day Jitters during the morning on the first day to help the kids settle in, laugh, and relate to all the emotions of the first day!

What are you most excited for in your first week???

Reflect, Refresh Part 1

Hi Everyone! I am linking up with some other teachers to reflect on the year!

We gather for the last 5-10 minutes per day. I have a student leader for the week that calls on 3-5 friends for highlights from our day. I type this into a daily email and we send it out to parents. I add any special notes at the top! It's quick and saves me the hours of writing a newsletter. This is my second year doing it, and I have found that parents REALLY read it and they love it! It's right there on their phone as they drive their child around to activities, get it at work, or while they are at home. So many parents tell me that they feel so connected!

We do a "Bucket-Filling" system in my classroom. While I might have other classroom management techniques... this one is the one that is constant and a foundation of our classroom. I read them all the bucket filling books. We create our own classroom poster of what it means to be a bucket filler. Then, the students select a "Bucket-Filler of the Week." This person is someone they noticed as a role model, doing honorable deeds. This person serves as my teacher assistant for the week and has his/her picture featured on the bulletin board. They are the student leader I mentioned above. Get your free bucket filler poster here.

I had the privilege of having one-to-one iPads this year and hope that this can continue. It truly made such an impact on student engagement and learning. I put most of what we used to do on paper in the form of PDF's and sent it to them through our learning management system (Canvas). Then, they could open this in another app and use all the interactive features of that app. For example, a graphic organizer and text could be opened in Notability. This enables them to highlight, record, type, and have as much space as they need. Our grade level showed the most growth of every grade in our District and 97% of the students met or exceeded their growth target in math... I have to think that the one-to-one technology used in innovative ways was a huge contributor. I don't know if we will get to stay one-to-one next year, but I sure hope so!

I've had such a blast entering the teacher blogger world. I hope to create lots of products that can be shared with other teachers! In fact, I'm hosting a SUMMER LINKY for teachers to share products and help us all prepare for next year! It's starting soon, and I'd love to see you there!