DIY Pennant Banner

I love the new pennant banner craze that's hit teachers on Pinterest and Instagram. Pennant banners are a cute and colorful way to create signs or labels for virtually anything in your classroom. They also add a creative DIY touch to make your classroom appear more inviting and "homey."

After much searching, I found a free (and colorful) pennant banner template from Erin Nation's TpT store. *If you're not teaching kindergarten, don't let the title of the file discourage you from downloading. She has included blank templates at the end of her file. 

I simply printed the blank templates at the end of the file on white card stock paper and cut them out. Then, I traced circles on white card stock and wrote my letters before adding them to the triangles. It was super easy, super cheap, and super quick! Now all I need is ribbon to attach to the pennant banner so it can hang from the ceiling! 

I'm also hoping to create a pennant banner that says "Calendar" to hang above our calendar.

El-em-en-o-pee and Letter-cising

One of the ongoing learning objectives in kindergarten is learning the alphabet. While many eager five year olds come into kindergarten already knowing how to sing the alphabet, an emphasis must be placed between singing the alphabet and saying the alphabet. In fact, during our beginning of the school year kindergarten screening, we will often ask incoming kindergarteners to tell us the alphabet. More often than not, almost every incoming kindergartener proceeds to sing the alphabet. We listen eagerly and wait until they are finished before giving them a cheer and then asking if they can now say the alphabet. Even after these instructions, many proceed to start singing again until we demonstrate, saying, "A...B...C," making sure that we are saying each letter with the same intonation and pausing between each letter. 

Why make such a big deal about the difference between singing and saying the alphabet? The reason resides in one "letter," commonly known to many five year olds as "Elemenopee." Learning to sing the alphabet is, indeed, a wonderful start to learning the alphabet, but in and of itself, singing the alphabet is not the same as "knowing" the alphabet. 

In addition to saying or speaking the letters of the alphabet in order, a young child also needs to be able to identify both upper- and lower-case letters in print, in addition to knowing the common sounds that these letters make. For instance, "U" can say "uh," as in "umbrella," or "u" as in "unicorn."

During my Senior II student teaching semester, my mentor teacher taught me the importance of maintaining the distinction between singing and saying the alphabet. Every day during our calendar time, we would say the alphabet as we pointed to each letter on an alphabet chart. After we said the alphabet, we would go back through our chart and, this time, as we pointed to each letter, we would say the sounds that the letter makes. ("'A' says 'ahh," A says 'a.' 'B' says 'bbb.' 'C' says 'ccc.' 'D' says 'ddd,'" and so on. 

*Note: 'B' does not say "buh," nor does "C" say "cuh," and nor does "D" say "duh." There is a difference (which is hard to denote in print on a blog) between 'bbb' and 'buh' and we should strive not to over-emphasize the sounds that a letter makes to the point of saying the incorrect sound. Modeling incorrect or even over-emphasized letter sounds makes it slightly more difficult when young readers learn consonant blends, such as "br" in "brother." Think of a confused young reader reading "brother" as "buh-r-other" or reading "cat" and "cuh-at." The difference is subtle, but it is much easier to teach young children the correct letter sound the first time rather than "un-teaching" them the incorrect or over-emphasized letter sound when the time comes from them to learn consonant blends.)

Over time, my kindergarten students got used to the rhythm in which we said the letters and the sounds that they make. I say all this to say that when we teach young children the alphabet, we should marry letter identification and sound; do not separate the letter from its sound. (Example: While driving down the road, if you see a McDonald's sign - the "M" or golden arches - ask your young child what letter it is and what sound that letter makes. Say, "That's the letter 'M' and 'M says 'mmmm.'")

Below is a picture of my new alphabet chart. I searched long and hard to find alphabet cards that had large and clear print as well as clear, common pictures that represent each letter's sound. When choosing an alphabet chard (or really any piece of classroom decor), make sure it is clear, easy to read, and functional. If there are too many prints or bright colors, it makes it difficult for students to focus on the letters or other content at hand. 

I got these alphabet cards for free from First Grade Fanatics' TpT Store. I printed four cards per piece of card stock paper and glued them onto a poster board, which I will then laminate for durability and post near our calendar area. 

This year, I am also hoping to incorporate Dr. Jean's "Who Let the Letters Out?" song and/or Dr Jean's "Lettercise" song while we "punch out" the letter sounds (to incorporate active learning) into our daily alphabet routine. 

Whole Brain Teaching Rules

This summer, I have been studying whole brain teaching, a concept that will surely revolutionize education as we know it. Brain research like how we learn and what parts of the brain are stimulated when we learn has fascinated me ever since my time in my teacher education program at ECU. I hope to focus on whole brain research and teaching during the remainder of my graduate studies.

Simply put, whole brain teaching is a teaching technique that involves the "whole" brain in learning. It is based on what we know about how the brain absorbs information quickly and effectively. Instead of simply lecturing students as passive participants in lessons, whole brain teaching actively involves students and stimulates the entire brain during learning. The teacher basically "chunks" micro-lectures of content for about 30 seconds then involves the class in repeating, teaching, and applying the information by mirroring, gesturing, partner teaching, etc. It also allows the teacher to gauge the engagement of the students and to adjust their instruction based on this feedback. Here's a quick video that teaches whole brain teaching using whole brain teaching: Whole Brain Teaching: The Basics. 

This year, I hope to incorporate whole brain teaching into my classroom. Here's what whole brain teaching will look like in my kindergarten classroom this year: Whole Brain Teaching in Kindergarten. 

I absolutely fell in love with the classroom rules used in this video and I was so excited to come across a super cute, free printable version of these rules to use in my classroom this year!

Rule #1: Listen when your teacher is talking. 

Rule #2: Follow directions quickly. 

Rule #3: Raise your hand to speak or stand.

Rule #4: Respect others, yourself, and your school.

Rule #5: Be safe, be kind, and be honest.

You can get this free printable from Jessica Heeren's TpT store! Since kindergarteners use words and pictures to make meaning at this stage of development, we will be illustrating these rules on the first day of school. 

Crisscross Applesauce

While browsing the children's section in Barnes & Noble the other day, I came across this adorable book for incoming kinders:

It has several super cute poems about various aspects of the school day, such as lunch time, recess, and nap/rest time. My favorite poem, however, is a great classroom management tool for teaching expectations for sitting on the carpet :

Crisscross applesauce, that's the way we sit.

Not feet-out sauerkraut.

Not cottage cheese on your knees.

Not bottoms-up coffee cup.

Not blueberry jelly on your belly.

But crisscross applesauce, that's the way we sit!

I also found this neat song on YouTube that's similar: Crisscross Applesauce. How cool is that?

Revenge of the Pronged Folders

I absolutely adore the back to school season and all of the excitement and promise that August and the hope of a new school year bring. To me, the back to school season is truly what Edward Pola and George Wyle had in mind when they wrote "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." I love the smell of a fresh pack of Crayola crayons and I love that I can smell the newness on each page in a never before written in notebook as I fan the pages. I love the feeling of cracking open a new binder and writing with a freshly sharpened pencil. Seeing aisles upon aisles spilling over with pencils and erasers, notebooks and folders, and crayons and lunch boxes gives me such a thrill that I'd almost rather not speak of because it's just so nerdy. 

Despite the exquisiteness of new school supplies and the promise of a fresh start, I get major FOMO (fear of missing out) during the back to school season. In fact, I had my first major FOMO episode several nights ago, when I had the most blood-chilling nightmare about pronged folders. It was the kind of nightmare that you wake up from in the middle of the night, drenched in a cold sweat. 

I was perusing the back to school section at Target, hunting for the ever elusive plastic pronged folders (in my classroom colors, of course) to use as my students' daily take home folders. Abandoning one aisle overflowing with cheap paper folders (with no prongs) for the next, as I walked around the back to school section, I slowly came to the horrible realization that, sadly, no more folder options existed. 

Woe is me! No plastic folders to withstand tears from eager kindergarteners shoving their daily folders into their book bags (and getting caught in zippers!) in order to devour their teddy grahams before catching their afternoon bus! Alas, no pronged folders to hold daily behavior calendars and helpful homework anchor charts! As I made my way, rather tearfully, back to the cheap, non-pronged paper folder aisle, only a handful of folders in mismatched colors remained, none of which that were in either red or green. Cue the hair-pulling, blood-curdling scream that ends in me waking up at 2 o'clock in the morning, with my heart racing and drenched in sweat.

Today; however, I am happy to report that I have conquered my folder FOMO and have finally extracted my revenge upon the ever elusive pronged folder! I bought 25 of these durable plastic green pronged beauties at Target for 50 cents a piece.

I'm thinking about switching my green folder bin out for a red one with a green apple label, as I had originally envisioned candy apple red folders for my class. 

Having been hired mid-year during the last school year, I learned a few valuable lessons about daily take home folders:

1. Obviously, folders are essential in the primary grades. They serve as the main form of daily communication between the teacher and the parents. Daily behavior calendars, homework assignments, helpful homework anchor charts, and important notes use these folders to travel back and forth between home and school. And since folders are essential...
2. Invest in plastic folders over paper folders. Plastic folders don't tear and won't get ratty throughout the school year. Although they are a few cents more expensive than paper folders, they last much longer and look much better!
3. Choose pronged folders over folders without prongs for quick and easy organization. Hole punch behavior calendars, homework calendars, and helpful homework anchor charts and hook them through the prongs in the middle of the folder. This ensures that essential day-to-day documents cannot accidentally be taken from the folder and thrown out; instead, this information remains in an easily accessible place. Once again, pronged folders will cost a few more cents than their non-pronged counterparts, but it is well worth the investment. 
4. Speaking of cost, folders are about as cheap as dirt during the back to school season. During the school year, this is not the case; heed my warning and stock up now! Walmart currently has paper folders, which are good for short-term use (such as with phonics journals at the beginning of kindergarten - I'll blog about these later), on sale for 15 cents a piece! As I mentioned above, I bought durable plastic pronged folders for 50 cents a piece at Target. 
5. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having an organized and easy-to-use daily folder system. You must really think through what you send home, when you send it home, how you send it home, and where (in the folder) you send it home. 

I am working on writing another post about the folder system I plan on using this school year. In the meantime, I am going to start writing R.L. Stine about an idea for a new Goosebumps book... ;)

Make a Wish!

I absolutely love printable classroom decor and how it has revolutionized the useful decorativeness of the every day classroom, so this confession should come as no surprise: I am a TpT fiend.

What TpT find has gotten me so excited this afternoon? These adorable birthday mini posters from That's So Second Grade's TpT store. 

These are my favorite cupcakes from the pack. I absolutely love how each cupcake as a theme relating to the month, thus reinforcing seasons, holidays, and thematic units. Purposeful, useful loveliness. 

Here's a closeup of my favorite cupcake (and my second favorite month):

Seriously, could this cupcake be any cuter?

Best of all, these adorable birthday mini posters are free, so happy birthday to you!

Owls and Polka Dots, Oh My!

After much consideration (and way too many late night pinning sessions on Pinterest), I have decided that my classroom theme for the upcoming 2013 - 2014 school year will be owls and polka dots!

I am so ecstatic to be moving to the red kindergarten hallway this year. Not only will I be closer to my grade level team and my mentor, but my move also means that my new classroom will be RED! Red is a color known for energy and excitement, which perfectly matches my educational vision for my class this year. Since I am a firm believer in working with what you have, along with my theme of polka dots and owls, I have chosen to use red as my main classroom color and green as an accent color.

While indulging myself in one of my many aforementioned late night pinning sessions in search of the perfect classroom theme, I came across these adorable polka dot owls from Schoolgirl Style. It was love at first pin. 

I am planning to use these owls as name labels for my students' work cubbies. 

I also somehow managed to stumble across these super cute (and coordinating!) name plates from The Moffatt Girls. 

After I laminate the students' name plates, I will velcro them in place, which also makes for easy seat changes later on in the school year. 

After deciding on a theme for my classroom, I started looking for basic supplies in coordinating colors, such as pencil and crayon baskets, trash buckets, and table caddies.

The Dollar Tree is my favorite spot for super cute, super cheap, and durable plastic student supply containers. I purchased these cute red trash buckets for $1 each. I found free coordinating table number labels from Rowdy in Room 300's TpT store, which I then attached to each bucket.  

I chose to purchase the same color buckets for each table because not only will it go with my theme, but it will also help students to reinforce their number recognition skills. Instead of relying on knowing that their table always gets the red bucket, students will have to know that they are a part of table one and; therefore, must use the bucket labeled "Table 1." Later on in the school year, I might change these labels from numerals to number words to reinforce number word recognition. 

I also managed to find green table caddies at The Dollar Tree (also for $1 each) that will hold each table's liquid and stick glue, as well as their scissors. 

I dressed these caddies up with coordinating red polka dot ribbon from Walmart and the same table number labels. 

One piece of classroom management advice regarding table caddies and trash buckets: keep them off of students' tables and out of the way until you are ready to use them. Otherwise, during a math lesson you'll look up to discover that one of your students has glued his neighbor's arm to the table or that another has decided that math is too tricky and that she has decided to go for her cosmetology license by cutting her own hair (yikes). I store mine on the window sill and it is a much coveted job for a student to retrieve their table's caddy and trash bucket. 

I typically try to purchase pencil and crayon baskets at The Dollar Tree as well because they run 3 baskets for $1, but alas, two stores in my area were out. :( Based on a tip from a teacher friend on Instagram, I decided to stake out Big Lots for the ever elusive pencil baskets. As luck would have it, I found several, but not in my colors of red and green. 

These turquoise baskets were 3 for $1.20 at Big Lots, so it really wasn't far off from my usual steal at The Dollar Tree. I decided I could live with turquoise pencil baskets as teachers usually stock up on these items and I would rather have pencil baskets of some kind than not at all. I was also pleasantly surprised with how well they coordinated with my red polka dot owl name plates when I brought them home (see below). 

Each student will have their own pencil basket, which will hold two sharpened pencils with either fully functioning erasers or eraser hats as well as the basic crayon colors to start with. My mentor taught me to start each student off with only the basic colors in order to teach them how to properly treat and keep up with their crayons. They will later receive a full box of 24 count crayons labeled with their name to store in their pencil basket once they have demonstrated that they can properly care for their crayons.

Everything is starting to come together!

Tell a Story. Make Some Light.

Just as assuredly as M&M's are the best pizza topping (seriously, why has Domino's not realized this?!), one of the greatest stories ever written is Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux. (For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with the unlikely mouse hero with the unusual name, I suggest that you calmly and carefully close your computer and walk -- no, run! -- to your local library. Or, if you happen to cross me on the street and if you pinky swear that you will not dog ear any of its pages or read it while eating spaghetti and engaging in a lively debate or drinking chocolate milk while laughing at an inside joke, and that you will return it as swiftly as possible, I might be willing to lend you my copy. In any case, trust me. You won't be able to put it down.)

Perhaps my favorite line from the story is spoken by a jailer named Gregory, whose life is both literally and metaphorically confined to darkness while guarding a pitch black maze of a dungeon. Thirsting for light, when the mouse on a mission stumbles into Gregory at the beginning of his adventure, the jailer begs Despereaux to shine just a bit of light into his life of darkness. He sorrowfully says, 

“Stories are light. 

Light is precious in a world so dark. 

Begin at the beginning. 

Tell...a story. 

Make some light.”

Yes, a big reason why I chose to start a blog was to help me organize my teaching ideas for my classroom and to chronicle my journey as a first year teacher. As a first year teacher, I can promise you I'll make mistakes, land myself in awkward situations, get paid in frustration, come home with a cute quote from one of my students, have nightmares about report cards, and maybe, just maybe, survive until June. 

As my Facebook friends will be happy to learn, another, smaller reason why I chose to start a blog is so that I don't ambush my poor friends and family on Facebook with my seemingly trivial spaziness (both my spidey sense and the red squiggly lines on my screen have alerted me that this is not an actual word, but upon further reflection, an already existing word simply does not convey the meaning and connotation I wish to convey; oh wait, spazy-ness...nope, I give up) over the latest chevron classroom accessory on Teachers Pay Teachers or my thoughts on the glue sponge vs glue bottle debate and so on. (However, I realize that I may already be too late on this one. Whoops.) 

In my opinion, one of the best reasons for creating something like a blog is to tell a story and make some light. I hope that this is what I will accomplish with this blog; that even if it is just the swift spark of a lightning bug, I hope to create some precious light in a world otherwise so dark.