preparing for the 2012-2013 school year

I have been pinning from Pinterest and came across some really good ideas and spent the afternoon working on a few anchor charts.  I have used charts in my classroom but not like these.  As the end of a school ends and the new one gets ready to begin, I reflect on the school year as to ways to improve myself, my teaching and student learning.  So some of these charts I think will help my ELL students have a visual as well as the non-ELL students.

 This anchor chart I hopes illustrates a good listener.  It lets them know the points of a good listener: eyes watching, ears listening, mouth waits to talk, hands in lap, raise hand to talk, face forward, and sit criss cross apple sauce.

This anchor chart I plan to use with our 3rd grade reading buddies.  It will help our reading buddies see how to sit and what they can do with their little buddy.  They can choose a book together, echo read, ask questions about a certain page, and practice sitting EEKK (elbow-elbow knee knee) with the book in the middle of their laps.

 My students are using unifex cubes to measure our plants in our garden bed as well as the bed itself.

Green Thumb Garden Gals

My BFF and I will be presenting next week at the ELL Summer Summit in Tulsa.  We are going to be sharing our start with our school gardens and how we use them in our classroom.  I am excited this will be my second presentation to my peers (my first was on how to get resources for your classroom through Donors choose).

The First year of our school gardens was mainly the set up phase.  This year we actually got to use it in the classroom to teach our students through a variety of methods from science, math, to writing.

Garden update

 April 4 , 2012 growth from our garden bed.  We planted lettuce, spinach, cabbage, cosmos, and tomatoes.

This is a fourth grade bed their beans are growing so fast.

Signs of spring

 My students are holding the chain we used to measure the circumference of our garden bed.  We counted each chain and there was 228 chains and it took 20 of my students to hold it.  We then used the same chain to measure our classroom.  From wall to wall the chain was the same as the circumference of our garden bed.

 Today my students made hand print Easter chicks.  I got the idea from a site that I googled under the subject hand print crafts.

 Each year I have my students do this activity.  It is a cute way to learn the parts of the flower.  They get to learn the names while learning to write the words. I use real sunflower seeds for the inside of the flower, a cupcake foil for the petals, a straw for the stem (I only had red ones lol), yarn for the roots and then they cut out their own leaves from green construction paper.

This is a new thing I did with the children.  They wrote words that had to do with spring onto raindrops and then glued them to an umbrella.  It turned out really cute.

Chinese New Year ...the Year of the Dragon

 Flag of China....continue to learn about different countries with Around the World with Pre K

 Chinese New Year Mobile

 The symbol for Dragon...2012 is the Year of the Dragon

In the writing center the students can write Chinese symbols for animals....

New winter projects

 Name Snowmen....The students put one letter of their name on one "snowball".  Then added the face to a smaller snowball.

 Snowy Day scenes from the book.  Students got to choose the colors of their buildings and then use colored chalk to make the snaw.

 "I have A Dream"....the students were asked to tell me what they "Dreamed" to become when they grow up.