Soaring Through 1st and 2nd

Shew, what a week!? I hate to be that way, but man on man... it was just one of those weeks. I'll spare you the details, but I am sure thankful for my Saturday morning. I am praying for a more peaceful week next week.

I have been teaching for 3 years and I have had 3 classroom themes. I have loved all three, but also love creating new ones. This year's theme is my favorite, I think. When I was reader Debbie Millers, "Reading With Meaning" over the summer I loved when she talked about classroom environment and making it homey and inviting. She recommends pillows, lamps, and anything that will make the classroom feel cozy. I have always found classroom decor to be fun, but I wanted to know a little more about the "why" behind it. THIS research article does a great job of explaining how a comfortable learning environment can help increase student achievement. Ding! So don't let anyone fool you into thinking that creating and environment in your classroom is a waste of time, it's research proven people.

I am loving the calming effect of my theme this year. I did a soaring theme (my sister sucked me in when she showed me ideas that she had from ikea for her middle school classroom). I have lots of clouds and stars combined with green, blue, and yellow.

Here are some pictures:

My table mobiles made from a sewing hoop, card stock, and ribbon. 

Sky High Learning Targets

Love, love, love the poster printer at school. I made the clouds, printed them as posters and then had them laminated to be headers for all of my anchor boards. 

Cloud Cubby Number

I used a yellow paper lantern to make a 3D sun for the room. You can also see the "Math Cloud". 

You can't see a lot of them here, but I have created a classroom theme for my TPT store. You'll find things like the cloud header files, a star of the week packet, name tags, cubby labels, "soaring" work header, table signs, iPad rules, along with a few other fun things! 

Click here to grab this theme in my store! Hope you enjoy! 

Mrs. Phillips, What Do You Read?

The past thirty days my life has been consumed with literacy. I have been writing things to send home to families to explain the systems and goals of my classroom, I have been working with students to write, read, and understand classroom rules and procedures, my first and second graders have been working SO hard to build their reading stamina every single day, I have started guided reading groups and conferring with my kiddos. Life is good because I love teaching reading.

When my kids are reading I am walking around conferring with them or meeting with them in guided reading groups. I love this hour of the day because I get such intimate time with each student. When I can talk with a kiddo one on one about books that they are truly enjoying I learn so much about what interests them. I also get some extremely valuable assessment time. After having a 2-3 minute conversation with a student, I know of they understand what we learned in the min-lesson that day. Sometimes, I am just flat out knocked out by their responses! For example, when someone from my district asked one of my boys, "I see that you put a post-it note with a question mark on this page, did you have a question about this page?" and he responded "No," (GULP) "this page is just a mystery to me, what do you think is going on here?". I mean folks, I think he got it.

Anyway, I have gotten off track. I am loving my reading workshop time this year, but that wasn't my intent for this post today. One of my kids asked me the other day, "Mrs. Phillips what do you read when you are at home?". Well, bud... it's funny you should ask. I am taking 6 hours at the University of Louisville this semester and apparently literacy professors really like to assign reading?!? Who would have thought. Here are my current reads...

The Book Whisperer

Lenses On Reading

Literacy With An Attitude

Bridging Literacy and Equity

Three Cups of Tea

These classes have proven to make my nights pretty busy, but they are so interesting. I feel like each time I open one of these texts I am reevaluating myself as an educator. 

On another note, I opened a Teachers Pay Teachers store. Click the link to visit it! 

Here are some of the first things that I have uploaded to my store. 

First and Second Grade Common Core Checklist

Metacognition Garden

Sweet Shop Classroom Theme

I'll be uploading more themes soon and updating you on how all of my reading is going! Hope you can visit my store soon!

Up and Running!

Our season has definitely changed since last year. When I sit to think about it, my mind is kind of blown!
Josh is officially over halfway through dental school. When the heck did that happen? He has passed his 2 year boards and now works with patients on a daily basis. This guy is really becoming a dentist, not just studying science 24 hours a day. I am so thankful that he is finally getting to do what he has been working so hard for, for so so long. He is loving it and I haven't been up to the clinic but I have a feeling that he is doing awesome. The things he (and others) say that patients say about him are so nice, but he is a pretty likable guy.
My summer break has come and gone. Like really gone, gone. I worked on school stuff a decent amount this summer. I really enjoy having that time to prepare some things that just can't be a priority during the school year. An example of this might be cloud mobiles to hang above all of my tables, thank you HGTV. So I had my first grade brain ready to roll! 

Then, the first day of school came and those little kiddos were so sweet. We had a great first day. After that, the second day of school came. *Insert duhn duhn duhn sounds* We realized that our numbers in our school were a little crazy and that some splits were going to have to be formed. *major duhn duhn duhn*
Sooooo... guess who has been working on making her first grade brain and world a first and second grade brain and world?!?! This girl. Talk about a mind blower. But, I was happy to take on the challenge and when I got 9 of my kiddos from last year back I was so extremely excited!
My second graders have been such awesome helpers and it is so neat to get to do some review with those kids and also get to challenge my first graders by giving them some second grade exposure. We spent quite a bit of time working on creating a joint classroom community and now I hear first and second graders talk about being best friends and even forgetting who is in which grade.
They are such a neat mix of kids and I am learning so much about differentiating, classroom communities, the common core, and classroom management. We are wrapping up launching reading, writing, and math workshop and next week we take off. Say a little prayer, I am going to be small group and conferring my face off, in the words of my team mate :)
I felt like the first thing I needed to do was get a grip on second grade standards and to really study the differences between the first and second grade standards. It was such a challenge to compare the two when I couldn't find a document that would allow me to have them side by side, so I made a First/Second combined checklist. All first grade standards are in gray and the corresponding second grade standard can be found right below.

Click here to purchase from my brand spankin' new TPT store!

We haven't been so school focused that we haven't done anything else though.

We got to see Jeff Dunham at the KY state fair for my birthday. 

Lucky to have my sister-in-law in the same city with me for a weekend!

Go Tops! We headed down to Nashvegas last weekend to see the tops beat UK. 

We couldn't return to Louisville before Josh had a chance to get his dove hunting in. Don't you like the get up?

The best thing lately is DEFINITELY that my newest niece, Eleanor joined the world! She is so, so sweet. The cutest newborn around, but I might be a *little* partial. :)

We are busy busy, but isn't everyone? It'll always be busy, it will just be what is keeping us busy that will change. We are loving Louisville and the life we have here, so even though I do miss our family that is not here and I am looking forward to what our future holds, I am so thankful for this season.