Daily 5, Mini-Tour & Bucket Fillers!!!

YOU GUYS. I loooove our class!! All 44 of them! They are doing AWESOME! I am loving this team teaching thing! We had our parent meeting last night, and we had a great turn out, and the parents all seemed excited :) Made us feel really good! We have great kids and great families for sure!

This week we have started the Daily 5. We are using Daily 5 for Dummies to help us plan our lessons. HOWEVER, we are taking it a bit slower. So what D5 for Dummies says to do in one day, we are doing in two. Yesterday and today we learned 3 ways to read a book. We also learned the CAFE strategy of Check for Understanding. Then we worked and worked on building our stamina for Read to Self. Amy and I were honestly a tad worried about how Read to Self would go with 44 kiddos, but OMG they were AMAZING!!! I am so excited for Daily 5 to really get up and running in the next several weeks :)

Okay, last week I was very busy with Open House and other last minute things, so I did not get to post photos of my classroom. These are from Open House night {so excuse all the baskets and whatnot all over the place!}

These are the packets we had for Open House... A checklist for what to do that night, Magic Confetti {I cannot remember who I got that from-if it's yours PLEASE leave a comment so I can give you credit!}, Cara's Student Info Sheet and Getting to Know Your Child sheet, my Helping Hands sheet {from my Beginning of the Year Forms}, and a Welcome letter explaining our class!

My teacher table {with the lanterns I bought and pom poms I made}

Our Classroom Jobs {from my store} and our library pockets. Each pocket has a popsicle stick in it. We write each child's reading level to help them find books in the library. It also serves as a hall pass!

My giant leaf from Ikea! This is a favorite reading area :)

Our Writer's Eye board {pick up your FREE copy here}

My teacher computer & Word Chunk Wall..... AND where my Smart Board is supposed to go.... still hasn't been installed :( I am getting impatient and antsy!!!

Our morning routine board. We say our pledges, then do the school creed, school song, class creed, character trait of the month, word of the week {not posted yet} and quote of the week {not posted yet}.

Our Tree-riffic Words! We will add each word of the week to this tree, so it will be FULL by the end of the year! This is also our turn-in station. Kiddos highlight their names on their papers before turning them in. No forgotten names!!!

Our Bucket Fillers!

To kick off Bucket Filling, Amy demonstrated using a tube of toothpaste. She squeeeeezed it all out.

Then we tried having a few friends put the toothpaste back in using toothpicks {because Mrs. Lynes has no toothpaste at home! Haha} Of course, we couldn't get it all back in! So we talked about how we can't take back our words, and if we say something hurtful, those words stick-even if we say sorry.

Then we read

and discussed what it meant to be a "Bucket Filler" and "Bucket Dipper." We made a Bucket Filler anchor chart and a Bucket Dipper anchor chart.

We threw away our Bucket Dipper chart because we will only fill buckets this year! :)

It's been a great year so far, and I am SO EXCITED!!