1.  Restock assessment materials for beginning of the year.
This is a true sanity saver!  When you finish up your Fountas & Pinnell (F&P), DRA, DIBELS, or whatever other assessments you use go ahead and do yourself a favor and make your copies for next year.  Nothing is worse than feeling prepped for back to school, then sitting down for your first F&P assessment only to find you don’t have any copies of the Level D Fiction book in your folder – btw its The Nice Little House (that skunk is pretty smart if you ask me).

4.  Use Scholastic points for end of year gifts.
Have you struck it rich as a teacher yet?  No?  Me neither.

A great way to get your kids a small end of the year gift without breaking the bank is to save your Scholastic points throughout the year from book orders.  If you don’t use Scholastic book orders in your class, do yourself a HUGE favor and sign up [here] immediately!

Every year I gift my students The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf.  The message of the story is one that is so powerful I feel every child should hear it.  And thanks to Scholastic, I gift it for FREE!

If you don’t have a class copy, again I highly recommend this book!

I personally think books make the best gifts.  I’ve given trinkets in the past, but love the meaning behind a book.  However, give what works best for you and your kids!

5.  Pin some ideas for next year.

6.  Clean, clean, and clean some more.
Let’s face it.  We start the year with perfectly manicured classrooms, everything is in order and CLEAN.  Add 20 children and fast forward 180 days.  How’s that room looking now?  More importantly, how clean is that room?  I’ll be the first to say that despite great intentions, as the year goes on things become disheveled – and often dirty.Take some time to clean before heading out to summer break.  You will thank yourself when you come back in August.  Want a little bonus tip?  Have your kids help!You can fill large containers/bins with warm, soapy water and dump toys, manipulative, whatever else that needs cleaning into it.  Let the kids go to town “playing” in the water.  They LOVE it!  We’ll just keep the fact that they’re actually helping us clean a little secret.

7.  Add behavior incentives (as needed).
If you have one of those classes that is well-behaved all the time, even at the and of the year – I hate you.    Ok… I didn’t mean that.  However, I am jealous.For the rest of us who have kiddos that seem to “forget” how to be in school, here’s a tip for you.  Every year I have taught I have used an end of the year countdown as a behavior incentive.  Each day we pop a balloon and earn the reward inside.  Yes, I said earn.  The kiddos don’t always get the incentive if behavior is not on point.  You can read more about how I set up my countdown [here].

8.  Keep kids engaged.
This ties directly into the behavior management that I mentioned above.  If your kids aren’t engaged, especially at the end of the year, kiss your classroom management strategies goodbye.  Nothing is worse than a group of kids who are flat out bored.One thing that I did this year to keep kids engaged until the last day was an animal PBL unit.  The kids picked an animal to become experts on during our animal unit.  During the last week or so of school the kids spent a ton of time building a virtual zoo exhibit on Book Creator, then actually building an exhibit.  Students voice and student choice for the win!  More to come on that unit later!

My reflection of the year can be found [here].

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Excuse me while I shake the glitter out of my hair.

I can’t believe it has already been 3 years since I began my journey teaching.  And it has already been 2 years since I walked across the stage with this fantastic group of people.  Time flies!

The Good

After feeling fairly frustrated with teaching (yes after two years) with all of the red tape, standardized testing, and other hoops to jump through I knew that I had to find my happy place.  For those of you who may not know, I unexpectedly left my teaching position during my second year of teaching to move to another school/district.

Trust me, I had a great reason, and you can read more about that [here].

That was the best decision I have ever made for my career – well besides going to grad school maybe.  By standing up for what I believe in I landed a job at my dream school.  The mister calls it Hogwarts…  And it truly is a magical place.  A school that values learning through play, project-based learning, developing the social-emotional aspect of children, has a chicken coop as well as a cow, pig, and goats, and I could go on, and on.  It’s a great feeling to know that I’ve found my place in education.

The Bad Not So Good

This was my first year diving into the writing world of Lucy Calkins.  While I have grown an appreciation for her approach to teaching writing, I know that this was not my strongest suit this year.  Looking back I remember having an “oh $#%@” moment and realizing my kids had not progressed quite to where they should be at that point.  We put things into overdrive, and I feel confident my kiddos are ready for First Grade – but I will definitely be looking/reading more about her methodology for next year.

Moving to a new school can always be challenging for forming relationships.  I landed on a great team, but I feel like we didn’t really get to know each other (much less teachers in other grade levels).  My goal next year is to branch out and get to know more of the teachers.

In trying to learn the ropes at a new school, I feel like I let my identity as a teacher with autonomy go somewhat.  No I didn’t become some robotic alien, as exciting as that may have been.  I guess this one is hard for me to put into words.  So lets just say that I plan on making sure that my voice/vision is apparent in my classroom a little more next year.

The Ugly Surprisingly Humbling

My school believes in handmade/teacher-made classroom materials.  No I don’t mean to say that we go into a woodworking shop and build our own supply caddies and whittle pencils from sticks…  Rather my school likes to see very little to no worksheets – and anything that may even be slightly thought of as a worksheet should have been made by the teacher.  We also don’t use a lot of cutesy stuff from teacher supply stores to decorate our classrooms.  In fact the only thing hanging on a wall in my room that is from a teacher store is the background for the calendar (yet the students make the actual calendar pieces each month) and a pocket chart for keeping track of days in school.

This was a hard pill to swallow as I embarked on my exciting new journey.  Here I am, Teachers Pay Teachers author, and my school doesn’t use worksheets or pages with lots of cute clip art.  Surprisingly this made me feel less pressure as I went through the year.  I didn’t have to spend time adding borders and clip art to anything I was making for class.  I didn’t have to spend loads of money buying borders, punch out letters, or poster.  I didn’t have to spend hours creating bulletin boards (because only student work goes on the walls – it is their classroom after all).  And guess what?  My kids still learned.

Do I plan to continue creating for TpT?  Of course.  My vision for what I can create has just been broadened.  And I’m very, very excited to begin creating more products that would still be acceptable at my school as well as others.

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Not only did I have a great time wrapping up the year today with my first graders, but I also managed to finish packing/cleaning my classroom AND get officially checked out for summer!  Here
is my empty classroom as I said goodbye!

Now for a look at the Read Aloud that I did today.  I found this idea somewhere when searching through teaching websites…  I read “Miss Rumphius” by Barbara Cooney to my kiddos today.  Here’s where I tell you that if you have never read this story, GET ON IT!  It is an amazing book about a little girl named Alice (later referred to as Miss Rumphius) who promises her grandfather 3 things:  (1) that she would visit faraway places, (2) that she would live by the sea when she gets older, and (3) that she will do something to make the world more beautiful.

The story walks through her fulfillment of each promise.  The final promise is fulfilled when Miss Rumphius plants Lupine flower seeds.  After she realizes how much she loves them, she plants them all over her village, thereby making the world more beautiful.  The story circles back when the granddaughter of Miss Rumphius makes the same three promises that Miss Rumphius did as a child.  It   is truly one of the best pieces of children’s literature that  I’ve ever read, and my kiddos were enthralled from start to finish.

I sent each kiddo home with a small baggie of Lupine seeds and a note attached that said “You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”  We talked about how we might not know what that thing is right now (just like Alice didn’t when she was young), but that they would figure it out when they were older.

I don’t shed tears too easily or too often, but let me tell you… reading this story and hearing my kids so excited that Miss Rumphius kept her promises almost made it happen.

Who am I kidding?  I did cry today – but just once (or twice).  When I had to say goodbye to one of my very special friends, I lost control for a moment.  It was hard to say goodbye to my first class ever, but even harder to say goodbye to this friend.  Wondering what will happen to this particular student in the future kills me.  I wish I could just keep teaching this student because I know that I would do whatever I could to make sure he/she would get exactly what he/she needs.  I guess that’s a lesson to be learned as a teacher.  That and to not forget my sunglasses for carline on the last day!  It’s impossible to hide a stray tear or two without them!

It’s OFFICIALLY summer break for me!  I am excited for this much needed time off!  And… I found out what grade I’ll be teaching at my new school next year.  Stay tuned for the big announcement!

As I planned math lessons this year, it was so important to make sure I was building and connecting background knowledge that would enable my kiddos to be successful not just in 1st grade, but in later years as well.   This meant TONS of opportunities for my kids to make real-world connections to math.  However, as we approached the end of the school year, I knew that our students needed to build fluency in addition and subtraction to be successful in 2nd grade.  After speaking with some of my team members, I settled on an idea that would dramatically increase engagement and motivation to reach a goal that would potentially require quite a bit of “memorization” or “drill.”

So came the birth (so to speak) of my latest creation, Super Sundae Math Facts!  Basically, students progress through 11 different math facts test that focus on addition, subtraction, and then both together.  For each test that is passed, students earn an ice cream sundae ingredient.  I can just about guarantee you that the addition of ice cream sundaes DRAMATICALLY increased engagement in what could have been perceived as boring practice.  It was amazing to see my students so excited about passing the next test, or hear about how much they had been practicing at home.  Seriously, kids excited about math – what could be better??  Please see my previous post to see more about what I’m talking about.

This packet is a complete system for building fluency in addition and subtraction.  It is Common Core aligned and most app
ropriate for 1st grade – but can be used in Kindergarten and 2nd grade as well!  The packet includes:

• 11 Different tests to build math fluency
• Answer keys for each test
• Super Sundae recording form so that students can keep track of which tests they have passed and which sundae toppings they have earned
• Parent communication letters in English AND Spanish
• 2 pages of flash cards for each test

I think that the best thing about building fluency using a packet like this is that students can progress at their own INDIVIDUAL level.  Differentiation using an activity like this is almost so easy that it happens by itself!

In honor of completing one of my first summer projects, I am offering a raffle for a free copy of my Super Sundae Math Facts packet!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Just… one… more… day… Summer break is so close that I can taste it!  If it weren’t for a bad weather make-up day on Tuesday of next week, we would already officially be on summer break.  Oh well, the positive is that because this week we have had noon release every day I have been able to get my classroom packed up.  It looks like I might have an hour or two after school Tuesday to get it completely packed and loaded into my car, and then I can stay home on our workday the following Wednesday.

On to the Five for Friday linky party!

First, we did an awards ceremony in class.  I used an awesome End of Year Award packet from Curriculum Castle.  You can grab a copy here.

I thought about doing this myself, then quickly decided the kiddos could help.  The name tags we had at the beginning of the year quickly became worn, so after Christmas break I put nice, new ones on the desks.  However, I couldn’t get the old ones off!  They simply did not want to come off (easily anyway), and I didn’t have the patience to spend a huge amount of time on each one so I just placed the new ones on top of them!

The new ones were only attached using packing tape, so they came off without any trouble.  Then we had to get creative.  I searched google and found a few different suggestions for getting them off.  A lot of teachers recommended using a straight razor blade.  Clearly I could not give my kiddos razor blades, so that was not going to work!  So what did a try?  The end of a dry erase marker!  These were the ones that we had been using all year anyway, so who cared if they got ruined?  It worked like a charm, and after some awesome modeling on my part, it only took about 15 minutes total. I know this daunting task would have taken me hours if I did it myself.  Work smarter, not harder!

Every day this week has been a complete whirlwhind!  Field day was Monday, and I got to monitor one of the 8 bounce houses that we had.  Yes, I said 8 bounce houses!  Here is a picture of my view for most of the day.  It was so much fun for the kiddos, but I was absolutely exhausted!

Today we had an ice cream sundae party to reward the students for passing timed math facts quizzes.  Why on Earth would I want to get them all sugared up?

Ok… Let me explain.  All year long we have worked on building strong conceptual understanding of addition, subtraction, etc.  But, it was time to build some fluency to help get the kiddos ready for 2nd grade!  We created 11 tests for the kiddos to progress through (addition of 0s, 1s, and 2s for example).  Each time a student got a 100% in the 3 minute time period, he or she got to advance to the next test.  The reward for passing each test was a different item for their sundaes.  The first two tests earned them a spoon and bowl respectively, then the third test was where they actually earned ice cream.  After that the kiddos got to add chocolate syrup, cherries, gummies, oreos, and a few other tasty additions!  Let me tell you… Engagement was at an all time HIGH!  Of course we wanted to reward the kiddos who did not pass the first 3 tests, so we gave them a lollipop and talked about all the hard work they put into it!  After the kids ate their sundaes, we had some sidewalk chalk time as our countdown surprise for today.  They had a blast!

One of my first summer projects is to get all of the ice cream sundae documents looking all spiffy and loaded onto TPT.  Check back for it soon!

Suffice it to say, I’m basically treating tomorrow as if it were the last day, even though we have one more half day next Tuesday.  I’m assuming several kiddos (and know that some for sure) won’t be attending that final half day.

When I was prepping for this week, I knew that I would need a visual schedule to get me through it!  With crazy lunch schedules, specials schedules and celebrations, I was scared I would inevitably be late to something or forget to take the kiddos somewhere.  Now my schedule isn’t as nice looking as some of the ones I’ve seen out there, but these are a completely different format that our typical plans.  It was a nice change to have everything so easy to see!!

Thanks to this handy sheet my week went by smoothly!

Some of the activities we are doing this week can be found from other sellers on TPT.

“Suiting Up for Next Year” was created by Michelle Hudgeons and can be found here.

The bucket glyphs are a great freebie from Teaching Heart and can be found here.

The “Thank You” cards are a freebie from Mrs. Padak and can be found here.

The nouns, verbs, and adjectives sort is another great freebie, but I can’t for the life of me find where I got it from!  If you recognize it, please let me know so I can give whoever created it credit!

Time to get the gifts prepped that I got the kiddos.  They’re nothing too fancy… some plastic beach buckets filled with goodies and one very special gift.  I’ll share more about that tomorrow!