My new planner

I am so excited to get my class list and schedule so that I can insert the information into my new teacher planner. I am going to save so much time this year and really be organized.

 

 

I worked really hard to make this planner simple to use for any teacher. I made one for myself like this a few years ago but this time I made sure to add everything I needed to it, such as expense sheets, parent volunteer information, substitute information pages and pages to write my weekly objectives. It's personalized so I get to show off that this awesome planner is MINE!

To get your planner or to know more, visit my teacher store at here. Don't forget to check out the previews to see how simple the planner is to use!

Moving Up!

I am going into my 10th year of teaching. Time flies!

The last few years I have changed schools, either because I have had to, being young and having less seniority than any other permanent teacher at my schools, or because I was trying to get closer to home to have a few more minutes at home with my little girl. Because of this, I haven't always had much control over deciding which grade I was going to teach. This year, I had a bit of control. I had to choose between moving up with my first graders into second grade, or moving up to fourth grade. I chose the latter.

I love teaching any grade. I love teaching, period.

I loved organizing my first grade class last year, down to deciding between tables and desks for my students (I chose tables and didn't regret it for a second during the year) to decorating my reading corner and designing my classroom job task cards for the bulletin board. I loved organizing my program and implementing my lessons. I grew a lot last year, learned a lot about myself and my teaching style.




Classroom Jobs Display Set

This year, I have to rethink everything. Last time I taught fourth grade, two years ago, I hadn't had time to get organized the way I do this year. I was ill, waiting for surgery, and was trying to survive. This year, everything will be PERFECT!! (Yah, right).

Now I am looking for ways to organize my class similarly as my first grade class, but with my larger furniture. I want my class to be appealing and welcoming, organized, age-appropriate and conducive to individual and group work.

I also need to update some of my materials and projects to make them level-appropriate, because they are as interesting and appealing to my little kids as to the older kids in the school.

I have my work cut out for me and I have a lot of thinking to do.

I welcome comments and suggestions about blogs, articles and sites to check out.

Update on the birds

I learned, this week, that finches are very sensitive about moving.

Before March Break, there was only one of six eggs left to hatch. Five baby finches were born in the classroom in the presence of my students. They loved it. They ran in every recess to check on them and see how they were doing.

Four baby finches

During March Break, the heating in my school is turned off. I had to move my birds, my fish and my plants to a warmer temporary home for the week.

Unfortunately, my mama and papa birds decided that they did not like the move and they stopped taking care of their babies. Despite my best efforts of trying to keep the babies warm and to feed them, they all died two days after bringing them home.

I will be bringing the birds back to school tomorrow. Today I found a new egg in the bottom of the cage. Not all is lost. The parents have moved on and I don't plan on moving them again until the end of the school year, so the next batch of babies should be alright.

My students will be able to compare their observations from the last set of babies to the next. It will be interesting to see how this will go.

More to come!

Birds of a Feather

In my class we have two finches, a couple named Ping and Pong. They are a breeding pair, and I knew this when I adopted them and brought them into my first grade class. Little did I know that within a few weeks my students were going to get excited because they found a finch egg in the bottom of the cage!

Since I wasn't expecting the birds to lay eggs that quickly, I tried to make a makeshift nest and put the egg in it, but the birds knocked it out of the "nest" and it cracked on the bottom of the cage.

That evening I purchased a finch nest and the makings to go into it. The next day I placed everything into the cage.

When I came into school the next day, the finches had laid a new egg in the nest. The next day there was another one. And then another one. And then another one. Finally, after less than a week, the finches had laid a total of six eggs. The male and female took turns sitting on the eggs. The kids were pumped! They rushed into the classroom every morning and after recess to check to see the status of the eggs.





Four finch eggs in their nest.
They are about the size of Cadbury Mini Eggs.



Never having taken care of breeding birds, I was nervous about cleaning the cage. Did they reject the first egg from the bottom of the cage because I had touched it? If I touched items in the cage, would they reject the new eggs?




Ping (the light colored female) and Pong (the colorful male)
in their dirty cage.


Finally, I googled it. I learned that the cage should continue to be cleaned because of the risk of disease for the chicks once they hatched.

The cage is now clean. (Phew!) I am a bit of an organization and clean freak in my classroom. The new status of my cage was comforting to me.

Students began to ask me when the eggs would hatch. I had been told about two weeks, originally. To be certain, I asked the staff at my local pet shop how long it should take and they told me it would take about 24 to 28 days for the eggs to hatch.

Yesterday, after lunch hour, a student came into the classroom, raced to the birdcage, (as usual) and exclaimed, "A bird hatched! There's a baby!"

I figured, yah, right. His wants to play a trick and tease his classmates.



SURPRISE!!!

Nope! An egg had hatched! It took about 21 days after laying for the first egg to hatch.

I tried to fend off the students since the parents had gotten jittery and nervous with all of the kids racing to the cage and sticking their faces in to get a look. Instead, I took a picture with my phone and showed it to them.

This morning, another egg had hatched.

Two babies out and four eggs left to hatch.

 

 

This adventure sparked my creative teacher side and made me wonder, how can I use this opportunity to motivate and teach the students?

 

I created my Birds of a Feather unit.

 

 

 



Available at teacherspayteachers.com



 

Through my Birds of  a Feather unit, I am teaching my students vocabulary, grammar, about facts vs. opinions, list writing (what do pet birds need?), instruction writing (how do you take care of birds?).

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also used this experience to teach math through bird and egg themes math problems.

 

 

 

 

Finally, because the kids are so keen on observing the birds and checking their progress, I made an observation journal.

 

Below you can see the cover and the first page. In my Birds of a Feather Unit, there are pages for follow-ups and progress observed by the students.

 

 

 

 

 

We started working on this unit on Monday, the day the first egg hatched. This kids are loving it. It is concrete and allows them to spy on the birds, talk about their experiences and share what they are learning.

 

If you are interested in downloading my Birds of a Feather Unit, click on the link to find it in my TeachersPayTeachers store.

 

 

 

I hope you enjoy it as much as my students and I are!

 

Miss Chantal





My first post!

Well, this is my first blog post ever. In this blog I will share what we are working on in class, as well as systems I use to organize the classroom and various activities. I am open to suggestions and would love to answer questions anyone may have about what I post.

Coming soon: Photos of my classroom this year.

Library Organization

I recently added new books to my classroom library.

In the past, I hated my classroom library. I invested a lot in books and took the time every year to organize the books into different bins, only for all the books to end up being mixed up and misplaced a few days later. I think we hope that if we explain to students how our library is organized at the beginning of the year that they will understand right away and sort classroom books efficiently. Shortly afterwards, our students remind us that they are in 5, 6, 7.... years old.

This year, at the beginning of the year, I took the time to sort my books again, but this time I organized myself differently. I made labels for each bin, as organized teachers usually do. However, I realized that to help students return books to the correct bins, they need visual cues. To provide these cues to them, I printed the same images that I have on my book bin labels onto stickers labels and put them on the back of each book.

When students have finished reading a book, they flip it over, look at the image I've stuck to the back of the book, and they proceed by putting the book back in the correct bin.


This is what my classroom library looks like.



This is one of my library bins and books that belong in it, all clearly labelled.



 

My Classroom Library Organization Pack is FREE for a limited time on TeachersPayTeachers.

 

 

 

 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Classroom-library-organization-pack-1698732