3 Favorite Classroom Items

The ladies over at the Teaching Trio have encouraged me to share three favorite things with you for their Favorite Things linky.

Today I am going to tell you about three of my favorite classroom items.  These are three things that I use in my classroom every day.

My colorful Expo markers

 

 I write on my board so much during the day that it gets pretty full.  I like to use different colors to help students differentiate between various things on the board.  I use different colors for different subjects.  

I also use the colors to emphasize different parts of an exercise.  For example, when I teach the parts of sentences, I might use red to underline the verb, blue for the subject, green for prepositional phrases, and so on.  Sometimes, I even let the students use colored pencils to follow the same pattern on their own papers. 

The color choices also come in handy during math.  I write problems on the board in black usually, but I use the other colors to show the steps students will take to solve a problem.  This is especially useful in teaching multiplication and division.

 

My plug-in wax warmer

I love having my classroom smell wonderful while I am teaching.  {And when you teach in the upper elementary, a classroom doesn't always smell that pleasant - especially after recess!)

My teaching binder

I started using my own teaching binder last year instead of a traditional grade book.  This was definitely one of the best decisions I have made as a teacher.  I love having everything I need in one binder - lesson plans, grades, student information, monthly calendars, reading plans, and more.  I made my own lesson plan sheets to print out, but I did download the awesome cover and calendar pages from Brandi Miller,  grade recording pages from Tracee Orman, and editable teacher planner pages from Haley O'Conner.  Not only is my binder useful in so many ways, but it is now super cute as well!

 What things do you use in your classroom everyday that you wouldn't be able to live without?

First Day Back

Today was our first day back to school!  I personally enjoy going back to school after a break.  I like getting back into a routine, back into my classroom, and back to teaching.  

And even though the kids might not admit it, I always think they are glad to be back too!

I kept my kiddos busy today {and got everything I had planned done as a result}.  Here are just a couple of the things we accomplished.

We used the Winter Break Snapshot Journal by Rachelle Rosenblit for a fun writing activity.  We will be working on this all week long during writing time.  I enjoyed listening to the students talk about what they did over break, and the journals already look so cute!

My 6th graders started a new topic in our Interactive Reading Notebooks today.  We defined story devices and colored and cut out the pieces that we will use tomorrow to take notes on.

I was busy during my free hour too.  I finished putting up my new bulletin boards and worked on report card grades.

The students are going to write times when they help someone on mittens to hang on this board.  Hopefully it will encourage some extra kindness among each other!

I can't say that every day is this productive, but at least the first day back was.  Hopefully I can keep this up all week!

How was your first day back after break?

Our Christmas Festivities

Christmas Break has finally arrived!!  

I am not going to lie to you.  I am pretty excited to have a couple weeks off.  And I think the kids all need a break too.  We have been doing some fun Christmas activities over the past few days though.  

 

We wrote cute Christmas tree shape poems to hang on my bulletin board.  This was an easy project, and the poems came out great!

We decorated our classroom complete with Christmas lights.  {And sometimes we even worked with the lights off!}

We gave presents from our elementary students to all of the volunteers that help out in our room.  The kids loved signing all the cards to put in the presents.

And we had our annual Christmas program on Thursday night.  My kids did amazingly well.  We have so many practices. {And this year, I did not feel like the practices went very well}  But they pulled off an awesome performance!

I was so proud of them all!

And of course, we had our Christmas party on Friday morning.

Party snacks were first, and then the kids got to open presents.  The students each bought a present for another student, and then we teachers all chipped in to get a present for each student as well.

{We got each student a book at their reading level, a word search book, and two pencils.}

The kids were super excited about every present that was opened.  It was so fun to watch!

We teachers had fun, and I know the students had fun too!