My theme is coming along!

Well I decided to do a "Hollywood" theme. Why? Because it's the most popular and very simple to create. Plus I've always been 'mesmerized' by Hollywood. I have a clip chart themed Hollywood, which a co-worker found for me at The First Grade Parade. I found many ideas from other sites too, of which I cannot remember, I've looked at so many sites. So to all those who created Hollywood themed classroom "stuff", a big huge THANK YOU! Now all I need are Daily 5 cards to match my theme. I created them myself, but eh, they don't look as cute. 

I have been sitting on Pinterest finding a whole bunch of stuff, neglecting other things, like the Lucy Calkins Writer's Workshop and the Daily 5 and Cafe. I must get to those things and soon. Thank goodness for Vacation Bible School starting next week so I won't sit here half the day googling Hollywood themed stuff. I'll add pictures later when I get them taken of what I've found. Although I'll probably wait until I can get into my classroom and start decorating. 

Starting Second Grade

This will be my second attempt at blogging while teaching. My first attempt was last school year (2011-2012), which was my first year of teaching. I was a third grade teacher at Inverness Primary School. Thankfully, I was asked back but was moved to second grade, hence the title of my blog. 

I am on a whole new team, minus a co-worker of mine from my third grade team. And I couldn't be happier. I will be next door to my co-worker, which we've become really good friends, as well as next door to a mentor teacher, who has more or less become one of two of my "moms away from home". The rest of my team and I have all clicked really well, all having the same general ideas of how we want our team to be ran. 

We all want to use the 'clip chart' for positive behavior as well as attempt the Daily 5 (or in our case, Daily 3, as our 90 minute reading bock will not accommodate the true Daily 5). Also, 5 of the 6 members of our team have all come from 'secondary' grade levels, meaning 3-5. So this will be a challenge to say the least. Also, while our grade level is not required to document Common Core State Standards (CCSS), we are to attempt to incorporate some of the standards into our lesson plans as a means of getting to know how Common Core is. As a team, we had two days of this past week, to work together to wrap our brains around CCSS and started to write lesson plans to incorporate them. We have the first 5 weeks of school planned as far as reading goes.

To say the least, I think our team will work well together! I'm super excited. Last year was a rough year for me, this career proving to not come as easy to me as I thought it would. I struggled to keep ahead, fit in with my administrators; basically just to get through the year was a struggle. This new school year is proving to be 100% better and it hasn't even started!

Like I said, I will attempt to keep this blog going as I love the idea of blogging and sharing my ideas. 

Until then... starting second grade... again! 

~Kelly~