That All Too Familiar Feeling!

That title is in reference to my certification test on Thursday. I know what you're thinking, "Didn't she take her certification test already?" Yes I took test 1 of 2 in early April.  Now it's time for me to take the second half which is the Spanish part.

I know Spanish, or at least I think I did. Studying for this is starting to prove that I know very little or I'm just being way to hard on myself. Anyway, the test is this Thursday and I'm a nervous wreck.  Test anxiety and I don't go well together. In fact, we despise each other. Okay enough test talk for one night, I'm on here to put the test in the back of my mind.

This past week we learned about the double oo sounds. Like in 'book' and 'fool'. Or as one child said, "booger" and "poop". I do not in any circumstance condone this type of language in my classroom, but hey they get the sound concept, right?  Anyway, I took the chef hat idea from Cara, which was not an easy thing to do like she said, and gave it to the children as we created our First Grade Cookbook of short double oo words.  Take a look.

Below you will see a picture of our long and short oo anchor chart. The kids loved the ghost. :)

We also did some Skittles graphing..and who doesn't love Skittles?? I stole this lesson off of Pinterest, which then lead me to Melissa's TPT store AKA Awesome in First! It really is a great lesson and so colorful. I LOVE colors!

Some of us were a tad shy!

So that was last week in a nut shell!

This week we are learning the digraph au/aw. I also found some really cute lessons on Pinterest. Thank you Pinterest Gods out there for making this crazy teacher's life so much easier. HA! You know you're thinking the same thing!  

Oh I had my formal observation today. I think it went really well. My principal burst out laughing  smiled at the things I said about au/aw, because don't you know us Jersey folk speak funny..with our aww's! I totally don't have a Jersey accent unless I'm speaking very fast and those aw/au show up in conversation ;). Okay peeps. I'm going to do some reading en español...impressive eh? JK! Then I'm going to call it a night. I am one tired teacher!

BTW, were anyone else's students off their rockers today. I'm doing my best to keep them as calm as possible, but the Texas heat doesn't help!!!

¡Buenas noches mi queridos!

Subjects and Predicates Anyone?

So this is going to be another quick post because I never did get to that grading...grr!! I also need to study for Spanish (I have my second certification test next Thurs.)

So this week my class started learning about subjects and predicates...I showed them the cute Mr. Morton video from School House Rock, they loved it but then I went into more depth with it. Some of them get it, some of them are looking at me like what crazy lady...I have summer vacation on the brain...yea you know that look! Anyway, I created a quick little lesson that I'm going to have partners work on tomorrow after I model of course!

I'm going to have one child write the subject and the other will be writing the predicate. They can take turns if they want!


So here it is and if it can be of any use to you go ahead.

Okay, I'm all planned for tomorrow...skittles graphing..double oo "froot looping" you know regular first grade stuff. :) Night ya'll!!!! I totally just wrote ya'll umm..I've been living in TX for too long!! JK!! :)

Quickest Post Ever!

Tomorrow I start my science unit on animals.  I made this KWL chart as a freebie. I used really cute fonts but Google Docs is being difficult and won't copy my pdf correctly..grr..Well here it is and if you want my cute copy just let me know. :)

I need to grade papers and go to bed, I'm still not feel very well...may be even running a fever...:(

Click the distorted image...(lol) to get it. :)

Oh yes, each day I'm having one Kindergarten student visit me and I can't tell if they're scared or just can't wait to come to my class but they are fighting for a turn..LOL sooooo cute!!

Okay night!!!

Sick on Sunday

I haven't been blogging as much as I would like because life has been busy. I know that's not a great excuse but it's true.  Well, I woke up this morning to a not so wonderful surprise--a sore throat! There's very few things in this world I hate but a sore throat is definitely one of them. Having a sore throat and teaching through it is just awful, don't you teachers out there agree?

Okay enough complaining because this is going to be a quick post since I'm not feeling to well.  I had the kids write their high frequency words on my windows and they had a blast! I turned it into a Daily 5 word work station for the kiddos. Those window markers are wonderful! It's hard to see but here are a couple of pictures.

                                     Cute right? :)

We also leard the oi, oy diphthongs and I snapped a picture of the poster that was somewhat inspired by The First Grade Parade.

This past Wednesday was my birthday and the wonderful parents at my school through me a surprise birthday party.  Seriously, how wonderful are they?  I didn't get any pictures of the event but I did get a beautiful vase, Pinterest inspired of course! One of my little girls love it, but who can blame her? Take a look

That same day we got a Mimio Teach. It's not a NowBoard, but I love it anyway!! The kids are super excited as well! Now I can do all those Smart Board activities like everyone else. :)

Finally, one of my first graders won a poster contest for our Diocese and he got second place. It was really an honor for him an his family.

Cute right? I am one proud teacher!!

Well, it's about time I start getting ready for tomorrow. Have a wonderful rest of your Sunday!

A Fun Linky Party

If anyone knows me at all they would say that April is my most favorite month ever!!! So I've decided to Link up with Jodi over at Fun In First to discuss my favorite things in April!

1.
My birthday! I know I'm going to be 29 on the 18th, but I seriously LOVE my birthday.  It's the one day a year where people appreciate you and you get to celebrate the day you were born, so why not be happy about it!!! :)

2. 
My new blog design that Erin over at Creating and Designing did for me!

3. 
I'm going to be a guest teacher blogger on ClassDojo, once I get all my information filled out and put together!! That is just so cool!!!

4. 
I'm totally obsessed with this Somebody that I used to Know (not the remix version) song. I think many people can relate to it or at least I can..ha!

5. How could I not post my niños! I start getting all choked up when I start to think that I only have 29 more days with them.  They really are a great class and love to learn!  So yes, I'm really loving them now. :*)

One more thing, I also love prince charming but he doesn't need to be on my April list because he's on my every month list ;).

Well that's all for now folks. We were super duper busy today and I didn't have time to take pictures but maybe tomorrow I'll be back with pics!

Go link up!!

Pictures! Finally!

Happy Sunday folks! I feel like it's been forever and a day since I actually posted something that's been going on in my classroom.

The last two weeks, which was actually more like a weeks worth of school because we were on Easter break, the children were learning about the Amazon Rain Forest.  I don't think they had any idea what they were getting into but I think they left with a plethora of knowledge and some awesome vocabulary to boot.

They learned about the levels of the rain forest, how much rain they get in a year (around 300 days of rain), and some animals that inhabit the area.  I wish I could have done an entire months worth of rain forest material but unfortunately my curriculum is forcing me to move on with our regular material.

Here are some picture of my room as I promised.  I didn't get to hang up all the parrots because I ran out of tape!! But for your viewing pleasure here you go....Also before I forget, I purchased this unit from Teacher Bits and Bots which was totally worth it.

Long view...I seriously don't have anymore room!!

Trees..the kids loved it!

The kiddos duck so the snack won't bite them..ohh firsties!

More trees

Levels of the rain forest charts..(these took forever to make)

I know it's not the best rain forest in the world but my kiddos loved it and are begging me to keep it up. So I'll keep it around for another few weeks (or until I'm sick of walking into "vines")

This week we are going to be learning vowel dipthongs oi, oy, prepositions and prepositional phrases, sequencing, and lots of other fun stuff.

I went to Wal-Mart today and purchased a few things, first up on the list were these bad boys

They're window markers and they look so neat when you write with them. I think I'm going to use them for sight words and have the kids write down their words on sheet of paper that I can create.  I think the kids are going to flip for them...I took a picture of it on my bathroom mirror because the blinds in my apartment are so difficult to deal with. They have a billion strings and don't come up or down the way I want them to..so mirror it was!

See how pretty!

When I introduce oi and oy I plan on doing the lesson that Cara over at The First Grade Parade did.  I used an old Bath and Body Works bag because I thought it was cute and really didn't feel like going out and buying a new bag, ha!  She cut a hole in her pig's tummy and I decided to cut a hole right where his mouth is.  The kids are going to feed him apples. You can download the words off of her site!! Check it out...

I just love it!!!

Last picture of the night is my preposition pigs.  It's basically the Angry Birds pig and I wrote prepositions on them.  I'm going to hide them around the classroom and then explain the children what prepositions are.  I found the idea on Pinterest. I can't link back to the owner of this idea because everytime I would click on the file it would say the website was corrupt :(. But if anyone knows who this belongs to, drop me a line.

I printed these on light green paper.

I think I covered everything for tomorrow and the next few days. I'll do my best to blog tomorrow but can't make any promises because my school has a tuition banquet tomorrow.

Have a nice evening!

I Love ClassDojo

First let me start off by showing you what Classdojo looks like from my class screen:

Seriously, how cute are those monsters? My kids LOVE them!

What I love most about ClassDojo is that I have noticed a change in my class. I mentioned in a previous post that my students were going through some spring fever. Well this changed all of that.  They want to listen and participate. They want to read nicely and help others.  They love hearing the catchy sound when they get a point.

I also love that you can configure the settings to whatever behavior management you use. For example, I have "Quiet during Daily 5" for positive behavior or "Not following directions" for negative behavior.  It's awesome!

Other things I like is that you can create other classes for it as well and you can change the Avatars. I have that as an option when a child reaches 10 points, they can change their monster, if they choose.

Before I forget, one of my students said, "Ms. Campos, they're in alphabetical order.." (first name at least). That makes me so happy as a teacher because they are learning as well!

Another thing that's great about  ClassDojo  is their customer service.  I couldn't access it from my Android, so I contacted them and within a few hours Kalen solved my problem and was very courteous. A great product with great customer service, what more can you ask for?

If you haven't heard of it or you are hesitant give it a go. It's best if you do have a projector or smartboard but it's not necessary.

Try it...you'll love it!