Back to School Recap

Hello friends! :) I'm back! The first few weeks of school are always so hard to juggle teaching, blogging, and being a wife/dog mom.  Thankfully, I am able to leave work a little earlier each day now and I should have some more time to blog, share, and create. 

The first three weeks of fourth grade have been wonderful.  I am so blessed to have two very sweet classes who love reading and writing.  They also have such fun personalities and I love spending my days with them.  One of my sweet students brought me an apple the other day and it about made me cry. A student hasn't brought me an apple in a very long time, so I cherished this sweet gesture. 

One of the first things we did this school year was starting our school year scrapbooks.  You can check out my School Year Scrapbook pack {here}.

I am really excited about our scrapbooks and I know that they will be such a great keepsake of our year together.   It has been fun to read through my students' scrapbooks and learn more about them! 

We also did lots of the Find Somebody Who pages from my Fabulous Back to School Fun pack.  They got us up and moving and learning a lot about each other.  These are always a hit with my kiddos and I always love participating in them too!

We also had lots of fun with my Cooking Up a Great School Year pack.  Both classes loved it this year and the books have sparked a lot of really great discussions on how to be a good classmate this year. You can check out my original post on Cooking Up a Great Year {here}.

As always, the Cooking Up a Great Year Trail Mix was a big hit, and quite tasty too!

This year in addition to reading and discussing the books, I tried to do some hands on activities for each character trait included in the pack. 

We did graffiti walls to talk about sharing. 

We put puzzles together with our tables for teamwork. 

We drew self portraits for being yourself.  I'm so in LOVE with their pictures.  They always make me smile. 

The activities that I added this year really made the traits stick and I look forward to adding them to my pack very soon! :)

On our first Friday of school, we did the Skittles Sharing activity from my Fabulous Back to School Fun pack.  My kids loved it and it was a great way to hit some speaking and listening standards and close out the week with a fun treat!

 Behavior Bingo is still rocking my behavior management world and both of my classes just love it.  They have both earned a bingo already and are super motivated to earn their next one.  
You can check out how I use behavior bingo {here} and check out the awesome behavior bingo board pack I purchased from Dots n Spots {here}. 

I also have found a morning work that I just adore. Denise's Weekly Word Work has already made a big difference with my kiddos.  It's a very well thought out resource and I love using it.  I write their assigned boxes on the Smartboard with our lunch count each morning. 

We have also been busy launching the Daily Five. I am hoping to start guided reading groups next week.  We did a trial run today and it went wonderful, so I am very hopeful for another great year with the Daily Five!

My new students are also loving our new classroom library set up and have been doing a great job at putting their books pack where they belong. 

I put a small label on the back of each book this summer and haven't found a book put in wrong bin yet. You can find the labels I used here. 

I'll be back later this week/weekend to share some of the things we have done this week as we focused on main idea and detail for the first time.  

Have a great rest of the week, friends!