January has been quite a month in Northern Virginia...5 "snow" days and two days with two hour delays, bringing my county to ZERO days (or hours is how they do it here) left. How crazy is that? Temperatures below zero with the wind chill...the day we had a freeze day, it was -11 during the hours that the kids get picked up at the bus stop. I am from upstate NY, so these days off were bogus to me. I remember standing out side with so many layers that I could barely walk up the steps of the bus. My dad built me a small shed that looked like an outhouse. It had a bench in it so that me and my cousins, who lived next door, could get out of the wind on really cold days. Anyways...with this storm in the south right now we might get 1-2 inches tonight. We'll see!
Well, how about Peek at my Month!
I don't have plans from the first week on January, because they were absolutely useless! We were one of the only counties in our area that had to go back for Th/F and then we wound up having a snow day on Friday!
The above lesson plans are a full week...yes they are! BUT, I was out Monday with my daughter who had bronchitis and then Friday our first grade team had a full day of planning that had been rescheduled from our first snow day of the year on January 3rd.
And I have started including a new page of lesson plans that shows which trade books that I get daily worksheets out of. Daily Language Review from Evan Moor is one that I used in second and third grade for morning work. My first grade team decided to start using it for the last two quarters of the year. I think it will really help with their writing and to prepare them for the grade to come with the routine.
There will be some changes taking place in my first grade class over the next couple of weeks in addition to using Daily Language Review. We begin the year with word family spelling lists with five additional sight words from the high frequency list. The word families were very easy for my first graders, so I am happy to move on to Words Their Way sorts.
We will also start using a color behavioral chart that goes beyond green to Quality Student. I have created many behavioral charts for my TpT store, but I feel that my students would benefit from using only red, yellow, green and blue. I created punch cards at the beginning of the year and had so much on my plate with behavioral issues and getting to learn the curriculum that I did not use them the way I wanted to. So my goal is to use them with the chart and with mini competitions in the classroom to hopefully improve behaviors and academics. I have been pushing my students to write with their neatest handwriting and so I think the first competition will be to produce something with their best handwriting. Other competitions that I have in my mind are spellings bees and flash card fact rounds.
Until Currently for February...I imagine I won't be getting around to blogging at all the rest of the week since report cards are due!
