Love of Reading, Valentine's Day, & a Week in Review!

Hey bloggers!

We have a busy week coming up! The whole month of February, our school celebrates reading. Each Monday of the month is dedicated to reading and involving the parents! This Monday (tomorrow) is the week for first grade! The parents/grandparents are invited to join the students for lunch and reading! After lunch, the students get their book boxes and head to the learning center (our school library). The students that don't have a parent in attendance will buddy up with someone that does, with a teacher, or with a small group of students. The kids love showing off all of the books they can read. After reading, they each get a little treat with their parents (cookies). They're really looking forward to having their parents come in tomorrow! I'll try to remember to take some pictures to share.

On Thursday, we have our Valentine's Party. The party is an hour long in the afternoon. It's an "ice cream social". The kids will have their ice cream sundaes then pass out & read their valentines. They are making their valentine boxes at home so I can't wait to see what they come up with! I will be sure to take some pictures of those as well!

This week, we will be using this set of Valentine Math & Literacy Centers! You can pick it up over at TpT or TN!

As well as this activity :)

TpT    or    TN

On Friday, the kids have a half day and the teachers have meetings. Then we all have Monday off...yay for a 3 day weekend!! :)

This past week in review:

On the 100th day of school, we created 100 things that we love and hung them up on our hallway tree!

I got this idea from The 3am Teacher! I was having a difficult time getting this group to always do their best (& understand why that was important). After reading Michelle's post, I knew I had to at least give it a try! During math (whether it be independent practice or station work) the students show me their work and I give it a quick glance. If they can show me that it is their best work, they get to write their name on my heart! {I made the heart with construction paper and laminated it.} They LOVE this!! We only use the heart itself during math but at the end of writer's workshop they come to the rug and share with their partner something they did/worked on that they were proud of and they do the same at the end of reader's workshop. One day I forgot to have them come to the rug after writing and they were like, "Don't we get to share what we're proud of?!" Haha. Oops! But, it's working!! We have been doing it for 2 weeks now. So definitely try it! Thanks, Michelle!

I have these charts above my classroom door. They are charts that we created together. I wanted to make sure they were in a place that could be seen from everywhere in the room so that I could reference them whenever needed. The words above the door are our "passwords." Anytime we leave the room, we read our words. We have 5 high frequency words each week that we focus in on and at the end of the week, we add them to our word wall.

And last, a little picture of me. My dad spent a lot of time in China for work toward the end of 2012. He brought me back a lot of jewelry! I LOVE this pearl necklace that he got me! It has matching earrings too. But I just had to take a picture on this day because I was loving my pearls & polka dots! :)

Have a great week, bloggers!