Oh my goodness, I am exhausted after week 1! It is Friday evening and all I can think is, how am I going to get back into the routine again? The first week went very well and I am so excited to really start teaching. However, I forget that my students coming in this year are not the same ones that left me last year, crazy how that always happens. At least they somewhat understand what I'm saying! I didn't lose my voice this year from having to say "sientate por favor" a million times to the same kid, so that always helps ;)

   Anyway, a lot of people always ask me what I do to keep my classroom so organized with the two classes and it all comes down to this first week. I have been teaching nothing but routines and how to put things away and all of that fun first week stuff. I teach my students to switch things out (like flipping the name mats, their 'check-in' names, etc) for the other class. I sound a lot like a drill sergeant, especially since I have quite a few kids who can't understand me very well yet, but it pays off big time.

   Aside from teaching routines like crazy I started the Daily 5 and it went extremely well! I am so excited to have a better feel for this second time around because I kind of remember what to look out for and what to expect. I did the good fit books shoe lesson and it was such a hit. My afternoon class was literally rolling on the ground with laughter when I put my husband's fancy shoes on. We even went "book shopping" on Thursday and Friday and almost all of my kids have their "good fit" books in their bins. I think I'm going to have to go to another public library to check out even more books since I have about 50 students this year :o I am having a hard time building stamina with my afternoon class- they are just so chatty! I think we got up to 3 minutes *sigh* I keep reminding myself that it will be so worth it in a couple of weeks. The best part about doing the Daily 5 this year is that my team and even the K and 2nd grade teams have joined in me in this adventure! It is so exciting to talk about our progress and celebrate after just one week. I will be introducing Writing next week- we'll see how that goes!

    This is a little activity that I do on the first week to display some work on our hallway boards. I show the kids a power point about myself with a ton of pictures of my family, pets, friends etc. Then they write/draw about themselves using these sentence frames: "Yo tengo ____", "Mi familia es ____", "A mi me gusta  ______", "A mi no me gusta _____". They love seeing the power point and learning more about my life. For some reason they always confuse my husband's name with one of our dog's name, which I get a huge kick out of. You can get a copy of the student sheet here.

   I hope your first week back has gone well and that you are as excited as I am for this new school year!!! Here are more pictures of my classroom, let me know if you have any questions!