New Year's Resolutions

I hope everyone has had a refreshing winter break! I know I've been MIA since the beginning of the school year, but I wasn't as ready as I thought I was for the school year and honestly didn't make the time for blogging as I hoped I would. However, I've decided to make a resolution that I truly think I will stick with!

I welcomed my class back with joy and energy as my break was very rejuvenating :) I was able to make it to Disneyland after 14 years and had a blast! Here are just some of my favorite photos from my 5 day trip...

My sister is quite the photo bomber :)

I was determined to find Mickey today as I had birthday cards to deliver from my 1st Graders

Mission Accomplished!! He was so thankful for his birthday cards :) It was such a great moment.

My last character photo of my trip had to be my favorites! I literally ran out of the park to get back to the hotel to check out in time to make it to the airport. :)

Teacher Chosen Agreements

The first day back in the classroom consisted of a lot of review of classroom expectations and routines. I always recommend in taking the time to do so to help your classroom management. It's not always the miracle worker, but it definitely helps enough to make it through the day!
At the beginning of the year, we created our classroom agreements to make our classroom the "happiest place on earth" and signed them as a class. As a part of our New Year's Resolution, we created new classroom agreements. I use my "teacher chosen" agreements (Whole Brain Teaching Rules--I made a few typos and am working on fixing the mistakes) and then have the students decide what actions they will do in the classroom to make our room the "happiest place on earth". I make sure we word them in "I can" statements rather than "No fighting" and so on--this creates a more positive atmosphere and I like to think the students are less likely to do something they're not allowed to do--this is positive thinking but I am fully aware of the reality HAHA!


After lunch, we began our first writing assignment of the New Year. I am in LOVE with Reagan Tunstall's Writing Mini-Lessons Bundle! It is a growing bundle, and my goodness it's like Christmas every time the next month is added :) I have used some lessons as I've picked out a couple of lessons here and there and the students have done very well with and enjoy them.

One of the January resources we used was the "Popping into a New Year" writing activity. Because we are an IB Candidate School, we chose to make the resolutions centered around the Learner Profile. The students were to choose a learner profile and then decide 3 ways they were going to demonstrate that word. As a part of the mini-lesson, I shared my resolution with my students which was "The New Year, I will work on being balanced. I will work on this by eating healthy, exercising every day, and making more time for family and friends". We continued as a class giving examples of the other learner profiles before breaking off individually to do their writing. I am really proud of the words they chose and they came up with great ideas of how to demonstrate their learner profile! If you haven't gotten this pack yet, I highly recommend it!

And the final product....*DRUMROLL*

  

We've had a good start to our New Year! I'm excited for what's coming this month--we will begin our research on Penguins, we will continue our unit on Families Around the World, and we will have our authorization visit from IB to make our school and all of our hard work official!

As another part of my New Years Resolution, I'm going to work on getting a blog post up as often as I can! My goal is at least 3 posts a month until I get the hang of this more :) Thanks for sticking with me in this journey! Make sure you follow my blog for updates!