My Pete the Cat Classroom

Welcome to my Pete the Cat Classroom! I have had a bee classroom for almost ten years and was thinking about changing when Oriental Trading contacted me about writing a back to school post!  I chose many Pete the cat themed materials and can't wait to showcase them for you!

Here is my classroom library!  I had this precious library front built this summer for my new Pete theme.

This precious Pete is from Oriental Trading! My awesome mother in law made me the little pillows beneath Pete.  She's the best!

I organize my library by topic.  Each group of books has a coordinating label on the front of the tub that matches the back of each book in that tub.  These labels are from Krazee for Kindergarten's TPT shop. These books are perfect for "read the pictures" in Daily Five.

I also have emergent readers in organized in tubs by DRA level.  This helps my littles choose books that they can "read the words" in Daily Five.

The back of my library leads to my whole group area.  I attached felt to the back of my library shelves for story retelling with felt pieces.

My calendar is from Oriental Trading! I got these awesome Sit Spots at I Teach K this summer, where I presented about guided reading.

The back of my whole group area easel hold this pocket chart.  These are our MEOW pockets.  Meow stands for My Extraordinary Organized Work.  This is our unfinished work.  

Next to our MEOW pockets is the dramatic play area.  I change this out once a month to be a different science theme.

Some of our cozy spots stay behind the whole group easel.  These are our scoop rockers and laundry basket seats.

This is our STEM building area.

Next to it is this long white board where we build our focus walls for science and math, as well as our iMovie alphabet wall.  I created a little Pete bunting to go above this wall.

iMovie Alphabet is where we place our QR codes that link to a movie we create for each letter of the alphabet.  Students scan these during Daily Five for one of our Listen to Reading choices.

Our little clip chart

Here is my small group area.

This shelf holds many of my reading group manipulatives, my assessments tubs and my sub tub, as well as our PAWS folders - Positive and Wonderful Students!

I found this cutie cart at Lowe's years ago.  It holds all of my teaching materials for each day of the week.

This little blue cart from Mardel's hold my reading groups emergent readers' as well as my math groups' materials. On top is my teacher toolbox.

I got this awesome easel through Donors Choose a few years ago.  Currently it's holding a donations sign for meet the teacher, but during the year it's used for math and reading groups.

These little stools are form IKEA.  They hold transition games for my littles to play while they wait for me to join them for their small group.

This is the view from my table.

Here is my Pete the Cat Word Wall.  These came from Oriental Trading!

We love our Promethean Board and iPad cart!  We are blessed to have ten iPads in this awesome charging cart.  Under the Promethean Board are two bean bag chairs for cozy spots.

Our art station is right past the Promethean.  The top of the station holds our Listening to Reading Leap Frog Pads.

Here are our Creative Activities Tubs (CAT) that hold differentiated games for kiddos to play when they finish their work as a transition activity.  

This is where Work on Writing activities will go for Daily Five.

 

The sink area holds our robots that we use during our maker spaces.  They're put away right now.

Here are my Beanie Baby Reading Strategies posters.  In the frames are the 8 thinking maps.

More cozy spots!  I got these stability ball chairs through Donors Choose.

Wobble stools are also cozy spots...

tray tables too!

Cubbies and book boxes

This shelf is for math stations materials and writer's workshop paper.

This little cart holds Word Work materials for Daily Five.  All of the cute little posters are FREE here.

If you want any of my Pete creations, here is a folder with all of it for FREE!

I hope you have an awesome year!!

I Teach K!

Are you going to I Teach K next week?  

I cannot wait to go and present about guided reading on Thursday!  I'll write a detailed post after I return about my presentation, but until then, here is a video of one of my lessons this year in a small group.

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Last week was AMAZING!  I was blessed to teach K-2 teachers in my district about Daily 5 on Tuesday.  I made a huge mess in my bedroom while I was preparing my lesson. Yikes!

Then I attended a professional development session in my district about the Seesaw app (WOW!) before heading to Houston for Get Your Teach On with my bestest teacher friend, Lori!  It was THE best conference I have been to and learned so much from Deanna Jump

 and Adam Dovico!  He is the cutest and so enthusiastic!

Lori and I enriched our traveling with a stop at Magnolia.  We called our little adventure to Houston our "teacher field trip".  It was the best!

Saving the Polar Bears with Science and Math Integration

Have you heard about Polar Bears International?

This organization does so much for the polar bears!  For the last two years my classes have performed plays to fund raise money for this organization.

Here in Texas we have state standards called TEKS.  One of our TEKS states:

identify and explain a problem such as the impact of littering on the playground and propose a solution in his/her own words

I have gently inspired my students to solve the problem of arctic animals losing their homes after we complete Deanna Jump's Arctic Animals unit.  We perform a lot in our learning, so my kiddos have voted to perform plays to raise change for the polar bears so we can "Make a Change for Polar Bears". We used Heidi Songs Primary Plays.  They're the best!  Click HERE to see a snippet of our show!

To inform others about the troubles in the arctic, we created Adobe Spark videos to email to the campus and created QR codes to attach to brochures we wrote for our our families.

My littles love to use Adobe Spark to show what they know.  This app is so simple to use and they use it 100% independently!  WOW!  We had 5 groups create videos.  Each group had an Adobe Spark expert on their team so their teams could be independent in their creations.  Click the picture below to see one of the informational videos we made.

We also created these little collection cups for each class in our school to donate their loose change.  Each class on campus brought their change to our classroom on the day we performed.  We also performed for our families at night.

Once we collected the change we used it to sort into pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters to master our state standard:

identify U.S. coins by name, including pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters

We collected over $300 to send to Polar Bears International!