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!

Work on Writing Ideas

Happy Monday!  I'm getting ready to present tomorrow about Daily Five to some sweet people in my district.  I wrote THIS POST last week about it and wanted to give you some ideas about Working on Writing.  This is the daily that makes most people cringe!

Here is a picture of some of my Work on Writing areas from different classroom set ups.

 

 

 This shelf is empty because these pics were taken before the year started.  You can see I have lots of space for trays/tubs to hold the writing materials.

  

This was another year and I snapped this pic about six weeks into school.  You can see the tubs are in place and filled with materials.  This is also from a year I taught pre-k, so the materials are a little different for work on writing.

I do want to preface that this is the only one of the dailies in which I have my students turn in a physical "something".  The other four dailies are more kinesthethic, but writing needs to be about writing.  Your littles will only get better at writing if they're writing.

I also wanted to share where I got my signs for each of my Daily Five materials areas.  Click below to grab this freebie from my friend Kristen.

Okay, so here is a little chart I made with some writing ideas.  Remember the goal of Daily Five is INDEPENDENCE!  Whatever you add to your Work on Writing choices should be an independent activity for children.

A lot of these are pretty self explanatory, but I did want to show you some of my littles' creations in Work on Writing this year!  

SIDE NOTE: Since kindergarteners are still learning how to print letters, it's OKAY to have letter printing activities in your Working on Writing choices.  This is a scaffolded skill.  The joy in Daily Five is that there are many choices, so your higher learners can have writing choices while your emergent writers can work on letter printing.  YOU KNOW YOUR KIDS BEST!

Here is an example of one my cutie's pop up book that she created independently during Daily Five when we were learning about zoo and African animals.

 

Now this cuties didn't just know how to make a pop up book.  I added pop up paper to our choices in the second semester after we had created a few pop up books as a class during the first semester.  

Here is my FREE pop up paper and a video I made to show you how to make pop up books with your kiddos.

Another simple and preferred writing choice is writing about exciting news.  We all kinders can talk for HOURS about themselves and gradma visiting and their dog digging a hole and what they had for dinner... You get the point!  I often stop the stories by saying "That sounds really fun! Can you tell me all about it by writing to me?"  So, I created this little gem for sharing news!  Click on it to get it for FREE!

That reminds me, if a cutie wrote a letter for me, I have them place it in my mailbox.  Do you see it on the shelf to the left?  I would encourage you to get a mailbox to collect ALL of the treasures your kiddos write you!

Another writing my choice my kiddos love is creating 3D stories.  Here are two examples.

Again, this has to be taught.  I showed my littles how to create characters that stood up and about details in a setting, as well as how to attach the written portion of their story.

One of our most favorite writing choices are our shard journals.  I don't have a picture of them from my classroom, but I bought them from my friend Lori.  They're just journals in which you add a topic label to the front like "My Teacher" or "Pets" and anyone from the classroom can write in the journal about that topic.  Here they are from Lori!

I hope this gives you some ideas about what to add to your Work on Writing choices!  Just a few tips...

1.  Remember it is a choice so it's alright if a student chooses the same Work on Writing choice each day at check-in.  After all, it will take a child days to create a pop-up book, so she may choose to work on it each when he/she picks Work on Writing.

2.  Make sure you have a system for supplies.  Where are your students' pencils, crayons, etc. that are needed for Work on Writing?  Do they each have a supply box you want them to use?  Are there shared supplies stored in the Work on Writing area?

3.  What is your system for turning in the finished product?  Do they place it in a turn in basket?  (Mine do!)

4.  What if a child isn't finished?  Since this is the only one of the dailies that I have students complete since all of the other dailies are open ended, I have mine place unfinished Work on Writing stories in their blue pocket on the back of my easel.  Each kiddo has one for unfinished stories to store for the next day.

Have a marvelous Monday!