All About Me

Well, where do I begin? My name is Jessie. For those of you that are new to my blog, WELCOME!!!! I have only been blogging since last November and still trying to find my grove in things. I planned on doing a lot of blog reading and writing this summer but my four year old foster son had other plans. LOL I guess that this would be a good segue into what I am all about.

My family means the world to me and that's what I try to stay focused on. We currently have a four year old foster son who will only be with us for just a few more weeks. He has lived here for over a year, and we fell in love with him like a son. I cannot begin to imagine what it is going to do to us when he leaves. Below is one of my favorite pics of us.

This will be my first year in kindergarten. (Gasp) I have taught second grade for six years and loved every minute of it. I changed to kindergarten to gain some experience in other grades and try something new. While I am very excited about the change, I am also starting to freak out a little. I even had a dream the other night and lets just say that the chaos was insane!!! Below is one pic from my classroom. I will leave the rest for the tour I plan on posting later this week.

I have a small store on Teachers Pay Teachers and would love for you to stop by. I have high plans on expanding this year and adding some great new products. Anyway, thanks for stopping by and hop on over to blog hopping to check out the other All About Me posts!

Still Putting it Together

Hey everyone! I know that I do not do many posts, but I do want tot hank those of you that continue to read. I have not really been doing that much besides getting my class ready for all those little Kinders. It is crazy to think that in just a short couple of weeks we will be in the full swing of things. 

As I said in my last blog, my room is all thing Alabama. Roll Tide Roll!!!!

Today I spent some time creating my little tides a name badge so they, or the people helping out, can easily put in their lunch numbers. Yes, I am totally freaking about lunchtime. In second grade it wasn't that big of a deal. Well look out kindergarten!!

Their name will obviously replace my own. If anyone would like some of these I can email it out to you very easily. Or if a lot of people want it I can add it to my TPT store for free. 

I also created a cover for the little guys Leadership Binders. Our school is in our third year of The Leader in Me and we are really going to push these binders this year. Given in kindergarten there will not be much data, but it will be something that they can show visitors. There will be some progress stuff in the back. Our principal graciously bought each student a binder, agenda, folder, and page protectors. Yay for Title 1!!!

So now that those things are done I can start to work on getting the first week plans, materials, and such together. Unfortunately I do not have my class list yet, they hold that til the day before. How many of you have gotten your class lists yet? 

Enjoy the rest of your summer and I will get in another ROLL TIDE!!!

A Work in Progress

Hey everyone! I have been a busy boy this summer spending lots of time outside, playing golf, laying by the pool, and on and on. I have however spent some time in my classroom. This will be my first year in Kindergarten so I want to be ready in advance. I will need lots of time preparing lessons and figuring out what the heck to do. LOL

Shame on me, but I did not take before pictures. Let me just tell you the walls were a color somewhere between pink and purple. There was mounds of stuff all over the classroom, some of which was from 1978!!! But with some hard work and my good friend Angela, progress has been made. Here are some pics. 

I don't know if you can see it or not, but everything is done in an Alabama theme. ROLL TIDE! I even got some great things done in houndstooth such as my alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes, and name plates. Those are all from Angela over at The Daily Alphabet. You should hop over to her store and check it out. GREAT STUFF!!!

Notice I have tables in the room. I had student desks and was torn about whether to keep them or change to tables. After polling some well respected teachers I decided to change them out to desks. Yeah, there was much sweat and huffing while doing that. 

I was also worried about the black curtains after a few coworkers said that it didn't look like a kindergarten room. I went back and forth, but when I finally put them up I liked it. What do you think? 

Finally, this is the beginning stages of my bulletin board outside my room. I plan to put the Seven Habits along the right side of the tree and put the kids names on owls all over the rest of the board. I would love to put some flowers down at the bottom, but since our kids sit in the hallway during dismissal, they would never make it. 

So as you can tell I have been working this summer. But I do have a long way to go. And with only 30 summer days left I need to get busy. How much have you gotten done in your room? 

Chapter 1 Thoughts and Reflections

I read all of chapter 1 today and was really impressed. I've always struggled with storytelling simply because I never really know what to say. She really made it clear to me that it doesn't need to be anything planned out or elaborate. Showing the students that it can be a simple story from your everyday life that can be shared and enjoyed by others is something else that really went home with me. And of course, the last paragraph about the father that could not read brought a tear to my eye and made me think of so many of my parents from the past. How many missed opportunities have I had with them?

Summer Fun and Learning

Well, I am back and back with some exciting news. Although not official, I will be moving to Kindergarten next year. Yes I know, scary and exciting.

I thought that I might need to do some summer learning so I have joined Teaching With Grace and some other fellow bloggers on a book study.



She has a plan all listed out on her blog so jump on over to check it out. I am excited to be joining all the wonderful Kindergarten bloggers out there and I know I will need your help. Look to my blog later this week to offer up your opinions on a few questions on my mind. See you soon!!!

March Word Work

Okay, so it is 9:15 on Sunday night and I am NOT in the bed yet. Very unusual and highly suspicious. I am determined though to be proactive this week and stay on top of my goals. I did not neccesarily put first things first this weekend, which is why the late hour tonight.

I have been working today on my March word work center. It is now finished and posted in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Please hop on by and check it out. I will post some pictures of the center in action Wednesday night.

Hope everyone has a great week. Remember to never limit yourself to what you think you can do. Always push to give everything you've got. Who knows, you might surprise yourself.

WOW! I know that I have been a really bad blogger the last couple of weeks, but I really do have some good excuses! Who likes to hear those, but I am gonna say it anyway. 

First of all, a friend of mine at school ordered 50 cake pops! Now I love baking and cupcakes are my passion. But 50 cake pops! Those things are a bakers worst nightmare! It was fun and I was glad to help her out, but it was so time consuming. Here are a couple of pictures of the cake pops.

Along with the cake pops, I was fortunate enough to travel to Louisiana to the Leader in Me Synposium. I love this "program" and think it is a wonderful thing for teachers, students, families, and anyone else that wants to lead a more effective life. Our school has been in the program for two years now, and I really needed to inspiration to get me back on track. 

And now, since it was my birthday and I didn't get to post anything about it, I want to share one of the things we did in my classroom for Valentines day. I really believe that poems go naturally with the holiday, so my class focused on writing poems. I was really trying to get them to focus on rhyming words and creating stanzas. It was a challenge for some, but others caught on fast. Here are a couple of pictures from our displays.

 Each student wrote a poem on the back page, then colored the front page  and cut out almost all the way around the heart. They then glued the two pages together and ta-da!

A picture of the display outside my classroom.

So hopefully now that March is here and things will be slowing down I can be a better blogger. Look for some really cool products to hit my Teachers Pay Teachers store soon. 

A Birthday Sale!!!!

Hey guys and gals! Today is my birthday and I thought I would celebrate by throwing a sale in my TeachersPayTeachers store!!! Everything in my store is 10% off today only. Jump on over and help me celebrate!!

Just click on the picture and it will take you right on over to my store!

Literature Circles in 2nd Grade????

Literature circles or a book study in 2nd grade? Why yes! We did it and so can you. We had an amazing time working in groups, exploring books, and creating a bond over books. I divided my kiddos into groups according to their reading abilities. Then I assigned them a book that was appropriate. (Yes, I love the idea of the students picking their own books, but I wanted to start off with something I picked.) Then I created these "guides" that would get them through the book without it seeming so daunting.

You can get to this product by clicking the picture.

These activities are great in that some of them are done independently, some are done as groups, and all the pages involve a discussion within the group. There are pages for character, setting, predictions, plot, author's purpose, and main idea. 

Has anyone else had success with literature circles in the lower elementary grades? Share your ideas here!

Click the link and jump on over to my TPT store to check it out. Also remember to follow me here and at TPT.

I Love AMSTI

This week I wanted to share some of the fun things we have been doing in AMSTI! I am proud that my school is an AMSTI school and focusing on exploration and collaborative learning. Even though sometimes it is difficult to get all the science lessons in during the 8 week time frame, I do my best and the kids really love it. Here are some of the things we did this week in math and science.

             Even though I had to show them a couple of times how to write the numbers on the paper, they liked racing to the finish line to see who would get done first. In all actuality, no one got done with their number strips. So we will get to continue the game next week.

          This Bingo game is one of the most popular. There is another version earlier in the year where the kiddos add 1 or 2 to the number they draw. So it is a familiar game to them, which makes it a lot easier on the poor old teacher. (Sigh)

           Roll-a-Square is a new game where the students roll two number cubes, put that number of cubes on the game board, and do whatever the last square covered says. They also have to figure out how many more cubes they need until they get to 100. I found that with some of my kiddos, it was easier to have a separate 100's chart that allowed them to mark off as they went.

           And of course all the kiddos loved, Loved, LOVED investigating the worms. In fact, unlike all of my previous years, all of them actually held a worm. That is before I told them what the worm might do in their hands! (GASP!!!!) So it was another fun, exciting week in The Cornerstone Classroom. Look back here next week to see what new exciting things we had happen!

Sleepless in Second Grade

WOW! After that excites game last night, ROLL TIDE! I am going to be pushing through the day today. But it is Tuesday and I love Tuesday's lessons! So I should be good to go.

I have created an combined group of addition strategies that has really helped some of my kids. In AMSTI we teach them so many different ways to add numbers, they often forget one or two by the second semester. So I put them all together in one pack. I did go back and create anchor charts for each of the strategies. Here are three of them.

These serve as a great reminder to all my students about the different strategies we have learned all year. Visit my store on TeachersPayTeachers to check out this pack.

The Cornerstone Classroom

Back in the Saddle!

OK, I know that I have been absolutely terrible at my blogging. I was trying hard to get this thing up off the ground and then the holidays happened. But I am back now and one of my New Years Resolutions is to blog at least once a week. I have really enjoyed the holidays this year and hate to see them go, but it is time to get back in the saddle. I hope you all have had a wonderful break and are as excited as I am about the upcoming semester. While it's even busier than the first, I love this semester because it is when you can see great changes and growths in the students. Talk to you soon. Oh and don't forget to check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

Date :   2012-10-28 22:49:06	Download as file
<i><b><a href="http://thecornerstoneclassroom.blogspot.com/">The Cornerstone Classroom</a></b></i>