fun monkey bars

I have five groups in my classroom. They are known as "apples", "pears", "cherries", "lemons" and "oranges". The reason they are named as fruits is mainly because I want them to learn new vocabulary in Spanish and while they learn some fruits they also learn the colors. There is a second reason for not giving them just color names. This is because, as some of you know, I have to different groups learning in my classroom: one is the red group and the other one is the blue group...and I don't want them to be confused with more colors... So last year every student used to have a box with their own supplies. But it didn't work very well because one student from the red group had to share the desk (and box of supplies) with another student from the blue group... At the end of the week a lot of erasers were lost and some neat and well organized students were angry with the partners they have sharing their desk and supplies. So this ...

Don't miss this opportunity!! Go to educents.com and look for today's deals. You will find 11 e books fromThe Old Schoolhouse Magazine FREE!! The books are 98 $ and you can get them for free until next week. Only 4 more days to have this deal! They are books for teachers explaining real-life heroes and mentors for the children. These multi-age unit study from The Old Schoolhouse encourages the learning of basic subject skills and inspires creativity while focusing on a particular, exciting occupation. Web page for Educents deals:  https://www.educents.com/ Web page for The Old Schoolhouse:  http://www.theoldschoolhouse.com/product/wannabe-the-series/    

This year I wanted my behavior chart look nicer, so I decided to color all the clothes pins at home... I teach two groups, red group and blue group, and I wanted only one chart for both so here it is what I did. First of all I colored the clothes pins... ... and I wrote all the student names on them. I prepared the chart with happy or sad faces and I laminated it. At the beginning I did a vertical chart but, because I have nearly 60 kids, the clothes pins didn't fit in it... :( so I had to add two ears to the green (the more common) color.

I have been working on the board I will put on my wall when I finish the method I am using right now (Estrellita). Next book I will teach is "Calle de la lectura". This book works, as other English methods, with one main story and a bunch of activities and topic related items. We can find "the most frequent words" used in the story, different "phonetic sounds" (developed in different activities along the unit), "topic and related vocabulary" used in the story... I usually read the story to the children before starting anything, so they can be prepared for all the things we have to work on. After reading the story and introducing the vocabulary I continue with different activities. We can find an example of a "10 days planning guide" in this pdf:   http://utahspanishdualimmersion.org/teacher/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Calle-de-lectura-10-day-planning-guide-1st-and-2nd-in-Spanish.pdf but if you go to the main page of Utah Spanish Dual...