I Survived the first day!

So, my first day with my buddies went better than planned. I have to admit, when planning the first day you have expectations of completing at least 50% of what you said you would do... But reality is that most of the day you are trying to figure out how the kids go home (if parents weren't clear at Meet the Teacher) or any new kid you weren't expecting at your door. Besides the millions of phone calls from the office or otherwise parents letting you know how their student will go home. Well for me I have to share that LOOPING is the best decision I've ever made! My students were so happy to be back and so was I. Our day began by telling each other one or two things we did In the summer... While I was taking attendance and doing some paper work ;). The kids were eager to share some of their adventures; I gave them about 10 minutes to get their "talking" out. Immediately I began explaining our new classroom theme "surfing monkeys" :). They absolutely loved it! They were happy to see our mascot Charlie (stuffed monkey) still in our second grade class. He was dressed with a more mature look :). We worked on our class rules where they decided on 5 additional ones for our poster (we have SHARK rules in our school). They loved having to create the rules and using the interactive activities for rules (I will share the wonderful resource soon-it was a freebie). One of the rules was keeping the classroom clean- I kept telling them how if this was a rule they really needed to follow thru and they said they would... We will see how that one goes, :-). The best part of looping is that I didn't have to repeat myself or explain my expectations. They now me and I know them. It's such a blessing. We  spent our afternoon creating the surfers from Surfiin'thrusecond.com (Corinna has really great/cute ideas). I will post all our weekly creations and activities soon. Tomorrow, I'm planning on using one of the activities from the book Comprehension Connections by Tanny Mcgregor. I found it as a resource used at Lifein4b.blogspot.com. I'm in hopes that these new strategies will help my second graders become thoughtful thinkers :) when reading. More info on that activity and more soon. Thanks for reading...

Getting Ready for the Challenge!

I have been looking for soooo many ideas throughout the web and I have found many great ones to begin my new year with my not so new class. Looping is exciting but it has become a "challenge". My admin has asked me to do trainings on Marzano, attend in school training to re- create task cards for our one year old reading program -Journey's.  Creating the task cards are no biggie. I will begin sharing those soon for those interested in using those in their second grade class.
My biggest challenge is re-creating my classroom. Many teacher friends have told me to keep it the same, but I just can't seem to want to do the same thing with my buddies. I know they will get bored by looking at the same "old thing", lol! We'll maybe that's just me.

Here's are some pics of my classroom in process... I only have until this Thursday to complete my class before kids show up for "Meet the Teacher". :-/

I have a new round table! I didn't know what to do with it at first, lol! It will be our writing center... Thinking of some fishy ideas... 

This is going to be my new reading area. I'm inspired by Corinna Gandara at www.surfinthroughsecond.com for the beach theme. I have bought many of her cute things for my new theme.