Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Its been so long! But I have some exciting news!

I will be teaching 3rd grade this upcoming year!

 

 

Yikes!

I am really excited and looking forward to this change... but I am also nervous! Although this will be my 4th year teaching, and I began my teaching career in 3rd grade (even if it was only for 3 weeks before I was back in 1st), I know its going to be a big change and not to mention the pressure from the STAAR test. I am looking forward to the kiddos being older and a bit more mature. I am also looking forward to having some of my old kiddos as 3rd graders!

 

If there are any 3rd grade teachers out there reading this...

I'd love to hear any piece of advice you have to share.

 

Signing off

- Mrs. Breaux

Chevron Obsession & New Word Wall

The summer went by so fast!!! This summer, I really went after relaxing as much as possible and NOT doing anything for work until the second week of August. Needless to say, it was the best summer ever! I am all relaxed and ready for the school year! After searching for projects and pinning them on my Pintrest account all summer long, I decided to get the ball running with a few projects. It was a bit discouraging to find close to NO resources for Bilingual Teachers so translating and having to start things from scratch was the road ahead of me. Sometimes, I wish I could teach in an all English/Regular classroom... only when I see so many amazingly CUTE and at times FREEEEEEE things out there and I have to make things from scratch. But anywho, enough of my rant... I LOVE Bilingual Education! :) 

Word Wall Labels

Word Wall Heading/Title

Back to my projects. Thanks to Mel Stampz's free Chevron Digital Paper I was able to be inspired and begin designing my new and improved Word Wall . I am completely in LOOOOVEEE with the Chevron Digital Paper! Check out my Word Wall labels. It took forever to format everything, but it was totally worth it! I'm sure there's a better and faster way to do it, but I'm definitely a newbie with all this digital stuff. For my word wall heading/title, I decided to make a hanging banner using left over ribbon from my wedding... I've been trying to use up all the ribbon already! Its been 2 years since we got married and I still have a bag filled with ribbon.
                    
 I am definitely obsessed with the chevron paper. I also created some labels for organizational purposes. I was some great ideas to reduce all my paper clutter by using a plastic container. Here's an example from Mrs. Kiser's Classroom Blog. I created my labels using... you guessed it, the chevron digital paper. 

My Labels

Ms. Kiser's Example

  I also created the posters for my Daily 5 Cafe Menu! I printed these as whole pages per letter. I was so happy to have been able to translate successfully.

This will be my 1st year using the board and I am so excited!

 I'm really glad I was able to find a pattern that I can use to decorate my classroom. I think it will make things look organized and consistent with all the colors. I also hope that it is inviting for the students. I can't wait to go to my classroom tomorrow and begin putting everything up. I definitely can't wait to post the pictures! I'd love to hear what y'all think! Oh, and if you are a Bilingual Teacher and would like to use any of these products, please send me a message and I can try and email you the files.

Love,

Mrs. Breaux

Find-It-Shaker!!

So... I know I'm probably late on this discovery, but I have discovered PINTEREST! Oh my goodness!!! There are soooooooo many great ideas on there and I am committed to trying as many as I can!!! :)

One of the ideas that I saw there are these awesome Find-It-Shakers from http://sunnydaysinsecondgrade.blogspot.com/. On her site, I found the directions and a Freebie template for antonymms and synonyms. If I were a Regular Ed teacher, I would be all over it! :)

After telling my husband alllll about it, we went to HEB and got what we needed. He was kind enough to purchase 2 tea different teas (in some amazingly pretty plastic containers) and has promised to drink them as fast as possible so I can use them for my project :). We also bought a 5 lb bag of rice, and a food coloring pack. (We have alcohol in our medecine cabinet.. We will definitely need to replace it)

I got to work! It was so easy... The rice is currently laying in cookie sheets, drying :) I am soooo excited!!! I can't wait to complete the project tomorrow when I get home from school!!!

-Mariana

*True/ Fantasy*

This upcoming 9 weeks we will begin with discussing true & fantasy using Literary text. I sat down and created a sketch/ cheat sheet of what I want my class' anchor chart to look like and what I'm going to write on it. Here's what I have. I'll definitely update how the lesson went and the pictures of our different anchor charts.

3rd Nine Weeks: Anchor Charts, Academic Vocabulary, Graphic Organizers

Octoberfest! = Coopertative Grouping Galore!!!

As promised... I'm just inside my personal deadline for my monthly blogging!!! October has been an ABSOLUTELY crazy month!! With all the curriculum changes,  grades, and preparation for my  PDAS observation... sadly, blogging has been at the end of my to-do lists. 

     

    At the beginning of this month, I decided to try to give my students as many opportunities to work together as possible. They have been loving talking and thinking together through Think-Pair-Share, working in pairs, and working in groups. I have no idea where my camera is, BUT, I have some pictures of our latest group activity that we did on Friday... It was our Halloween Costume Day which would  be followed by our annual Fall Festival, and the kids were a bit wild. I almost decided not to do it, fearing the worst. But the kids did a really great job and learned a lot about magnets.

Here are some pictures:

First Weeks of School + Newsletters

The first few weeks of school have gone great! I absolutely loooooove my class. They are all super cute and very, very sweet. It has been an experience having to re-train my new batch to do simple tasks, especially after being used to the END of 1st grade 1st graders... :) But, they are doing great!

One of my goals for this year is to inform the parents as much as possible through newsletters. I have been working on them this weekend, and am so excited to have them ready to send in to copy Tuesday morning.

Here are some snap-shots of my creations:

This is the first of my Seasonal Newsletters. My plan is to send them out at the beginning of each 9 weeks.

I want to send a weekly snapshot of the week informing the parents of the skills that we will be focusing on in the classroom and give them ideas on how to reinforce those skills at home.

 I really hope I can keep up with the newsletters this year, but I think I'm off to a good start! :) Wish me luck!!!!