Weekend Warriors~November Necessities~Day One

Hey everyone, today the Weekend Warriors are bringing you November Necessities. Posts all about the things we can't live without in our classrooms or homes.

Today I'm going to share a few things I use in my classroom that I don't think I could go without. The first are my students' "offices."

I don't know about you but I always have some wandering eyes every year and it doesn't matter how many times I say "I want to know what you know, not what your neighbor knows" there are still eyes glancing around. I looked into purchasing something to block their work but everything was so expensive so a couple of years ago I asked for parents to send in trifold boards. I just cut them in half and have used them over and over. We don't always keep them on our desks. I just get them out when we are doing something for a grade or something I need to check for mastery on.

Another thing used in my class on a daily basis for the last 3 years now is our morning calendar routine. This is something I created that you can find {HERE}. I created this so that my second grade skills would be covered briefly every morning whether I had taught the skill or not. This way when I go to teach the skill later in the year they have already been introduced to it.

Each child has a binder with the pages we need in sheet protectors. They use dry erase markers to answer (I think this is the part that makes the kids like this part of our day so much). They just erase at the end and we use the boards all year. Actually these are the same ones I have used for 3 years now.

I have a morning calendar board where we sit for this with posters for them to reference. I have certain skills that I cover each nine weeks. Some we continue all year and others I do at different points in the year. I only do one question for each skill I want to cover that day. Usually it is about 5-6 skills per morning and we just briefly cover it. Not an in depth lesson at all and just takes about 15 minutes.

When I started my unit on place value last week most of my kids did amazingly well because place value/number forms is something we cover during calendar time each morning. For my lower kids, they had at least seen the skill before so had some background knowledge with it.

This is an idea that you could do without purchasing anything really. You could write your questions on the board and have students answer on dry erase boards. Just pick a handful of skills and cover them all nine weeks.

I'm putting my calendar routine on sale 20% off this weekend so check it out!

Head on over to these other blogs for more great ideas!

A Burst of First	Hippo Hooray for Second Grade	Creative Lesson Cafe	Sailing Into Second
Bright Concepts 4 Teachers	Crayons and Whimsy	Primarily Speaking	Second Grade Perks
Lucky To Be In First	Saddle Up Second Grade	A Sunny Day In First Grade	The Tutu Teacher
First Grade Smiles

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