Friday, October 31, 2014

Five for Friday - Happy Halloween!


Happy Halloween!!!! I hope you all have a frightfully great time this weekend! I am joining Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday - barely!
 Yesterday (Thursday) afternoon IT came and reimaged my computer. Do you know what that means? They wiped it completely clean and it is just like brand new. I did know this was going to happened so I have every thing backed up (I hope!) on an external hard drive but now I have to make time to transfer all my stuff back over. I am hoping they way I saved things on the hard drive will make it a little less painful. I just hate that right now I cannot find a thing on this computer! Please forgive the lack of pictures as they are somewhere between the cloud, my external hard drive, and the 3 flash drives I have floating around!
 
Is it just me or are the kiddos loosing their minds. My class has been EXTREMELY active - more so than the normal "it's almost Halloween and the weather is changing for the 100th time" active. I have really dug into Class Dojo. Have you tried this? I am loving it and so are my kids. I customized all the positive (dings) and negative (dongs) points and meet with each child at the end of the day to let them know how they have done. At the end of the week, students with enough points visit the treasure chest. Students can also go online with a code and personalize their avatar - hello OWNERSHIP! Parents can also go online with a personal code and see how each day has been and at the end of the week Class Dojo sends them a weekly report. I love how easy this makes marking my behavior sheets at the end of the day. It also makes giving conduct grades at the end of the quarter effortless and equitable!

A Plea For Help!
 This year I have quite a few kiddos that do not know letter names and are having a hard time learning them. We have amazing tutors that come in and work with small groups to help these kids but we are seeing limited progress. What do you do with your kiddos that are having trouble with letter names???? All tools and suggestions are welcome!
 As you may have seen in my post earlier this week, the AMAZING Pixie Anne from Growing Little Learners nominated me for the Liebster Award. I am so honored and had to give her one more shout out of thanks!!!! Check my earlier post for the 11 amazing blogs that I have nominated - they are all so amazing and deserving!


Today my beautiful nieces are coming down for Trick or Treating and I cannot wait until I get off work at 6:00 (I work at our After School Childcare program) to go play! My amazing husband is surprising them with a hayride for their transportation around the neighborhood. Who walks when you can ride on a trailer filled with hay!! 

How are you spending your Halloween weekend? Leave a comment below and then head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching and see what others have been doing this week!


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3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the extra shout out! Good luck with sorting your computer and happy halloween!
    Growing Little Learners

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  2. Hi Melissa, I think one of the best ways to teach alphabet letters is through tracing. I first learned this approach from Jan Richardson. She has a great website with lots of resources. Also Jeannie at Kindergarten Lifestyle discusses the system here: http://kindergartenlifestyle.blogspot.com/2013/07/finger-trace-books.html The key thing is that it is done everyday, one-to-one with the student. I was going to nominate you for the Liebster– then realized that Pixie Anne nominated you at the same time she did me :) Love your blog! See you around! Kathleen
    Kidpeople Classroom

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for the tips!!! Great minds think alike. I wanted to nominate you for a Liebster as well and then saw Pixie Anne beat me to it!!!

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