Classroom Tour!

Thanks to my dear husband my classroom is 97% done as of Tuesday! And I started work yesterday; we spent the whole day in meetings. (We won't have time to be in our classrooms until Monday afternoon! That makes me happy to be done! Also, thanks to Mr. Mora for being able to put things on my wall STRAIGHT! Every time I try, it turns out crooked!

Here are the pictures! I'll explain them as I go. (These were taking by my phone so please excuse the quality!)

Front of my class! On the Right side is my desk and podium for my laptop. On the board on the right side is the Focus of the Week. I have a picture of the story of the week from the Harcourt Trophies series and the Word Power words (HFW) that go with it, the sound of the week, and Six traits for writing. I will be putting up the math once I get my curriculum map from the district. 

On the left side is a yellow clock and border, that is my standards area. I will put up the letters I CAN on Monday. 

Close up of my clock. I got the numbers from this lovely lady who gave it away for free!

I got to my site after the Grammar wall was introduced at my school so we are required by our principal to put up a Grammar wall. However, since I haven't been trained using it, I do the best I can. 

 My classroom theme is Superheroes. And since the Avengers, it seems like everyone is making the cutest stuff! I found these on Allison's blog. She is in Kinder and had some jobs that I don't use in my classroom so I changed them a little. But she's awesome for giving them away for free! I put the students' names on index cards and binder clip them in random order. Every week, I ask the students what they would like to do. And their card gets pinned underneath. This is after I've trained the kids as to what the job entails. For the first couple of weeks I choose the students for the jobs. Then they get to pick. They love getting to pick. And they understand that if what they wanted is taken they just have to choose a different job. Learned this from my cooperating teacher. The amazing Margie Hervert!

Usually I do a Word Wall by order of the stories but this year I wanted to try an ABC wall. So I asked the amazing Kyp McLaren to make me superhero ABC's and a calendar set that is in the next pic. I'm planning on making that rectangle table the Work on Words table but maybe the listening to reading table.

 On the left is my General Wall, it has my calendar, hundreds chart, money, and shapes.

On the right is my Math Vocabulary wall. Underneath I'll be posting Anchor charts as we make them.

 My library! It's almost done. I need to make labels for each genre. And maybe a poster with pictures so my firsties know what the genres are. 

 I got a new Horse shoe table and it's wider than the the one close to the Math wall! SO I'm really excited! I'm gona use it for intervention/guided reading groups. 

 Inspiration for the Clip chart came from Misty. She is also the one that introduced me to the Daily 5 when I stumbled upon her D5 wall on Pinterest. So thank you so much Misty!! I saw her clip chart on Pinterest and then not even three days after I made my clipchart she put it up on her TpT store! haha That's life! Would have been wayyyyy cuter with hers! 

The little Superman poster above my fire extinguisher is from a pin from Allison.

The Red Pocket Chart is for our lunch cards. My first year I would pass out the lunch cards and always arrive late to lunch. My second year (last year) I put a pocket cart on the wall, put the students' numbers on the cards, and had a student put them on the cart each morning. Boom! Never late to lunch again! Old adage "Don't do anything your students can do." 

 This is my door. The little purple, pink and blue box is a cereal box. The students are going to put the bus passes there until it is time to go to specials at the end of the day.

The duck tape is another thing I stole from Pinterest. My student's will have something on a magnet with their numbers to show where they are going when they leave the room. I put magnets on the back of pattern block tiles but they were too heavy to stay with the tiny magnets. So I'm trying to make them more like the pinterest picture. I can't find the pin to link it but I'm sure you've seen it, it's all over pinterest. My sections are (Left top to right top) Boy's Restroom, Office, Girl's Restrooms, (Left bottom to right bottom) Speech teacher's name, Nurse, SPED Teacher's name. 

My backpack hooks. To the right I have my Sounds We Know Wall. But I'm thinking of making that a "portable word wall". Where I put it on a right and the kids can go up to it when they need it. 

And that's my classroom! I also have a Daily 5 wall but it's not finished since I want to wait til my Principal approves it. She's never heard about it before so she wants to sit down to go over it before she says Go for it. I'm dying to know of course so I can finish my room. 

My firsties have Meet the Teacher on Tuesday and Wednesday is our first day of school!! Good luck to Everyone else who is also starting! Especially my dear friends the Ms. Del Valle's!!!!

Superhero Theme Update

I am soooo excited! I just bought this and this from Kyp McLaren, who's blog is: teacheskids2.blogspot.com

I really appreciate her taking the time to make it for me! I'm going tomorrow to decorate my classroom.



Yay! 2 Followers! Shout out to Ms. Del Valle

I am very excited because I have another friend following me. I want to give a big shout out to   

Ms. Del Valle! She just started blogging last week. She is an amazing 4th grade teacher! Very excited for her because this year she will be at a new district! Here is her blog:

Click here!

If Lily had a button I would place it here instead of being lame and only hyperlinking. But alass we are young in the blog-o-sphere and I sure don't know how to make one. hehe

Love ya Lily!! Also, Esther needs to get a move on it and start a blog too. 

What teachers really want...



I've had this in my head for awhile and wanted to get it out. Every year around the holidays (especially Valentine's Day) parents are sweet enough to send us a present from their child. And every year, I end up with those mystery chocolates (I'm not sure anyone likes those....), mugs, or plants.

I really appreciate the gesture! I, however, am a chicken when it comes to those mystery chocolates and usually try to count points during the school year. I love those mugs but I have about 20 Valentine's mugs. Ok I exaggerate. I have 4.

Here is my holiday wish list.

Teachers really want:

1. Gift cards: Dollar Tree, Michael's, or iTunes. I say iTunes because I have an iPad and would like to buy apps for it. Not every teacher has one. Starbucks: I don't like coffee but I'll have a frapechino no matter what time of year! YUM!

2. Scrapbooking paper: I can never get myself to buy scrapbooking paper. It's sooo expensive. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places or maybe I'm cheap. I always think "Ohh I should buy scrapbook paper to do ______." And then I go to the store and say "Um No thanks!"

3. School Supplies: I love those pretty pens from Bic with all the pretty colors. They are practically markers.

4. Dry Erase Markers

5. Gift Cards for local Teacher stores.

6. Milk Crates: for storage, for seating. For anything!

Or ask your teacher what she needs!

Well off to our 2nd day of VBS! Next week, I will be sorting my library! Finally! Yay!

I'm almost finished with the CAFE book from the 2 Sisters. I'm going in on July 16th to pitch it to my principal.

Summer To Do list

I have been so ADD! I have way too much going on! My friend is getting married tomorrow, next week is VBS. And we only have a month left in summer vacation and I feel like I won't be able to finish everything I wanted to do. Here is my summer to do list:

1. Finish reading CAFE by the 2 sisters (finished Daily 5 on Monday)

2. Put resources together to present Daily Cafe to my Principal. (I really want to start the Daily Cafe this year but not sure how it'll go.)

3. Finish making tests for Math Common core for the new SMART Response. (I went through LA Common Core and tied each standard to the Daily CAFE so I've decided not to make tests for the clickers in Language Arts.)

4. Organized my library into genres

5. Convert my books on cassettes into mp3 and load into my iPod Touch

6. Organize my technology ideas for this year.

7. Start decorations for classroom (that's like a bazillion things in it's self! lol)

I think that was it...

I was trying to decide if I would use math notebooks this year when I texted my grade level partner. (There's only two classes per grade in my school.) I asked her if she had sent out the supply list while I was on Maternity leave to the office to send during the summer. She reminded me of some very crucial information. We can't ask for supplies this year. That is just PEACHY! So I'm hoping the parents ask for one. And I'm going to go to the Dollar Tree and buy a sample student supply list for (hopefully) no more than $20. Probably will end up being $30 but better than last year's that was almost $60-$80 depending on where you went.

I'm not supposed to want anything for my birthday because I got an iPad for Mother's Day/Anniversary/Birthday but..... I'm dying to have a label maker for my classroom! I've had to avoid Wal-Mart so as not to buy it! I'm pretty sure I saw one once at either Big Lots! or Family Dollar for less than the $25 Walmart price.

Possible Themes for '12-'13

Last year, I decorated with Apples. I think I want to do a new theme this year.

Here are my possible ideas:

1. Super hero theme

2. Bookworms theme

3. Bird or Owl theme

4. Polka-dots (not really theme but decoration)

5.Stars (I did this last year so kinda eh about it.)

6. Movie Stars (ooohh could be fun.)

And that's where my list stops... Any ideas?

Update 6/28/12: I've decided on a Garden theme. :D We shall see how it goes!

My first creation/freebie!

Hello to all my readers.... which is pretty much just Gabe, my brother. I'm hoping to get a few more followers after this post. I'm working on a project that I am going to put up on Teachers Pay Teachers or maybe TeachersNotebook. Last year, my school bought SMART Response clickers. (These ones!) The really fancy ones! I'm so excited! I've been dying to have clickers since I first heard about them in college. I can live without a SMART board but give me my Airliner and clickers!! Unfortunately we only had enough funds for two class sets. So I'm hoping the schedule I submitted works out so we get to use them every day. ANYWAYs, my project. I'm working on making SMART Response tests for the Common Core. So far for math it's been going well. Reading is a bit harder. But not going to give up. So stay tuned for that.

Yesterday I found high frequency word posters for sale but they were not from Harcourt Trophies, which is what we use. So I sat down to make high frequency posters. Now, this is my first (of hopefully many creations) but my computer doesn't have Microsoft Publisher. We have OpenOffice so I made these on OpenOffice Draw. It was my first time even opening the program, so considering that: I'm pretty proud of myself. So even though they are not PERFECTLY straight. I'm going to use them this year to conserve space on my walls. Well not conserve... but have more room for other things, like anchor charts.

So here is my freebie. It was on tabloid format (11 x 14) in OpenOffice but Google docs sees tabloid as 11 x 17. But I think when I converted it to pdf it changed it to 8x11. SO if you need it bigger let me know.

Guess Who

Catch a Dream

Here and There

Time Together Part 1 and Part 2

Gather Around Part 1 and Part 2

I'm back!

So I forgot I had this blog. But today I started going through different blogs on the Teaching Blog-o-sphere. And it made me want to blog again. So first up, personal update:

1. No longer Ms. M, now Mrs. M. Yay! (I thought about changing my blog to a different one but decided to keep firstgradewithmenendez, even though I am now Mora.

2. I am now a mommy!! My beautiful baby boy was born April 9th. Had a c-section since he was breech and a whopping 9 lbs 12 oz! He is now 2 1/2 months and has the blues eyes ever! 

I am still teaching first grade at that school in Nogales. I've been off since April on Maternity leave and am now itching to revamp my room, change my daily routine. The AZ Dept of Ed has all the districts working on a new Teacher Evaluation Tool. Unfortunately for the first grade teachers in my district, the only data that they have that is standardized is AZELLA and Diebels. AZELLA in First grade is way too hard. The passages have to be Second grade reading level. The directions are given too fast. Thus, many students stay in the same category or regress. Then Diebels goes from letter sounds, letter naming, and nonsense word decoding in Aug to Full passages and 35 words per minute in Dec. Passages that have LONG and short sounds. My grade level partner and I were deciding that since we usually spend the first 9 weeks reviewing short vowel sounds, we are going to go a little faster to make it to some long vowel sounds before Dec. 

So long story short, we needed something that would help us with those tests. I started going through pinterest searching for ideas to help us with fluency. (Isn't Pinterest amazing?!) And I stumbled upon 3rd grades a hoot and The Daily Five. So I bought the book from Amazon last night. And am now a quarter way through it and am IN LOVE!! So I'm hoping to set it up in my class this year! 

Hope everyone is well and enjoying Summer break! 

Mrs. Mora