Guest blogger ~ Kristi and Crystal

Hi there! This is Kristi and Crystal from Teaching Little Miracles.

What are some things you do everyday in your classroom? Is there something you do daily that takes time that you would like to simplify? Well, we recently came up with a little something that will hopefully help us out and thought maybe it could help some of you as well.

At some point in the morning before our students arrive, we both take the time to write on the board...something like this:

Carrie's Font © Clip Art By Carrie

We know writing on the board is not that difficult, but it does take a few minutes and seems a bit monotonous after 100+ days of school (maybe sooner)! The reason we continue to write is because some of the items on the list change. For example, we give homework on Mondays (Phonics), Tuesdays (Math), and Thursdays (Math or Spelling) so item numbers 1 and 2 change depending on the day of the week. Number 3 changes also. In fact, we don't really write "morning work" instead it could be MB p. 127 (math box), SP100 (spelling), or FTS Week 3, Monday (Fix the Sentence*). Items 4 and 5 are the same every day. Work Folder is where students keep all unfinished work or where we put things that need corrected - see below for our new idea on those. Choices are what students are allowed to do if they finish work early - read a book, computer games (that go along with our curriculum), practice spelling words, number scroll, flash cards, and Wild River (phonemic awareness activity).

**Fix the Sentence is actually the Correct the Sentence! daily journals. We started using these last year and LOVE them! A little tough at the beginning of the year for our firsties, but they get there by the end and we pass them up to second grade.

Last week, we found this on Pinterest:

Smiling in Second Grade

And you probably know what came next...

"Why didn't we think of that?!?!?"

So...we got busy and made our own posters. Here's the plan. We will print these and laminate them. Then put magnets on the back and put them on our whiteboards at the front of the room. We even made them so we could simply fill in page numbers and number of errors for our FTS books. Our choices are represented by pictures that we plan to use as seperate magnets. Sometimes we want to limit their choices so we will just put specific choices on the choices poster for that day. We're so excited about this we thought we'd share them with you too! Click here to grab them!

Morning Routine FREEBIE - 17 pages total

On to what we hope will be another great Pinterest find...

2nd Grade Sandcastle

In the past, we have kept the Work Folders in one central location. Students did great quietly waiting their turn to get their folders or put the folders away, but it does take some time out of our day. We are super excited to give this a try! It seems like it would be so much easier for students to access and we won't be flipping through folders looking for the one we need for corrections. We're a little nervous about how these will hold up so we'll just have to see...

Thanks to Kelli for having us!

We hope you'll come visit us on our blog soon!

Kristi and Crystal

*Thank you so much Kristi and Crystal! 

LOVE the work folder idea! :) Only one more to day to enter my 1st Blog Birthday giveaway...click {HERE} for more info! :)