First Week Survivor! + Freebie

Hooray! I survived my first full week!

We were busy. We had some great days and some not-as-great days. We're working on it!

I decided after 2 not-so-great days to give Whole Brain Teaching a try. I struggle with getting a handful of students to look and listen when I'm talking. So, Thursday I taught the kids Class? Yes! and Hands and Eyes!. We used Thursday to practice those 2 techniques, but I realized at the end of the day that I should have introduced the points that day too. I introduced those today.

(Note: I am not an expert in Whole Brain Teaching. I have not taken any trainings. I have not read any books. I have only watched Youtube videos, read blogs, and tried to use those as my examples. If you have any tips or tricks to share, I would love your advice.)

I decided we are going to try to earn a celebration. If the kids can end the day with more smiley faces than frown faces on 10 days, we'll celebrate. I have some little plastic figures I was given that we'll decorate to look like monsters with glue, glitter, fuzzies, googly eyes, etc. Unfortunately, today we did not end the day with more smiley faces.

Maybe Monday will be better. This last Monday was awesome, so I have high hopes!

This week was a week of learning how to do things in second grade. Most of what we did was whole group to learn the processes. We worked hard on handwriting too. It needs a lot of work in my room! We are also working hard on writing complete sentences.

Learning our new Math series has been the hardest instructional part of the week. I have used Everyday Math all 7 years I have taught, so this year will be a learning year for me. Now we have Math Expressions. So far I like it! The teaching manual will be glued to my side, probably, and in my take home bag every day after school.

One of our whole group Spelling activities we practiced together this week was putting our Spelling words in ABC order. I know you probably don't have the same Spelling list that I do, but maybe you can use the activity anyway. It's all short vowel sound words that the kids cut, glue, and write. Grab it if you can use it!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you had a great week!
Please leave a comment if you decided to download the freebie. Thanks!