Read to Self and the Interactive White board

This past week I really started my kids on read to self. They are starting to take off as readers and this time of year is the perfect time for me to introduce something that becomes a staple in our routine. You have to remember I have my kids for 2 years. So we start read to self in Kindergarten but in first grade it is something we do everyday without fail. So this week, they had their book bags which had books from the leveled library that came with our reading series and the sight word readers they made themselves. They were getting all excited to tell me the popcorn words they found while we were reading. So I had to come up with something to get them to not yell them out but still encourage their reading. I hate to get on to them when they are so excited about being able to read a word. So I told them to be on the look for the words and then when we gathered on the carpet they could share a word they found. I just used an open flipchart on the board but it got me thinking.
I use my promethean board for everything. If you have followed my blog for a while, you know that I make flipcharts each week to go along with our reading series. I also use a calendar one everyday. So after asking some questions on my facebook page, I created this freebie. It is a pdf file that has several questions for your students to focus on during self selected reading time or really any reading time. This is just to try it out and see how it works. It has one for sight words (popcorn words as I call them), words that you stretch out, words that have g in them, words with short a and words with short i. These are the skills we're working on in my classroom. From my experiences with a promethean board, you can import the pdf into a flipchart or you can open up active inspire and use the desktop feature so your students can write directly on the page. I know nothing about smart boards but I've been told you can import pdfs into smartboard files as well. If you grab this freebie and use, I would love to hear some feedback. This is something I'm excited about but I'd love to hear how it works for others.

Click here to download the freebie from google docs. 

The weatherman is calling for snow Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I was really hoping for a five day week again. We are suppose to celebrate the 100th day on Tuesday and then go on a field trip on Wednesday. We'll see what really happens with the weather. I'm so ready for spring break! I set up new centers on Friday so I can't wait to show you what they are later this week!

Promethean Board Ideas - Recycled Post

I have been racking my brain trying to come up with something to blog about it and I have a few ideas but no energy to blog. So I'm reposting an old post from last fall. It has all my promethean charts in one place. So check it out! If you have some things you'd like to see me blog about leave me a comment.


I have had a really hard time getting back into blogging since school started. It has been so hard to  balance everything. On top of school, I feel like Chris and I are so busy all the time. He's a boy scout leader and a youth leader. I help with the youth and also teach a class on Wednesday nights. We just started a Sunday school class for young adults. I'm really not sure how we're going to balance everything when we decide to start a family. Then on top of all this I've had jury duty and dealing with my knee issues. It looks like I'm going to have surgery the week before Thanksgiving on my ACL. We went yesterday to get a second opinion and although I'm still not going to be able to run, I feel a lot more positive about it all. I'll be out of school at least a week and on crutches probably close to 6 weeks. They gave me the crutches last night and I'm suppose to be practicing with them.( I got tired of being at school and just stopped this post yesterday afternoon.)
This is Wednesday now. This is my third go on writing this post. I'm determine to get it written today. I haven't been blogging like I would like. I like to blog about ideas and things that are going on in my classroom. I don't think I've done that much lately. But I was happy to see that pictures from my blog are being pinned and I'm getting some traffic on some older posts. So I've tried to revamp some of those posts and ideas. I reblogged about apple week activities on Smedley's Smorgasboard of Kindergarten blog on Monday. You can check that out here. I offered a freebie so you might want to head over there when you finish reading this post.
Another topic that gets a lot of traffic on my blog is my promethean board posts.  I love my board. I don't know how I ever taught without it. I use it for everything. Last year when I was in kindergarten I created a chart to go with every letter. I have a couple to share with you if you are interested.
Flipchart on the letter A
Flipchart on the letter M
Flipchart for the letter P
Flipchart for the letter S
Flipchart for the letter T
I also use my promethean board to do calendar each day. This is my kindergarten one you can check out.
Calendar flipchart for Kindergarten In first grade I do things a little different. So I'll have to post again and share some of my resources for first grade.
Here's a flipchart that I use for literacy centers. They are pages taken from my letter charts for the week.
Center flipchart

Hopefully this will help someone out. I'm always getting emailed about my flipcharts and now you can get all of them from this post. I'll be back next week with a post on first grade flipcharts.
I hope to be back later this week with some information about reading groups.
Let me know if these flipcharts help you out any.

Promethean Board Ideas

First up I need to announce the winners of my giveaways.
Day 1 giveaway winner was Cathy Irwin.
Day 2 Giveaway winner was Kirra.
Day 3 giveaway winner was Mrs. B. I've sent emails to all of you so hopefully you will receive all your goodies soon.

I have had a really hard time getting back into blogging since school started. It has been so hard to  balance everything. On top of school, I feel like Chris and I are so busy all the time. He's a boy scout leader and a youth leader. I help with the youth and also teach a class on Wednesday nights. We just started a Sunday school class for young adults. I'm really not sure how we're going to balance everything when we decide to start a family. Then on top of all this I've had jury duty and dealing with my knee issues. It looks like I'm going to have surgery the week before Thanksgiving on my ACL. We went yesterday to get a second opinion and although I'm still not going to be able to run, I feel a lot more positive about it all. I'll be out of school at least a week and on crutches probably close to 6 weeks. They gave me the crutches last night and I'm suppose to be practicing with them.( I got tired of being at school and just stopped this post yesterday afternoon.)
This is Wednesday now. This is my third go on writing this post. I'm determine to get it written today. I haven't been blogging like I would like. I like to blog about ideas and things that are going on in my classroom. I don't think I've done that much lately. But I was happy to see that pictures from my blog are being pinned and I'm getting some traffic on some older posts. So I've tried to revamp some of those posts and ideas. I reblogged about apple week activities on Smedley's Smorgasboard of Kindergarten blog on Monday. You can check that out here. I offered a freebie so you might want to head over there when you finish reading this post.
Another topic that gets a lot of traffic on my blog is my promethean board posts.  I love my board. I don't know how I ever taught without it. I use it for everything. Last year when I was in kindergarten I created a chart to go with every letter. I have a couple to share with you if you are interested.
Flipchart on the letter A
Flipchart on the letter M
Flipchart for the letter P
Flipchart for the letter S
Flipchart for the letter T
I also use my promethean board to do calendar each day. This is my kindergarten one you can check out.
Calendar flipchart for Kindergarten In first grade I do things a little different. So I'll have to post again and share some of my resources for first grade.
Here's a flipchart that I use for literacy centers. They are pages taken from my letter charts for the week.
Center flipchart

Hopefully this will help someone out. I'm always getting emailed about my flipcharts and now you can get all of them from this post. I'll be back next week with a post on first grade flipcharts.
I hope to be back later this week with some information about reading groups.
Let me know if these flipcharts help you out any.

Flipcharts for the Letter A

I'm loving making these flipcharts that follow along with our reading series and practice the skills needed. This week I'm having the students complete a flipchart during their center time as well. I'm pretty excited and I hope it works out well. Up until now, they've just been using a website www.starfall.com during center time. But I took our sorting pages we've already completed and added them into a flipchart. Here a couple of tips for making charts like this for yourself:

• I use microsoft word to find my pictures. You can use the shared resources/my resources as part of the promethean software. But I've found it difficult to search when I'm looking for something specific. I can search better using word. So then I just copy from that document and past into my flipchart. The reading series we use has picture cards that go with it. So I use their ideas for pictures to sort and just search for them. 
• You can use the camera tool to capture any picture you want on the internet. I've found that copying to the clipboard works best for copying and pasting into the flipchart. The camera tool is found under tools.
• You can insert any media you want into a flipchart. Go under insert and then media. I've put a lot of the music we use and the cds that came with the reading series into my music files. I just have to insert the clip and it is already in the flipchart. 
• To insert pages from a flipchart you've already created into a new flipchart is very easy. Open the new flipchart and the flipchart that you want to copy from. Go under view and choose show browsers. The first icon on this tool is the one that shows all the pages in your flipchart. You click on the page you want and drag it to the title of the other flipchart on the top of the page. This will put that page into your new flipchart. 

I hope these tips and charts are helpful. If you download my charts or use my tips, I would love some feedback. It means a lot to me that someone else can use what I've created.
Click on title of chart to download.
Letter A flipchart                          Flipchart sorting for centers

Side note: I finally have a blog button. Thanks to Ms. M at



I used her post on TBA but couldn't get the html right. I commented on her post and she got right back to me. I emailed her my code and she fixed it for me. So a big thank you to Ms. M!

Starfall on the Promethean Board

One of the other ways I use my promethean board a lot is with other websites. It's so nice to have access to different websites for the whole class to use. One of my favorites is www.starfall.com. If you haven't visited starfall and you teach kindergarten or first grade you need to visit. They have a ton of good games and activities for students this age. I've been reading a lot of blogs about starting writing with kindergartners and starting with labeling. This was part of my lesson plans this week was to work on a picture of animal families and have the students label the picture. Well, we haven't talked about labels at all. When I had my students in the computer lab yesterday, they were playing on starfall. A couple of the boys were using labels on one of the activities. So today as introduction to labels we did this activity together. This link should take you to the labels http://www.starfall.com/n/me/myBody/load.htm?f. It is under the It's fun to read and then the about me tab from there. The kids enjoyed this. We'll see if it stuck in their heads about what a label is tomorrow when we finish the lesson. After using this website, they drew a picture of their family and tomorrow they're going to label it. You can get that page here. When we get finished, we'll make a class book out of it. I try to do a class book a week.

Using Flipcharts for reading

The next way I use flipcharts a lot is with my reading series. I worked this summer and created some flipcharts to go with each week of the series. We use the treasure series. It has 3 weeks of a smart start to get them ready. I started with those charts to see what worked and what didn't. I really liked it and now I've got to get to making more flipcharts.
Treasures comes with a lot of charts and resource books and you can find the same things on the cd-rom that comes with it. I've downloaded all these charts and resources. Last year I would just pull it up on the board but sometimes it was hard to find the workbook page I am looking for. So using the camera tool on the promethean board, I'm able to copy and paste the pages into my flipchart.
This is how you do that:
1. Open the document you want to put in your flipchart.
2. From your promethean software chose the desktop annotate option. This will allow you to use the promethean tools on the desktop.
3. From the tools menu chose the camera tool and then chose fit the area.
4. Use the arrows to fit around the document you want to use.
5. I think the copy to clipboard or my resources are the best options to use. If it something you'll use more than once, I'd copy it to resources rather than just the clipboard.
6. Go back to the flipchart that you're working on and then paste the document into the flipchart.

I use this for the teaching chart that comes with our reading series a lot. It is easier to me to write directly on these charts using the flipchart rather than the desktop annotate. It saves me time from searching for the charts needed. I just look the first time when making the flipchart. I also use this for the worksheets. Treasures has the whole workbook as a pdf file. Especially at the beginning of kindergarten, this is great for the kids to learn how to do the workbook pages.

I also include in my flipcharts, interactive writing charts. I've done these in the past using chart paper. The thing I like about using my board, is that I can turn it into a pdf and then print the sheet needed for the students. They can practice reading their sentences at home. Eventually, I'm going to print the sentences and cut them apart for the students to put together again. The writing charts usually have our sight words in them or they are connected to the theme we're working on.
We do our handwriting as part of learning our letter of the week. I thought the board would be a fun way to practice writing the letters. So I included a page that had some handwriting lines on it. Using the dual user function, I was able to have two kids practicing writing their letters at the same time. This was the first time I used that function and it was pretty cool. The kids were so surprised that 2 of them could do it at the same time.
You can get my chart for M week on this post and hopefully I'll get ahead of making the charts soon.
Check back later this week for a how-to post on including media in your flipcharts.
M Flipchart
If you would like to see some of my other flipcharts just leave me a comment. Please leave me a comment if you read this and found it useful. I love getting feedback and I just don't get much.

Morning Meeting Promethean Style

This week I'm going to share some of what I do with my promethean board in my class. I've had some people want to see my flipcharts and I think I've figured out how to share them. 

I love love love my morning meeting and calendar time with the kids. I think I love it so much because I use a flipchart that I'm really proud of. It is a combination of different ideas and trial and error and searching promethean planet for things that work for my kids. I love it because I can adapt to fit whatever my kids need. All I have to do is add another page.
When I first started teaching kindergarten, I wrote my morning message on a small white board and did my calendar time on a bulletin board. I had a good routine with them. I keep my students for two years. I have them in kindergarten and then first grade and by half way through first grade I was tired of my morning message and my kids didn't seem to need it. But by using my board, I don't get bored or tired of it. I love it!
Here's my morning meeting routine:
When they first come in they see a chart that has their routine for the morning. I use pictures of what they are suppose to do and the words. I saw this idea on Mrs. Wills blog and just adapted it to fit my needs (At lease I think that's where I saw it. I can't find it now). The students can see what they need to do. As they are working on their morning work at their table, they answer a question on the board. I started this year with their favorite color. They moved their name underneath a square of their favorite color. I started these graphs to help them recognize their names. The next one they do is if they are boys or girls. This starts to get them used to the yes/no format we use the rest of the year and they can "read" it themselves. Then they have a yes/no question they answer everyday. I use their popcorn words and different themes and concepts we're working on. I also use a lot of graphing and math concepts with this chart.
When morning meeting starts, we start with a Dr. Jean song I've embedded in my chart. Then we go over our rules which I got from The Polka Dot Patch.
Here's a list of the next slides:

• Morning message (I enjoy playing around with the backgrounds depending on the season and holdiays)
• Calendar
• Days of the week (Dr. Jean song embedded)
• Days we've been in school hundreds chart
• Months of the year (Dr. Jean song embedded)
• Weather (Dr. Jean song embedded)
• Season
• Temperature
• Patterns with shapes
• Number patterns
• Schedule

 Then there are a variety of pages that I'll add eventually and that I use in first grade. If you download my chart, I put notes in each slide to let you know what I do there. I love doing my morning meeting this way because we practice so many skills in math and in reading and writing. I try to include questions in my morning message and my question of the day that review our science and social studies themes.
If I could figure out how to show an image of it I would. Hopefully soon I can figure that one out.
Here's my flipchart for download in google docs. It took a long time to upload, so let me know if you were successful in downloading it.