Loving: Urban has been really tired and cranky in the evenings lately, so we've been putting him to bed a little earlier. That leaves a little more time to play with Gray before we do his bedtime routine and read books. He has been choosing to play the lowercase version of the Alphabet Recognition Parking Lot I created for him. I am proud to say that he is now identifying all of the lowercase letters! He is reading the cards for himself (and us), and has started telling us where we need to drive our cars too! The next step will be moving on to the pictures and matching the beginning sounds with the letter!
Needing: In years past, we have held our conferences the week before Thanksgiving. However, this year we are having our conferences the week of October 20th. With two in-service days and a field trip the week before, I know that I will be very busy! So, I really need to get my papers and assessments together so I can fill out my conference papers!
Trick: I have been wanting to share my grading trick, but never seemed to fit it in, so now is the perfect time! Since number grades don't usually mean anything to first graders, I use Mrs. Triangle to show them how they did on assessments. Curly hair means they got everything correct (You are awesome!). Straight hair means they may have gotten a few wrong, but they still did well (Rock on!). No hair means that they had some difficulty and we will work together to do better next time. No triangle means they didn't do so well, and we will need to work REALLY hard to improve! (This idea was not of my own invention, but one from a training I attended. It has worked wonderfully with my kiddos!)
Wishing you a wonderful October,
~Becky