I'm Gonna Party Like It's Back to School 2012!!!

Hello Sweet Endless Pinabilities Friends!,

It's Lisa from Learning Is Something To Treasure & I'm here to share some fun and functional pins that I have found for Back to School time.

Did I seriously just say Back to School?!? I swear it was just yesterday I was saying farewell to my classroom and swapping my teacher wardrobe for shorts and flip flops! How fast time flies! :)
Here's a little humor to start us off before I get into the fun and the functional!

Pinned via Greg Smedley
Too funny...I choose to convince myself of that!
Here are some fun back to school pins that I would like to share with you!:

Pinned via Kelley Dolling
How stinkin' cute is that?!?

Pinned from Deanna Jump
Since I have a pirate theme, my firsties will be making some pirates for our classroom display!

I love this activity to start off the school year:

Pinned via First Grade Factory
I fell in love with this pin when I saw it. What a great way to discuss classroom expectations & let the students be a part of it!

I thought that the following pin would be fun for the 1st day of school:
 
Pinned via Jeannie Partin
So...I made this one for the First Day of 1st Grade!!

The lovely little girl modeling it is my daughter! :)

I also do a friendship unit for the first week of school. I L-O-V-E these ideas:

  

     Pinned via Melissa Williams    

Pinned via Pam Jones

Here's some functional pins for beginning the new school year:

Pinned via Sara Ventrella

This is for organizing sight words! I have organized mine like this for years & can vouch that it is a great way to organize your sight words. :)

Pinned from Deanna Jump

For those of you who are doing Common Core this year, I love this way of organizing & displaying the common core standards that you are teaching from none other than the famous Deanna Jump!!

I put together this Teacher Keeper that I purchased from Jessica Pollard. It includes absolutely everything you need to stay organized!

Pinned via Jessica Pollard

Here's a picture of mine that I put together:

I found this freebie that has everything you need to create your own substitute folder:

Pinned via Simply Kinder
And finally.... another great way to keep everything you need for the week at your fingertips:

Pinned via Cheryl Saoud

Well that's about all that I have for today!! I wish everyone a great beginning to the school year!! Since I started with some humor, let me end with some humor. You have to love these ecards!

Pinned via Traci Clausen

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!

Pinterest...The "Write" Way!

Happy Weekend All!

I am so excited to be here on Endless Pinabilities!! Let me introduce myself! Some of you know may know me already! My name is Lisa from Learning Is Something To Treasure.

I have been teaching 1st grade for 7 years in Florida. I absolutely love teaching 6 & 7 year olds & being a part of the amazing strides that they make throughout the year! I am so excited to be one of the authors for this blog, because I have SO many pins to share with you! Some may say I am a pinaholic...and I would have to completely agree with them. Pinterest has been an inspiration to my teaching career, as I know it has to many of you. As I looked through my boards to figure out what to talk about, one thing stuck out for me...Writing!

I don't know about you, but writing is such an essential, yet difficult subject to teach. I am always looking for motivating and captivating ways to teach it in my classroom. It is so integral that we incorporate writing into our classroom on a daily basis as early as possible. I wanted to share some writing inspired pins that I have used or look forward to using with my students next year!
First, I think it is essential for a rubric to be established (at any age) of what our students' writing is expected to look like. It's important to set a high standard for writing. This is one of my favorite pins which provides students with a visual scale to rate their writing:

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Also, students should have easy access to a portable word wall with sight words and sentence conventions to view while they are working on daily writing. I think this is a perfect example!

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One thing that I notice with my students and probably at any age is the occasional "writer's block". Therefore, I feel it is important to have ideas that my students can refer to at any time to spark some inspiration. This is a great board that I found on pinterest to do just that:

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With that being said, anchor charts have been a big help in my classroom with organizing our thoughts on writing. Here are a few of my favorite writing anchor chart pins:

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I also love using thinking maps with my students. It's a very effective way to integrate multiple subjects together. I feel that it helps students understand a concept even more by using thinking maps to organize their thoughts and knowledge on a subject and then write about it.

 

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During and after the writing process, students should be aware of following the rules of writing. This chart is a great visual reminder for students to check over their writing conventions.

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 This is also another wonderful example of using your "writer's eyes" to check over your writing. This can be adapted to expectations at any grade level!

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Well there you have it! I hope you found some of these writing related pins helpful to you and your classroom. Thanks to Tanja for setting up this fantastic resource for all of us to share!

Enjoy your weekend!