Earth Day Freebie

Happy Earth Day!! You can download this freebie here :) 

Also, had to share.... definitely a great way to start the week :) This one is a keeper!

Field Trip Reflection

On Friday The Sara Marie School took their first field trip on the bus. Can you say EXCITED?! We went to see "The Dinosaur Petting Zoo" at The Egg in Albany. It was a fun hour long show. The dinosaurs were very realistic puppets. I think it's safe to say there were no criers! Except for *that one* student who can't handle not getting called to go on stage. Field trip = success and 2 tired teachers! 

When we returned to school we had lunch, recess, Spanish, then about 15 minutes to kill before free time. I whipped together this cute little reflection form that you can download for free here. 

Have a great week! We might hit 70 degrees here in NY! 

Office Make-over

I'm blogging from my new and improved office :)

Before shot. 

I *LOVE* the grey/yellow color combo. I still have a few more things to do with it. I have to fill those nice, empty shelf spaces with my teacher junk that you can't see piled up on the other side of the photo and oozing out of my closet! I also want to pick out a fabric to wrap my desk in and my husband is making me this Pinterest-inspired art piece. 

This office make-over is supposed to encourage me to actually use it and get back into blogging and creating super awesome resources again!! 

Anyone else's Spring Break ending tonight??! I'll leave you with this adorable photo to ease the Sunday night blues :)

And yes, I get *crazy-cat-lady* stares when kitty litter is on sale at Price Chopper while my husband walks behind me and pretends to not know me. ;)

And the winner is.......

Yvonne!! Email me to claim your prize :)  

durntm@gmail.com

Amazon Gift Card and Easter Unit Giveaway!

I was going to do a giveaway when I reached 1,000 followers, so now that I'm a little over a 1,000.... here it goes!! :)

There are several ways to enter, so please comment separately!

1. Follow my blog and comment

2. Follow my TpT store and comment 

3. Like Ms. Durning-Leander's Fairytale on Facebook and comment

4. Blog about my giveaway and comment with the link

5. Give my giveaway a shout out on your FB page and comment 

That's 5 chances to win!!! I'll announce a winner this Friday evening. Good luck :) 

A Look at February

Wow, February is over already?! February was a very busy month with Valentine's Day, 100th Day, Dental Health Month, and Winter Break. Here are some fun things we did in kindergarten. 

 I did my usual 100th Day t-shirt project. I am a pizza this year!! My husband gets full credit for that brilliant idea. 

I gave the kids the numbers 1, 0, and 0 and told them to make a picture from it. These are some of the creative portraits the kiddos made:

  A puppy!

  A butterfly!

Love <3

Also happening in February was Dental Health Month. Here are some of the fun projects we did:

We learned what enamel, dentin, and pulp are and how we feel pain. 

 "Whose smile is it?" bulletin board. Parents (and students!) loved guessing which smile was theirs! 

 And look at those adorable marshmallow teeth!

Now that February is over, I'm getting all my St. Patrick's Day and Easter centers out! If you haven't checked them out, they are on sale this month :)

And news on the school........ 

It's been an exhilarating and crazy couple of months at The Sara Marie School. We had our first Emerald Ball which was a great success. Here is a picture of me and another one of the co-founders Joanna from Love for Early Learners. 

1:1 Literacy Groups

Here is a lonnnng overdue post! Life has been so busy. Who knew home ownership entailed raking leaves, shoveling snow, and cleaning more than 1 room and bathroom? I don't miss apartment life, but I took a few things for granted! 

Things are starting to pick up at The Sara Marie School with our first gala and open house coming up. Enrollment has been increasing which is great news :)

Oh, and the Mr. adopted a kitten for Christmas. Her name is Ivy. Precious, yes?

This post is going to focus on literacy in kindergarten. I do use Daily 5 (see my previous posts explaining that in detail) but this year I'm not using CAFE with it. Because I work at a private school we have small class sizes. Instead of working with traditional reading groups, I meet with each student 1:1 3 times a week using Jan Richardson's Guided Reading format. My kiddos are making great progress using Richardson's approach. 

This is my handy-dandy teacher bag that stays with me throughout reading. It has everything I need from my data binder to magnetic letters. 

Here is where I keep all of my leveled readers. I have a bin for each level. It keeps me organized :) I bought most of them through Scholastic and on eBay.

This is what the lesson plan format looks like for emergent readers from Richardson's book. It follows a 3 day format. I love that each day begins with a sight word review. I've noticed tremendous growth. I had students begin the year with no sight word knowledge (or alphabet!) and now know almost all the pre-primer and primer words. I do NOT use the "drill and kill" method for teaching them. We go over the word wall once a day as a class and then we spend 1 minute reviewing them/learning new ones when they meet with me 1:1 during reading. 

On day 2, after we have practiced sight words and reread our story, we work on phonics or whatever it is I think they need practice with. Richardson gives a lot of ideas for this part but I also have a huge binder that I put together in college for no reason other than to use up my print quota before I graduated, but boy have I put it to use. Most of the collection is from PALS.  I have a section for beginning sounds, blending, rhymes, sound-to-letter segmentation, alphabet recognition, comprehension, concept of word, letter sounds, print knowledge, vocabulary, word recognition, writing, spelling, and fluency. This truly is an AMAZING resource AND it's free (with the exception of all the printing you will do!). 

On the third day we do a sight word review then I give them a sentence that includes many words they should know and one or two that they haven't necessarily learned but I want to see what they do with it. I do NOT do a traditional spelling test. I underline the words that they should know and those are the words I count in their score. Some students  only need to know 3, some 5, some 7. It just depends on the child. The sentence in the picture is "My mom said I was the best at some crafts." This student should have known "my, said, I, was, the, at, some" and he did so he got a 6/6. I also gained some insight on how he spelled "best" and "crafts" which were not right, but he did not need to get those correct for full credit. 

Also, I'm looking into a new math program for next year. Can you either tell me here what you use or comment below. Thank you :)