Awards and 4 on 4th

HOLY MOLY.... I have been given another award! Oh, how sweet is this???? (VERY!)

This big puffy heart "Thank You" goes out to Linda at Kinder Doodles for the Versatile Blogger award and again the One Lovely Blog award . I have got some serious homework, looking for more lovely blogs! Someone out in blog land will be receiving awards in the near future.

Today I got together with some other American's to celebrate our 4th of July today. No fireworks here, but good food and conversation is always a win!

And speaking of the 4th, I stumbled onto 4 on the Fourth from Ms. M's Blog. The idea behind this linky it to share 4 things your going to try for the first time in your class this coming school year. This inspired me right away, and I quickly knew of 4 new things I am going to try. You still have 3 days to join in the fun!

1) Flexible start for first grade: We have an new city initiative called Flexible Start. The basic idea is that you and your coworker/s must teach ALL of the new first graders coming to school for the first 5 weeks together.
The idea is that we must cooperate together and we get to work in smaller groups getting to know all the first graders, before we split them into their own class groups after the 5 week period.
This will be my first year trying it out, and it really sounds neat! 

2) Jolly Phonics: I have ordered the Jolly Phonics materials to teach in first grade this year. I had a chance in the spring to visit another English school which was using these materials. I am excited to get started and teaching the alphabet!

3) Core Statements: Well I don't have to do this, but I want to touch on it this year for sure. I will post for the students the standards for some lessons this year. I think often we don't give the students enough information about what their role it at school. I hope this gives the first graders some concrete ideas about their daily learning.

4) Character development: I have ordered from Scholastic the Build a Caring Classroom kit. It comes with 6 books, poster and teacher book. I think those first graders need some guidance in the early years to help them grow and deal with life situations in a positive way.

I will surely blog about these in the autumn.

One last note for today:

I like Farley's rule of 3. I am going to apply this rule to other linky parties. I just think it is super nice to write comments to others!