Back to School Giveaway and Blog Hop

I am teaming up with some great bloggers for a Back to School Giveaway and Blog Hop.  Each day a new blogger will post some back to school tips or freebies.

We start back to school in just over a week.  Teachers go back on August 18th and students will come on August 19th.  I wish I could say that I am ready, but at this moment I feel anything but ready.  My room is *close* to being done, but I need to finish up my plans for the first week.

I don't know how your school places kindergarten students in classes, but in my district we do things a little different than most places.  When kindergarten students come to school the first day, they are not assigned a teacher.  Instead all the students are together.  Throughout the week, we assess the students, find out what services they need (ELL, Speech, Resource, etc.), and see which personalities should be together or apart.  Once we have all this information, my teaching partner and I sit down and put the students into classes.  It is quite a process, but it is the best way we have to evenly separate the students.

How do you separate the kindergarten students into classes?

I promised some freebies so freebies you will get!  ;)

I have some freebies in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop for the beginning of the year.  {Just click on the image to download.}

Our district is big into cooperative learning and I absolutely love using it in my classroom.  It really helps build a sense of community.  Here is a cooperative learning freebie:

Another freebie is my shape poems.  I use these at the beginning of the year and it is a good reference for my students throughout the year as we introduce 3D shapes.  (I have lots of other fun freebies over in my TpT store too)

Now for the giveaway, you will want to head on over to Sarah's blog and enter the giveaway to win some fabulous back to school prizes.

Tomorrow you will want to check out the post over at 3 Teacher Chicks to see what they have up their sleeves.