Where Are We? Signs

I'm getting really excited for this new year to start!  There is just something about the beginning of the year - filled with possibilities and nothing has beaten you down yet. 

 

Our school is going through a major shift:

new principal (and our assistant principal's first year was last year) and 13 new teachers!  That doesn't even count the grade switching of some teachers.  But I'm excited...new faces and new ideas make me happy. 

 

So to welcome some of the new teachers I got my craft on.  Here are some hallway signs I made.

 

 

 

I tried to match class themes if I could - safari, beach, camp, etc.  My personal sign is done with dogs - shocking, I know.

 

 

One of my teammates made the whole team matching 'Where are we?' signs as Christmas gifts a few years back. I stole the idea from her and started making these.  One of our school policies is to post where you are if you are not in the classroom.  This sign is easy to have as a classroom helper change as you leave.  Plus they are just so adorable.

 

Have fun getting ready for this upcoming year ~

Books, Books, Books

No one ever told me this about books. I wish they had! It might not have taken me 3 years of teaching before I got my books in order. We all know that an early literacy classroom should be full of books. However, I believe you should have 4 distinct sets of books.


First, you should have a class library. These are the books the students will choose to read on their own. These books should NOT be leveled (because in life the books are not leveled). They should be grouped by theme: Berenstain Bears, Clifford, sports, Magic School Bus, fairy tales / folktales / fables, etc.

If you haven’t done this yet – take all your books (this will take time) and spread them out. Then start noticing the categories that emerge. I noticed I had a lot of books on the United States symbols. I never could read all of them during that unit so creating a library box of USA was the perfect way to utilize those books I didn't teach from. One more note about your classroom library – the books need to be facing the students. I have never been drawn into a book because of its spine. The cover is what catches my eye and interest. This is the same for students. Find a way to let the students easily see the covers of the books as they browse.

I have use color dot stickers to easily mark my books. You will want to find a system that works for you and your students. A friend of mine didn’t have the space to have her books facing out, but she still made it easy for the students to pull a box and browse the covers. The classroom library is going to be the main source of books for the Read to Self book bags if you use Daily 5.

Second, you should have your teacher books. These are books that you cannot have in the class library because you need them every year to teach from. I have started buying duplicates of books that I notice my students really love. That way after I have read and taught from that books I can put out the other copies for them to add to their books bags.  However, teacher books are not for student use. They are for a specific teaching purpose. These books I have organized in book bins with the spines out since they are for me.

Third, you should have homework books. These are books that can get sent home each week. I use the basil adoption leveled readers, phonetic book (i.e. Starfall books), and the old basil adoption leveled readers. Because my district mandates that I use the basil to pace my spelling I have the books ordered by the phonetic rule / spelling rule. Most of those books are leveled-ish…I don’t always agree with the level. I have many copies of each of these books so if one happens to get lost then I still have many other copies. Once a students has lost several books I go to photocopy / black and white books only for them. In 8 years of teaching I have only had to do that twice. If you have a good organizational system to send books home and return them then you will not lose many books.

Fourth, you should have guided reading books. These are leveled books that you plan to teach in small group. I use a lot of Wright Group Leveled Readers / Rigby Leveled Readers / Reading A to Z books. During my first few years of teaching I had to do my guided reading using books from the school’s leveled library, the basil adoption, or just a few books I had multiple copies of. It was not a good system – I didn’t do enough guided reading because of this.

So my lesson learned is to make things easy: easy to see, easy to organize, easy to use. I hope you will consider looking at your classroom books and thinking about breaking them into these separate categories. This would have made me a better teacher if I had thought about it sooner.

Charts, Storage, and Formative Assessment, Oh My!

Charting Our Learning

After we have used an anchor chart and moved on I like to put it up in another location for a little longer. This is my anchor chart area in the classroom. It changes during the year but it gives the students another location to go to as a resource for spelling during Writer’s Workshop and / or Work on Writing. 

 

 Storage Tip

 

My district uses Investigations and enVision as our math programs.  We use Investigations to guide our teaching but supplement pieces of enVision when needed.  However, we get the consumables for enVision every year.  Luckily we don't get those long student books that you have to rip pages out of any more...we get shrink wrapped sets of pages.  It is much easier to pull out one or two pages you actually want to use in this format.  But the stacks and stacks of shrink wrapped pages take up a lot of room.  Until I discovered that I could fit every single piece into one filing cabinet drawer.  I use a permanent marker to write on the spine what unit it is so I can easily find the few pages I use during the year.  I will gladly give up one filing cabinet drawer to get rid of the stacks and stacks of math consumables from my shelves. 

 

Formative Assessment

My district is pushing formative assessment to help guide our teaching. This was a great idea one of the other teachers shared. It worked like a charm in my class. All you do is have a sticky note for each student and ask a question. They can post their note in their corresponding square on the chart. Some of my questions were: What was one thing you learned about the food chain today? Use the 3 numbers on the board and make all 4 equations in a fact family. If I know that 7+1=8, then I know 8-__=__. Write down the main character(s) in one of the books you read during Read to Self. This was a simple poster to make with a lot of flexibility in how to use.  

 

I know these were a bunch of random tips.  But hopefully they will give you some easy ideas you might want to implement. 
 

Filing Crate Seating

I haven’t been blogging because I’ve been in my class the last couple of weeks.  It’s been fun actually setting things up and making all the fun things I have pinned from Pinterest.  So here is another crate project I did.

I’m sure you have all seen the cute little crate seats on Pinterest.  This is my tutorial of how I made them – full of pictures of course.

First, I found the perfect little dog fabric.  It happened to be blue so I went back to Wal-Mart and picked up some more crates.

I then went to Lowes and had them cut some plywood for me.  I brought a crate up there because another blogger said it was a good idea.  She was right – a couple of pieces didn’t quite fit with the first cut.  It was funny because as I was checking out at Lowes a worker came up to me and said, “You must be making those crate seats.  All these teachers keep coming in here to make those things!”  

Once my boards were cut I covered the top with foam – the roll out kind that I got at the sewing section of Wal-Mart.  One roll covered all 6 crate chairs I made.  The last one had to be pieced together, but you can’t tell once it’s all done.

Then I cut the fabric to size and used my super heavy duty staple gun to secure it all down.

I really like the way these seats turned out.  They also help make the room feel larger because I don’t have chair legs sticking out from the two tables I used them at.  I think it’s more of a visual thing than actually having more space, but whatever.  It’s a fun project that adds a little personality to the room. 

 

And they come in handy for storing all those supplies I get at the beginning of the year that we consume: spirals, tissue boxes, pocket folders, manilla paper.  We have so much of it early on that I can't always find the room to store it at the beginning of the year...problem solved this year!

 

 

Table Storage using Filing Crates

Over the summer I tried to think of ways to make my classroom less crowded.  I had tables with a desk at the end to hold my buckets and crates for the student notebooks.  I wanted to get rid of the desks at the end of each table in order to make more room. 

My mom came up with the idea of using zip ties to put 2 crates together under the tables for storage.  I love the idea because the crates are under the tables, separate the students a little, and are pretty sturdy.  I’m a very visual person so here are some pictures of how you can turn simple filing crates into storage / organization for your classroom.

I bought these crates for about $3.50 at Wal-Mart.  My mom already had zip ties, but I’m sure Wal-Mart has those too.

I put a zip tie in each corner of the crates and then snipped off the excess.

Next I use felt feet on the bottom of my crates. You could skip this step if you have carpet.  I don’t want the kids pulling the crates out from the tables, but I’m sure they will move around sometime so the felt feet will keep our newly waxed floor nice and shiny.

One side of the crate will be used for notebook storage and the other side for the pencil boxes.  I like this idea because sometimes when the students were at their desks they would play with their pencil boxes.  Now they will be safely stored in the crate (by my table captains) until they are needed.

I love this idea because my room already feels larger just by removing 5 desks.  I must admit my mom (once again) has made my classroom an even better place to be!

Some Handy Tips

Next year I will be having some new teachers on my team – yay!  I love a fresh start and new ideas.  But it has got me thinking about random tricks I have learned (okay, stolen) along the way.

If you have lockers in your room – did you know that you can put little dowel rods in them and create shelves?  It really helps me organize my supplies in the non-student lockers.

I’m sure you know this one…but just in case you don’t…place mats work as dry erase boards.  My mom got me these cute dog bone ones for super cheap.  My students LOVE them.  Also, socks work well as erasers.  I used to have white ones but the students liked to draw on them or joke around that they were from dirty feet.  Black socks from the dollar store helped solve that problem.

So my students have pencil boxes to keep them organized.  It only took me 4 years to think that I should get one for my teaching area as well.  I got a really big one because I put a lot of random things I might need in there.  And the best part is that I can close the lid and my teaching tools are conveniently hidden.

One teacher who is moving down from a higher grade next year asked me what I do with first graders when they finish early and the rest of the kids are still working.  I have changed over several years on what to do with these early finishers…but I love what I did last year because it was simple and it reinforced pervious skills.  I had a centers approach.  Since we do Daily 5 and math Investigations I don’t really use centers any more.  However, if my students finish morning work or any assignment and there is free time they have some choices.  They ALWAYS have to check their unfinished work folder first.  But if that is empty then they may choose a center.  I do not make centers as something extra – they are games we have previously played during a math Investigation or a science sort, etc.  When I am done cleaning up an activity I usually leave 2 of the sets out and put them in my centers tub.  The students may then choose them at any time to continue investigating.  For example – after the 100^th day of school I left a couple of the hundred charts that had been cut into puzzle pieces and put them in the centers basket.  Another example is after we had sorted various rocks during a science unit I left 2 bags of the rocks with a magnifying glass and sorting mat in the center basket.  Although the students worked in partners during the original activities of 100 chart puzzles and rock sorting, during centers they work on them alone.   I have found my students really like having this extra chance to revisit some of their learning.  Of course they always have the choice of reading from around the room or working on one of their books from writer’s workshop, but centers has given the students more options to extend learning independently.

And one last trick for the road…those big paper clips can be used to hold up cardstock.  I use them periodically for when I need something at the table group but it is not a permanent sign. 

I’m also thinking of taking my curriculum word banks (my Texas one is shown) and putting them on cardstock.  You can’t laminate the cardstock or it will be too heavy.  Right now my word banks are on laminated paper for the students to use during writer’s workshop or work on writing. 

Daily 5 in My Classroom

Can you tell it's summer time?  I keep posting because I actually have time to think and share.  It's nice for me because I start thinking about my set-up and what I can do to improve it as I blog away.

So my CAFE wall is by the rocking chair and rainbow carpet.  I keep all the reading strategies listed along with some items from the Comprehension Connections lessons for those strategies...hence the trash bag and lint roller tape.  I also put the word collector on large paper and laminated it.  For my class it works better to have it whole group rather than one for each student.  It's so cute to have them point wildly to the poster when I'm doing a read aloud and they hear an interesting word they want put on the chart.

I use the Daily 5 structure for my literacy.  These are my listen to reading bags.   I used the old containers from some basil samples we received when our district was adopting new textbooks.  It is just nice to have 2 areas for the student to disperse to when they choose their listen to reading materials.  I have collected portable CD and tape players for a few years.  I can now have about half my class at listen to reading because I have so many. 

Walmart has portable CD players online for about $10 - the store only carries more expensive ones.  But online you can find cheap ones and they have lasted me a couple of years.  Also, invest in rechargeable batteries and a charger.  It hurts when you first pay, but it is WELL worth it throughout the year. 

The students never change a tape or CD.  I have a gallon bag with the book and player in it.  When a tape needs to be re-wound it goes in a special container.  The CD players can just be replaced in the containers you see above.  This has kept my tapes and CDs from being ruined and I highly recommend it.  I keep tape players because a lot of times when you go to library sales they have books on tape and not CD.  I have gotten really good social studies connections because my listen to reading books correlate to the historical figure we are learning about.  The CDs come mostly for the Scholastic book orders - I got a bunch of the 4 books and 4 CDs for $20 when I was first building my collection.  I can be more picky now that I have a good start.  I change the books out about every 4 weeks.  That gives the students enough chances to have gone to listen to reading and get to all of the books a couple of times and it gives me enough time to where I am not always changing out books.  I usually charge my batteries during the change out day as well.

Sometimes I have a lot of books that coordinated with what I am teaching in science or social studies.  These are nice to reinforce those concepts in the literacy time for a few weeks after we have covered a topic in another subject area.  Here you can see I have several USA and weather type books.

My word work supply area is in another box from our textbook adoption time. I have some word family flip books and short vowel dry erase boards from Lakeshore that I use almost all year. But I do change out the bags of word cards / sorts based on what we are learning in science and social studies. This is a nice way to reinforce those concepts during word work.

Here are some close up shots of the word work bags – these are for the Pledge of Allegiance and Weather Words. I label the bag and the pieces so when I find one on the floor I know which bag it goes into.


I really enjoy the Daily 5 framework for my literacy time. Of course I modify it to meet the needs of my classroom, but I use a lot of the genius that the Sisters have come up with in order to help guide me. I love stealing ideas from people much smarter and more creative than me to help me become a better teacher.