Back to School- Part 2

Happy Monday!
I finally ventured back into my classroom today.  I actually went in early in August to drop off a bunch of the stuff in my classroom.  But today was the first time I actually worked on some things.  When I went in early August I dropped my summer projects off and moved everything out of the giant pile in the middle of my room.  I was afraid the sight of all that stuff stacked up in the middle of the room would keep me up at night.

So I quickly moved the big stuff to the right places and left.

One thing that took several hours today was my book basket labels.  I am not completely done with those yet so they will be my next Back to School post.

I worked on organizing my supply tubs today.  Since I have two separate classes that share the same space, I have had to get creative with my supplies.  I used to keep all of the supplies that the students bring in and give them out as needed.  But it was really hard for me to keep track of which class and which students were using the supplies.  I decided to let the students keep their extra supplies in their cubbies.  When they needed something, they went to their bucket and took it out.  When that supply was out, I sent a note home for the parents to send in more.  It really helped out a lot and took a lot of the stress of it away from me.  The only issue I had last year was that the students couldn't keep track of which bucket was theirs.  I used two different buckets in the cubby with two different lids, but both lids were white.  This became confusing to the kids.  So this year I decided to paint the lids to help them know which one is theirs.

I have never spray painted plastic before so I wasn't sure what to expect.  I had read about spray paint chipping as soon as it dried so I made sure to get the paint especially for plastic.

I am really happy with how they turned out and I think they look great in my cubbies.  There is no way the kids will get them confused this year!!!

Spray painting is kind of addicting!  I went ahead and spray painted all of my clothes pins too.  I really want to paint some more things now!  What have you painted for your classrooms?

Happy Painting!

Book Baskets

Ever since our school adopted the Reader's Workshop approach, I have been trying to find what will work best for my kids during their IDR (independent daily reading).  For the past two years, I have used the cardboard magazine files from IKEA.  They are cheap and easy to replace.  However, being cheap means that I am buying class sets twice a year.  As the year began, I ran to IKEA to pick up another class set and to my surprise, they were sold out of them.  I started racking my brain about what else I could do that wouldn't cost a lot of money.  I went to the Dollar Tree to pick up some more book baskets for my book collection (I mean when you have 63 baskets of books holding your classroom library, you are constantly buying them!).  I came across these cute blue baskets with handles.

I LOVE them!  I figured $23 was a good investment and they will hopefully hold up for a few years!  I wasn't exactly sure how to identify everyone's baskets since they look the same.  I didn't want to write on the basket so I decided to take some Rock Star name tags, mount them to card stock, laminate them, and then write on the name tag with Sharpie.  That way, I can reuse them as well.  Since there are holes all over the basket and it would be hard to stick anything to it, I punched a hole in the name tag and used a book ring to attach it.  So far, it is working wonderfully and I think they're super cute!!!

On a personal note, all of my children are finally in school with me.  Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade.  I am so happy that I get to take them to school with me each day.  It brings a lot of other issues that I have to learn to manage, but having them with me is priceless.  They are also in the classes of 3 of my personal friends.  So it is a lot of fun.  Not to mention my second grader is in Heather's class!  Each night, my job is to pack lunches and backpacks.  This is what my house looks like every night!

Here is what we looked like on our first day of school!  We have a very early start school (7:15 for students).  I leave my house at 6:30 every morning and have to have all of these precious ones ready as well.  So it is EARLY in our house getting up and ready.  They are pretty wide eyed for the first day and their first wake up call of 5:45!

Here we are leaving school in the afternoon (the morning pic is in the dark).  Everyone jokes because we always walk with Momma and her ducklings.  I don't know why, but they always walk in their birth order.  (Oh, and they are all 15 months apart from each other.)

I don't know about you guys, but we have completed 2 weeks of school and I am BEAT!  Exhausted does not even come close to what I am feeling.  Heather and I met at school today (Saturday) because we sill had hours of work to do.  We currently feel like we can't catch up.  Hopefully it will get better but until then, I will continue to look bleary eyed and breaking out in hives dealing with the stress and exhaustion.  My husband made a comment today about me not having put anything out on TPT for awhile.  He is right, but there just isn't a spare minute in the day.  Hopefully soon people!

Happy Back to School!

Heather's Classroom

A few posts back Juli showed off her classroom. I thought I would show off my room. I don't have an exact theme. I use the Furry Friends by Carson Dellosa.  I am not wild about it cause it does limit my ability to create items for my room.  I have tried to accent my room with black and bright colors.  This is the outside of my room where I hang up work:

This is the bulletin board between my classroom and my officemate's classroom. She thought of this and I thought it was really cute!

This is a view of my classroom library:

I have a Book Hospital that I found on Pinterest. I would love to credit whatever creative teacher created it but I just remember printing it off Pinterest. I created a Books To Be Shelved container where students can return their books before picking out new ones. Once they know the system I let responsible students put the books back in the correct bins.

This is a view of my calendar. I use the schedule flipped cards from Ladybug's Teacher Files. I just love her stuff. I plan on redoing it to use all the subjects she gives in that file.

This is the view of the front of my classroom. The flipped alphabet is from Ladybug's Teacher Files as well.

This is the board I use to manage my reading and math workshop rotations:

This is on my office door in the back of my room:

I found it on Pinterest of course and don't remember what smart teacher to credit with for creating it and pinning it so I could copy it for my own room. I have these sayings in my back wall that I think are cute and remind students (hopefully) to make good choices:

They are the same ones Juli has in her room. Her post will link you to that sight if you are interested in getting some of your own. Below that I have my station tubs that I use to organize all the materials needed for workshops.  I used a file from Ladybug's Teacher Files (of course) to label the bins.

I hope you find my room interesting! I have worked so hard on it and still have so much I want to do. My walls are pretty bare as they await the anchor charts the students I will be creating together.  We studied nouns this last week so I have one lonely little anchor chart up so far:

Hope everyone has a good week!

Back to School Countdown- 2nd Grade!

So, I thought that I would share with you some of the things that I have been getting ready for the school year to start in my classroom.  At the start of the school year, PlaceValue is a HUGE focus for our new second graders. One way that I like to focus on place value is by showing the different ways to display a number. This is a big skill for the common core and sets the stage for the more difficult skills that come throughout the school year.  I decided that I would make some place value practice for us.  My husband is a HUGE soccer fan, so it was only appropriate to make a Soccer themed Place Value pack.  I am excited for us to use it this coming year and I hope that you'll be able to use it as well!

Sweet Summer Bag Tags

At the end of the school year, I gave my students a packet of work to complete during the summer.  I told them that I would have a special treat for them if they brought the completed pack back to me at the beginning of this school year.  As I have been planning for this year, I remembered this little promise I made and began thinking of something fun I could do that wouldn't cost a bunch of money.  I decided the easiest thing would be to make goody bags filled with candy and give them to  my students.  To be honest, I don't expect many of these packets to come back to me, so I figure I won't be making that many bags.  If I make more bags than I need, I can just add the leftover candy to my candy box in the classroom.  So I decided to make the bags a little cuter by adding this little tag to the bag.

Cute, right?  Click on the picture or click on the link to the right to my TpT store to pick up your own tags to print!

Back to School Sale

Have you seen that Teachers Pay Teachers is having a sale beginning tomorrow?  I am so excited to stock up on some things that I have been eyeing!!  I don't think that whole site sales happen very often, so I am SO excited about this!  In honor of the big sale, I am going to be marking down all of my products 20%.  Plus, if you use the code BTS12, you can get even more savings.  Thanks so much to Amy for this cute graphic!!!  Head on over to my store and stock up on some cute stuff!

Back to School Countdown- Fourth Grade!

Today, I am so excited to introduce to you, Mariko.  She has been a fourth grade teacher at our school and is now moving into a fabulous new job as a reading facilitator!  She has AMAZING ideas and reaches students in so many creative ways.  She was also the Teacher of the Year for our school AND our county this past year and we are so proud to work with her!  Take it away, Mariko!


Aloha!  My name is Mariko and I’m a fourth grade teacher and colleague of Juli and Heather.  When they invited to be a guest blogger, I was more than happy to contribute.   It’s the beginning of August and the “school dreams” have begun.   I think most teachers have them around this time. My latest dream or maybe I should say nightmare, is the same one I have every year, the one where I wake up and realize that I’m late for work.  As soon as these dreams begin, I’ve entered school mode and I sadly consider it the end to my summer.  I’ve been teaching for a while, 14 years to be exact. Each year I fine-tune what I’ve done in the past to meet the needs of my new group of students.    One thing that I’ve done year after year is to have my students take a learning styles inventory.  I’ve used several different ones, both paper and electronic.   I’ve realized that I prefer an inventory which has less than 20 questions and has a limited number of answer choices.  Having too many choices becomes overwhelming for the student.  The one that I’m sharing with you today was adapted from Instructor Magazine by the University of South Dakota.   Don’t expect anything fancy.   It’s pretty straightforward and there are three links to click on.  You’ll be clicking on the first link appropriately titled, “Take the inventory.”  This inventory has 16 questions and the students have only three answers to choose from.  I think it works best for grades 3-5 but it could easily be adapted for the younger crowd.  This is what it looks like: 

You will notice on the website that there are also two separate links that give a summary of the different learning styles and a guide on understanding and identifying them.  I found these to be helpful. 

Now…here is the link:  http://people.usd.edu/~bwjames/tut/learning-style/.

So what do you think?  You may now be thinking about how you’re going to organize this information.  Well, I’ve created a worksheet for you to use once the students have completed the inventory (click the picture to download).  It will help you to organize the results on one single sheet.  Hopefully this information will aid in classroom management and to guide instruction. 

I hope you give it a try this school year.  Your students will enjoy completing the survey and you’ll have some valuable information to better understand your students.  It’s a win-win situation.  

Thanks for reading!  
Have a great school year!  

Back to School Countdown- 3rd Grade

Our Back to School countdown is going to skip 2nd grade for the time being.  Both Heather and I have things we want to share on the blog, but we are anxious to showcase our friends!  Today, we bring you a guest blogger from 3rd grade, Susan.  We LOVE Susan and her amazing ideas.  Heather and I both had the privilege to work with Susan in her first year of teaching.  She taught second with us on our grade level.  She has WONDERFUL ideas and we learn so much from her.  We are excited for her to show you some awesome ideas!  Take it away Susan...

The first and last 5 minutes of the day……

There are certain simple skills that we know are important for kids to know, but don’t always get the time they deserve because, well, we have a lot to do!  One thing I like to do with my newbie third graders for at least the first quarter is to use a small daily journal to practice handwriting, proper use of capitals and commas, spelling of the months, days of the week and basic forms of a number of the day.  I know that they leave second grade knowing these things but summer has a magic way of fogging their memories.

I had some composition books cut in half at OfficeMax (for $3!) and put a label on it for each student.  Inside, I made a template for them to follow each day as part of their morning work.  As you can see in the photo, they write the current date in word and number form and then show the number of the day in expanded, word and base 10 block form.  They also have to add and subtract 10 from the number and then add 100.  I may start but 2-digit numbers but quickly get into 3 and 4 digit numbers as well.   It doesn’t take them long to discover how they can use the 100 grid on their desk and later, place value, to quickly add and subtract without writing out the equation vertically.  I always go over each of these quickly during out morning meeting.

At the end of the day, they write two things…..can be something that they learned or something they enjoyed that day or something different that happened.  They may also write me a note if they want to.    This helps when they get home and their parents ask “What did you learn today?” or “How was school today?”   At the end of every week,  students turn in their journals  and receive a grade for a complete week of journaling based on a rubric that assesses  correct spelling, punctuation, number forms and calculations and complete sentences on their end of the day wrap-up. 

After I feel that students have mastered the first page, usually by October, I have them use both sides for journaling at the beginning and end of the day.  Morning journal is usually about anything they want but must be legible, make sense and follow basic capitalization, spelling and punctuation rules.  Sometimes they want to tell you all about their sick cat and it’s a great way to connect with them and what’s happening in their lives.   A simple but effective use of those few minutes …… 

Journal entries are expected to become more detailed as the year goes on.

Have a wonderful school year!

Susan

Third grade

Back to School Countdown- 1st Grade!

Next up for our Back to School Countdown is our friend, Morgan.  She also happens to be my son's first grade teacher, so I think she's pretty spectacular.  Morgan brings something a little different to the table as some of the other teachers.  She not only teaches full time, but also works for an Educational Supply Store called Education Express, and also in her "spare" time works for Scholastic.  She has put together some amazing videos for Scholastic showcasing some amazing new products and how to use them in the classroom.  We are so excited to hear about what she is using in her classroom this year!  Take it away, Morgan! 

Back to School Countdown- Kindergarten!

Now that August is here, the back to school countdown is on!  As much as I don't want to admit it, school is around the corner and it is time to start getting ready.  We know that getting ready for a new school year is something that spans every teacher and classroom k-12.  Heather and I are so lucky to teach in a school with AMAZING teachers.  We thought that it would be fun to showcase some of our K-5 friends in our own school and have them share some of their favorite things they like to do in the classroom that helps them prepare for their new class of students.  Each of these teachers will be guest bloggers for a day as they share their fantastic ideas that will help you as you prepare for your own classrooms.



First up is our friend, Melissa!

Hi there! My name is Melissa Culp and I teach Kindergarten at Heather and Juli’s school. I am so proud of them and their cute and helpful blog. This is my first time gettin’ my blog on so go easy on me!

Our Open House is a ‘drop-in’ for typically three hours and we usually have a REALLY good turnout.  Like, it’s unusual if a family doesn’t show up. Our Kindergarten families are so excited that they usually all come bunched into the first hour, then tour the school, then come back again!! I love it! But, it can get very hectic when there is one of me and 24ish families that all need their special time with me. I find that they are also all ready to share some important information with me.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember A THING unless I have it written down where I can refer back to it. I used to keep a notepad to jot notes on clipboard during open house but I found that my notes got jumbled, I was concerned about keeping some info in confidence, and it took too long to write down the child’s name then jot some notes. That led me to create my anecdotal notes folder. Here is what the finished project looks like:

To begin use any old standard size file folder and a 4x6 size index card for each child. Some years I have used pink for girls and blue for boys, but this year I am just using alternating colors. It would be helpful to write your students’ names on each card before you put it together. I don’t know my kiddos yet, so I’ll be adding their names later. You will need to turn the card upside down then write their name below the red line – like I have written Mrs. Culp in the pic above. 

Then just line up your first card upside down – with the red stripe on the bottom – being careful to leave ample room on either side for the folder to close. Then put a small piece of tape on the top of the card. 

Then place the next card on top, lining up with the red line and tape again. 

Then continue until you have enough cards. This one has 13 on each side. I wanted to do a total of 24, then I added two more to be for me to write misc notes.

I LOVE using this folder. All my notes stay together, I’m able to write notes on one child without letting parents see notes about another child, it is compact and slides right into my bag, and it gives me a good quick snapshot of a child’s strengths, needs, loves, etc. I continue to use this throughout the year when having conferences, speaking on the phone and email. I can document everything in one place!!! It is very simple, but I’ve found that the more simple and streamlined I can keep things, the more time I have to devote to my students and the more smoothly my classroom runs.

Yes, I have run out of space on the card before (several times – you know about this teachers!!). In that case I begin writing on the back of the card, just slip in a second card behind the student’s first one or I use a post it note to add to the card. I have used this folder as a reference several times in a parent/admin conference and love the confidence it ensures when I am able to reference a particular situation.

I hope you find this helpful!!

Melissa