Classroom Reveal!!

After many hours of unpacking, moving, organizing, re-organizing, sorting, hanging, stapling, fighting with my stapler, taping, hot gluing, and Target runs...my classroom is ready to welcome the kiddos on Monday.  As long as it took, I must say, it gets easier each year (though I was quite lucky to have the opportunity to stay in MY SAME ROOM this year, even though I'm switching grades :).  So here it is...enjoy the tour!

Overall view of the front of the room

Overall view of the back of the room

Outside bulletin board...the background is fabric from JoAnn fabric, and the tree is from a bulletin board pack from Lakeshore.  Personally, not LOVING this as much as I thought I would, but I smile when I read the title.

OK, now let's dive into the classroom for a closer look....

As you can see from the next few photos, I LOVE displaying books with their corresponding stuffed animals!!  The first time I saw this was when I did my student teaching, and my cooperating teacher had this in her room....I just thought it was SO COOL!!!  I started with the little Spookley the Sqaure pumpkin (well, technically, I already had the Sneetch from Universal Studios Islands of Adventure...got that from one of my many trips there...but I digress...), and have built my collection over time.  Got a lot of the small ones from Scholastic Book Warehouse sales, and when the media specialist retired, she gave me a lot as well.

These are my leveled books.  Got these fancy bins at Target...LOVE that you can write on the little label thing.  Once I got to level L, I did separate the chapter books from the "read-aloud" books; not sure how that will go this year, but hopefully I have some 2nd graders who get as engrossed in chapter books as I did at that age.

This is part of my free choice book area (BTW, I painted that bookcase!!).  The top 5 are chapter book series (Judy Moody, Junie B. Jones, Magic Fairies, Sweet Valley Kids (<--soooo excited about this one!), and Magic Tree House.  After that it's separated into favorite authors and other series (Fly Guy, Mercer Mayer, Mo Willems, and Mike Thaler).  I like this one because it's how I personally shop for books...I look for my favorite authors, or favorite series, because that's what I know I like.  Hoping to introduce kids to this concept, rather than having them obsess over their reading levels.

Overall view of the classroom library...this is where I will conduct most of my Reader's Workshop mini-lessons.

More free choice books.  The top 2 rows are again by other series and authors (Berenstein Bears, Froggy, Dr. Seuss, and Arnold Lobel), and the bottom is by topic (princess books, fiction animal books, nonfiction animal books, fairy tales and fables, sports books, adventure books, and there's also a bin with Time for Kids readers in there...mostly because I don't have a lot of nonfiction books)

Above the cubbies...LOVE those books with their characters!

Bulletin boards are the bane of some teachers' existence.  And I get it, I do....because who has time to change that s*$& consistently??  So in the classroom, I have 4 bulletin boards.  One is for my calendar (easy enough, right?), but I didn't really know what to do with the others.  So...this is what I came up with:

This one's for student work.  LOVE the clothespins...makes it so much easier to switch work out.  Got this background paper at Lakeshore.  I think it's called "No Fade bulletin board paper" or something....I just liked the that length fit the bulletin board almost exactly.

Birthday bulletin board.  Clearly I won't be touching this one all year...so I've got that going for me, which is nice.

(FYI, the background is again fabric from JoAnn fabrics)

This is my version of "Student of the Week" this year.  I totally drew that!!!  Pleased as punch with myself, if I do say :).  Will take kids' pictures and put their face where Max's face goes....hopefully I can work that out right.  The string across the top if for "sparkle clips."  Something new I'm trying this year...whenever a kid moves their clip up to "blue," they will get a sparkle sticker for their clip.  Once their clip is full of sparkles, they can clip it to that string.  Hoping to build some intrinsic motivation for good behavior, and wean them off of the "I'm good, so what do I get?" mentality.

Some reading time extras...

All these little friends here are mostly my childhood toys (thanks Mom and Dad for sending those up to me).  I had them in a basket last year, and the kids loooooooved them!  Each group had a "cozy reading nook" day, and on that day, they got to choose a reading buddy to read with during their independent reading time (wow...could I say "read" any more??).  Slightly different this year, in that table groups will have an assigned day to read with a reading buddy.

Also new this year are Book Nooks.  I honestly don't know how this is going to go.  It could go GREAT...it could completely blow up in my face.  I've designated 23 reading spots in the room...they include 2 cushions, 2 plastic chairs that I got from a garage sale, the teacher reading chair, a director's chair, a blow up pool, a throne-like chair...and then there are a few free choice, sit at your desk, and front carpet spots.  Ideally, I'd like to have this rotate daily, but I'm not quite sure how that will roll.  I may just switch it Wednesdays and Fridays or Tuesdays and Thursdays or something.  I want kids to get to sit in some fun reading spots, but I also like structure and consistency.  So...bottom line is, I'll try it, and if it doesn't work, I'll toss it and go back to old faithful (where kids choose a reading spot for a month or so, but they miss out on the fun seating, because that just wouldn't be fair).

And now a few odds and ends...

I haven't used the clip system in a few years, and now I'm back to it.  I definitely wanted to theme it around the jungle or Wild Things, and I was pretty happy with what I came up with :).

View of the shelf behind my desk.  I'll keep the prizes here for now, but they may find a new home.  Trying something new this year...got these ADORABLE coupons from TPT (click here to see it).  Rather than pass out tickets, I will use fake money as their "currency."  Apparently in 2nd grade, the kiddos need to know coins and money, and this just seemed to make the most sense.  Prizes cost 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents, or $1.00, and I think I'll run it kind of like Chuck E Cheese's.  That is, we'll have a shopping day where kids can buy coupons.  They can redeem them anytime BEFORE THE BELL RINGS for the day.  Again, not quite sure how this will work, but I'll try it and see what happens.

(Side Note:  I'm kind of torn about the fact that I'll pretty much be paying the kids to behave....they earn a penny each day they're on green, and will have to pay a penny any day they're on red...but at least it has some educational value, and it's almost the same as the ticket system I had last year)

To the far right is the job board, in the middle is a show rack from Target that now serves as the kids' mailboxes (anything that needs to go home that day goes in there, and they pick it up and put it in their binder), and to the left is the class reward poster.  I printed out 6 class rewards (movie day, popcorn day, extra recess, eat outside with the teacher, wear PJs to school) and painted over each one with scratch off paint (find the recipe here).  Our school gives out Golden Paws for great behavior (usually the class gets one from specials if they're good), so for every 25 or so, we'll scratch off a class reward.  I'm thinking of taping each paw to a streamer, but not quite sure how that will look...)

And that's it!  Kiddos come tomorrow, and I only hope I'm ready enough for them.  Take a breath, take a leap, and away we go!  Let's do this!

Reader's Notebook

Reader's Notebook

I’m trying to frontload my school year, starting off with things that I want  my kiddos to HAVE before I even get into the MEAT of lessons and teaching.  I came across this idea from Simply 2nd Resources, and modified to fit what I wanted my kids to have in their Reader’s Workshop bags.

This is the front image.  I have 4 sections…Reading Log, Writing About Reading, My Stop and Jots, and Strategies to Habits.  I made the tabs with card stock…I just glued them in, and then put tape over them.

This is the reading log section.  Teaching 1st grade, I found it hard for my kids to keep track of their reading, as they would often spend the majority of their independent reading time just writing down the title!!  I’m hoping that as I move into 2nd grade, their writing skills will have developed enough for them to at least keep track of what they’ve read.  I didn’t really see the need for kids to take ownership of this…until I actually started keeping track of my OWN reading.  I use the Goodreads app, mostly because I wanted a record of my reading, and so I can go back and revisit authors I’ve enjoyed.  I have a genre cheat sheet (I got this one from the Scholastic web site), and then I made my own reading log for the kids to use.  As the year goes on, I’m hoping they will either be able to write up their own reading logs, modifying them to include things that THEY find helpful, or I can just print out more of these.  I wanted to include the date, the title, the genre (this is mostly in prep for MAPS testing, I’ll be honest), and their personal review of the book.

The next section is “Writing About Reading.”  The bulk of our testing is written response where kids CITE THE TEXT (I still personally think this is crazy for 2nd graders, but I won’t even get on my soap box about that).  I included some evidence based terminology that I’m hoping they will use to write GOOD, QUALITY responses (this one is from a TPT document that uses Reading A-Z books to practice Mclass written responses; the entire document has been a GREAT tool if you'd like to check it out here...this link shows just one pack, but there are packs for levels F through I think S maybe??).  I think this will be good if I decide to grade some of these responses, and great to show parents!!  I might even include a rubric or example responses as the year goes on, but we’ll see…

The next section is “My Stop and Jots.”  This is obviously blank right now, but I’m hoping will house the students’ stickies.  Ideally, I’d like the kids to write the book title, possibly the author and date read, and put the stickies under that heading.  But if they can just take them out of their books before returning them to the classroom library, I’ll be a happy teacher .

The final section is “Strategies to Habits.”  I have not used this before, though it was recommended when I went to Teacher’s College training (seriously, that’s what it’s called, not just when I went to college to become a teacher…go to readingandwritingproject.org).  I wanted a place for kids to put stickies that I give them during conferencing (because I am hell bent on actually conducting good, quality reading conferences with my kids!!).  This section will be under construction for now, but I’m hoping to utilize it.

Finally, not really a section, but I wanted to include it.  Again, not my idea (taken from Simply 2nd Resources, who got it from a blog called “The Life and Times of a Third Grade Teacher”), but I really liked it! My kids were CONSTANTLY losing their stickies, so I’m hoping this makeshift folder pocket will work.  I just cut card stock into a sort-of triangle, glued it in, the put tape over it.  I don’t know how it will hold up…I’m assuming some will keep theirs’ pristine, while others will need tape replaced every week…we’ll see, I suppose.

I’m excited to use these this year!