Five for Friday! {with a freebie}

Linking up with Doodle Bugs again for Five for Friday. Let's roll!

By Friday night last week I had both my new laminator and color ink in my possession. So I did what any young, energetic person with an exciting life does on a Friday night. I stayed up until (almost) midnight printing, laminating and cutting. I got some awesome goodies from A Sunny Day in First Grade and First Grade Fairy Tales, plus I finally got to print and hang my "I Can" statements!

Reading Literature and Informational Text standards near the CAFE menu.

Reading Foundational Skills near the word wall and some of the Word Work choices.

I also have a writing bulletin board where I hung the writing standards, but somehow my phone purged that photo. Still trying to figure out where to hang the Speaking/Listening and Language standards. I may split the Foundational Skills standards into even smaller groups so I can post certain standards near the word work students do to reinforce them.

I use these little magazine holders from IKEA for book boxes for Daily 5. They definitely are not as sturdy as plastic ones but are much cheaper and easier to find. I bought all the plastic ones on sale at Target today for $3 -- they only had six! And they don't seem to sell them except during back to school season. My amazing paraprofessional spent a ton of time reinforcing them with colorful duct tape. A lot of them held up really well, others needed more reinforcing at the end of the year. They had been taking up an entire countertop, so I bought these white shoe shelves at Target. They are $14 but you can get them for $12 with Cartwheel. I needed three to hold 25 book boxes. In case you're wondering if they are strong enough to hold an average sized woman while she hangs something up high...

they're not. Thank goodness for Cartwheel.

Added plus, they give me two extra sets of shelves below for storing Daily 3 math stuff, and I have that whole countertop to do...something with.

This year will be my fourth year teaching. Where I am, that means I have been pink slipped three times. This past year went a lot better than the others because I got rehired before the year was out. It's been amazing to have the end of the year and the whole summer to get ready for next year. And truth be told, my (fantastic) classroom paraprofessional did a ton of the work at the end of the year. The biggest project was a class set of OWL binders!

Cover

 

Rules and guidelines.

I can't take credit for the idea. The other first grade teacher and her former colleague had been doing these for years before I came along. She gave me everything she used, and I just put my own little twist on it.

Making these last summer was how I got really indoctrinated into the notion of an organized classroom. I always figured I was pretty organized, or organized enough. But these blew my mind.

They have a zippered pencil pouch, the planner that the school buys, and a homework folder. Then there are two sections in the back set off by cardstock dividers. One is for all the various calendars (behavior, reading, snack), the other is for sight words, quarter by quarter. And everything is labeled with freaking labels.

The kids have exactly one thing to pack up every day. The parents have exactly one thing to check every night. I have exactly one thing to check every morning. It has revolutionized a lot of what I deal with and don't have to deal with day to day. I am now debating what to have the kids do first thing in the morning while I stamp. What do you do to start the day?

Being at home for the summer never fails to impart some domestic lessons. Among these:

• Krazy Straws that go through the dishwasher cease to be Krazy.
• If the living area of your house is 50% carpet, and your cat coughs up a hairball five days a week, the hairball will be found on the carpet roughly 100% of the freaking time.
• If rain doesn't fall from the sky without provocation, you must actually step onto your deck and water your plants. 
• On the scale of difficult tasks, vacuuming a living room bursting with tiny plastic food, a rainbow of Duplos, and Thomas the Tank Engines of every possible size falls somewhere between alligator wrestling and nuclear fusion.

You made it to the freebie! Three cheers for stamina.

My district does Continuous Improvement/Quality Tools. The gist of it is that students are aware of and accountable for their own achievement. One of the ways we promote and track this is through Data Centers. 

A Data Center is a bulletin board with charts where your class tracks its achievement on various measures. Last year I had four charts: behavior, math assessments, weekly spelling tests, and reading (sight words). My room is owl themed (can you believe it?!) so these charts are too.

It's all in Google docs for you to play with.

The math chart is based on a 20 unit schedule. This is my master plan for next year, though I confess being frightened. Another teacher in my district has made some amazing assessments for each of these units, and you should really check out her blog while you're at it.

Have a fabulous weekend!


Mrs. F-W