Some Classroom Photos

Well it was a much better Sunday for us Dallas fans today!! I sure do love football Sundays. Now I am trying to wind down and switch my mindset from weekend mode and back into school mode :( 

So some things have changed since I snapped these photos, but I wanted to share some of my classroom!

Darker, but here is my small group table. Behind me there are lots of resources for guided reading and some other fun stuff. Excuse the piles of folders and papers. This was before I handed out their guided reading folders. 

Our back board where we create anchor charts together and post our Word of the Day! The smaller table is the Writing Station. That houses all of the materials they will need to work on writing activities.

This is day one! The kids had Phys. Ed. first thing, so they didn't even have a chance to unpack. When they returned, we started our morning routine over and pretended we just walked in. This way we still got our first day routine practice in :) 

Love, love, love my magnet system that I wrote about in an earlier post. The cake pan hanging next to the door is where they post their magnets for using the bathroom - one at a time per gender.

This is where our History textbooks and resources are housed. Along with our community supplies and math manipulatives. 

 We are the RAMS and we call our 5th graders the RAMbassadors of the school. Here I have some quotes that help describe what qualities or traits a RAMbassador should have. I also have my "Helping Hands" job descriptions and hands that I flip everyday. This way 2 new students are my helpers each day. At the bottom I have my Love Bugs jar  - this is where students take a strip of white paper and write positive comments about students or how someone made them feel (positive or negative). This way we can praise each other, but also address the negatives in an "anonymous" fashion.

Reading is Thinking! This is our CAFE board. The blue shape at the bottom is our dry erase "Word Collector" where students can add words from their independent reading. 

I sure do cram a lot into this small amount of space, but this is our class library. My READ owls have already fallen down :( because I can't seem to make them stay up with tape. The baskets on top are the leveled readers from the Pearson Reading Street series. 

Numbers in the Classroom

Last year I used these cute numbers from A Cupcake for the Teacher in my classroom. If you click on the links you can snag the free download from TPT and see how she uses them. I apologize in advance that I don't have pictures from last year, but I will be taking them this year! 
I laminated, cut, and stuck a magnet strip to the back of each one. On the first day of school, all of their goodies were on their desks waiting, along with their numbers! I started with these colorful #'s as a way of doing attendance in the morning. Students were held accountable for moving their number from the "I am not here today" sign to the "I am here today" sign as they came into the classroom. It was perfect because as they did so, they walked directly in front of the white board and would read the Morning Work and message as they walked by. The "I am here today" sign was on a small sectioned off part of my front white board. I loved this because I ended up using the numbers for so much more throughout the day. Instead of picking sticks, I would quickly pick a number. It was great for quick groupings too! At the end of the day my "Helping Hands" would move the numbers back to the "I am not here today" sign so they were ready to go the next morning.

I love assigning students a number from day one (which is just done alphabetically) because once they know their #, you can use it for whatever your heart desires throughout the year. So, this year I plan on definitely using them again! I even numbered their erasers that I will give to them on the first day back. 
This will help when I find erasers on the floor - I can return them to the rightful owner! I am also going to have them number their pencils! Usually I end up picking pencils up off the floor and stick them in the pencil bucket, but I think this will help kids hang on to them better when they are labeled with their numbers. We shall see! 
Since I used these last year, I still have my old set. I printed a new copy for my new class, but now I can use the old set for Guided Math or Guided Reading Rotations!  

"Real Facts" Writing Activity

As I was about to throw my empty Snapple bottle into the recycling can, I read the "Real Fact" under the cap. "Real Fact" #854 - Hawaii is the only U.S. state that grows coffee. I never knew that. I threw it into the can and thought, that's a cool fact to tell my students. That's when I reached back into that can and saved that top. Now I am washing and saving all of the Snapple caps! I had to come up with some way to incorporate this in my classroom. So I created  "Real Facts" as either a Center activity or a task that students can work on when they are finished with independent work early (Fast Finishers). Now, the assignment will encourage students to read each "fact" with an incredulous mind because I'm pretty sure not all of those facts are correct. However, it gets kids thinking about different/new topics and provides them with some incentive to perhaps research a topic further. The assignment allows students to write a detailed response to the fact (we use RSSE format) and then write a creative story or essay with the genre of their choice using the fact as a prompt. The assignment has an example I created to get kids started. "Real Fact" #749 - The average housefly lives for one month. Ironically, the fact I chose to write about was easy for me because we have seen an increase in flies lately. Ugh - annoying.  

This is the story I wrote based on my "Real Fact" that is included in the product. "Real Facts" is the first product I have on TPT that is for sale and not free. It's actually my 3rd product uploaded to my store. It's not elaborate, but it's made with a determined mind and creativity :] Feel free to let me know what you think! 

I am excited to try it out in September and see what else can come from it! I know I will be buying a lot more Snapple :] 

TIME Magazines - Teaching with Pictures

 All year long I would get the TIME magazines for adults when we received our TIME FOR KIDS bundles.  I would skim through them quickly and then put them in my teacher bin. Before I knew it, I had quite a few TIME magazines cluttering my bin. From there, I would take them home and stash them in hopes that I could eventually read them. When summer started, I came up with the idea to use the pictures within them to help with instruction.

As I skimmed through the articles, I was able to cut out appropriate pictures and catch up on some of the reading :) I glued each picture to an index card and numbered them. I bought a Dollar Tree photo album and put each picture into a sleeve. I feel like there is so much I can do with this. I can teach skills like inferencing or cause and effect. Since we are working on Guided Reading and creating centers this summer - my plan is to use it as a Writing Center. Students can take out one of the numbered cards from the album and write something similar to this for each picture: 

I see...

I know...

I wonder...

I infer...

Opinion writing topic for this picture...

Persuasive writing topic for this picture...

Informational writing topic for this picture...

Narrative writing topic for this picture...

(I was inspired by another Teacher Blog which I can not remember or find now - to list different topics that could be generated from a picture for different writing genres.) 

After this, students can choose to write about the picture using the writing topic of their choice (students love choice :] ).

  

This picture was taken before 

I put the pictures on numbered 

index cards, but you get the idea. 

Classroom Management - some simple ideas that work!

With my smaller amount of experience in the classroom, I have tried a few different classroom management techniques. During student teaching, my Cooperating Teacher used the Letter System. The class votes on a class prize that they want to earn. The kids then earn letters or lose letters based on their behaviors in order to spell out that word. Once the word is spelled out completely, the class earns it! 

It worked out well, but when I was hired for my first teaching position, I wanted something that was my own. So I got all fancy and designed a football field in which the class would move up or down the field based on classroom behaviors. I was so proud of my field and the planning that went into it, but the system itself wasn't the best. I was not consistent enough with it. 

After trying a few different ideas, I went back to the Letter System this past year. It's just so simple and it works. In the corner of the board, I spell out the word with dash marks for each missing letter. So if the class votes on "A MOVIE" it starts out looking like this on my board " _   _ _ _ _ _ " . Each time they earn for above expectation behavior or doing kind things, I add the letter above the dash. If the class is having a particularly rough day with behaviors or too noisy, etc. , all I have to do is walk towards the board and erase a letter, and students stop in their tracks. It gives them the chance to reassess themselves and still earn the letter back throughout the day. This past year I had a more difficult class and it took them awhile to spell out their words, but it made them try harder and before I knew it, they were encouraging each other to behave so that they could earn. They were so disappointed when a few students' behaviors would ruin it for them sometimes. It became a class effort and it made them work together as a team! I plan on using this again next year!

As I was reading the blog Downeast Teach , I liked her idea of the Teacher / Student Points System. I am thinking I will try implementing both of these systems together somehow. We shall see :)  

Another great way to keep kids motivated is the "UMS" strategy we used. It stands for "Unknown Mystery Student." My students named it "UMS" because it's like saying "Ummmm who is the mystery student?" :) I pick a random student by drawing one of their sticks. That is the student I watch throughout the lesson, the assembly, or the one I get a report back about after a special, whatever the day calls for. The kids LOVED this. If that particular student was on task and behaved, they either earn a letter for the class or an individual prize like bubbles or a pencil.  I didn't use this all the time, which also kept it more exciting when we did do it. The kids would be like, "can you please pick an UMS"?

For those students that need a little of their own attention, I tried the tally marks on a sticky note on their desks. This way I could just walk over and mark a tally, without stopping the lesson. When consistent, this works. I am looking for ways to minimize constantly pointing certain students out as they struggle to learn appropriate behaviors. These individual types of behavior systems will always change with each class, with each student, so I am always looking for new techniques and ideas!!