Classroom Reveal

Well, we've been in school for 2.5 weeks now, and I'm finally getting around to showing off my classroom.

 Hopefully, as I settle into a routine, I'll find the time to post about this first few weeks.

Without further ado, my classroom...

First some, in the process pics:

When I walked in

Trying out desk arrangements

More desk arrangments

And one more failed try

 

At the end of Day 1

At the end of Day 2

And ... then I forgot to keep taking in progress pictures, but here is my classroom a few weeks later, many days of working in the classroom and about a week of teaching later:

From the door.  I finally decided on 2 groups of six and 5 groups of 4.

Classroom library, math board, mailboxes, computers, and whole class meeting area.
This has also become this class' favorite work area.
This is the corner that is cut off to the right in the picture above.

A shot from the library/whole group area.
I can't wait to do We're So Proud next week!  See my post here.

Directly opposite the door.
This is my One Class, Many Cultures Board (see post here),  Welcome board (this will be my science board once we start science), and my Prefixes, Suffixes, and Roots Word Wall (This is new for this year and I am so excited!)

My desk (which I made take up WAY less room this year!),
Student Supply and turn-in table (on the right),  math manipulatives (white drawers to the right
and bottom of book case - I love that these are accessible to students all the time now).

Close up of "the bookcase."
Top shelf: Daily copies, my Copy File Laminate box (with birthday pencils sitting on top)
Second shelf: My school's Character Building Books, a tub of things for helpers
(parents, middle school volunteers, etc) to do, and paper clips/push pins.
Third row: Master copies of things I use regularly, Sub Binder,
Folders to hold temporary centers, one tub of math manipulatives, and empty space.
Bottom Row: Math manipulatives that the students can use anytime
(although I guess we need to talk about putting them back since there is a missing tub!)
On top of the drawers is the prize box, raffle, and
Caught Being Good (school wide positive behavior system)

Front left of the room. 

Close up of the front left of the whiteboard.
This has our schedule and procedures we use daily, like our Morning and Afternoon Routine, When You Finish Early List, who the Lunch Helpers are, and who the Homework Checkers are.

The Reading Workshop (loosely based on Daily 5) board.  This is under the whiteboard.
I'm trying desperately to make productive use of that space,
but I'm worried that it won't be a visible enough reminder of what they need to do.

Trying out hand signals this year.  So far, we're only using the 1, 2, 3, 4 and me too.
 I started getting overwhelmed because I couldn't remember what each one meant,
so I had to turn around and look at this (it's above the whiteboard).
These posters are from Clutter Free Classroom
(but I had to print in black and white and color them - the printer and I were fighting)

I'm trying out mostly group jobs this year (the big circles) with just a few individual jobs
(the little circles with blurred out names).  I'm sure this will get a whole post later on!

Is there anything in my room you'd like to see me write a post about?

I hope you enjoyed looking around and that your school year is off to a fabulous start!

Posting Student Work - We're So Proud Board

I got this idea last year when we did a veteran teacher observation for BTSA.  I love it, the kids love it, and most teachers love it when they come into my room.

It's my We're So Proud Board:

The blurry parts are, of course, their names.
After many, many tries at fitting all 32 students' work here, this is the most space saving configuration boyfriend and I could come up with.

Every other Thursday, I make sure I (or our aide) has sorted all of their work (everything from homework to graded tests) in their mailboxes:

I know there aren't papers in their here, but it's the only pic I have of it!

They take their pile of papers to their desk and look through them.  It's the first time they've seen any of the grades, so they spend some time seeing what they got right and wrong and just generally reviewing their work.

Next, they choose one piece they are most proud of.  We have a list of reasons you might be proud that the kiddos came up with, including things like a good grade, doing better than normal in a subject, doing well on something that was really challenging, trying really hard, doing neater work than normal, etc.

Then, they fill out a "Smiley Slip" (that's those yellow papers you see in the corner of each).  They staple it to wherever they want on their paper and turn it in for me to put up.

I use the black and white version on yellow paper.

Click on either image for the google doc of both color and b/w!

Last, they return all of their papers to their mailbox to be filed later.  After our conferences in November, they will take most of this work home each time we do "We're So Proud" instead of putting it in their mailboxes, but I like to save everything until conferences!

How do you display student work?  How often do you change it out?

Spread the Sunshine!

I briefly mentioned Sunshine Notes before.  Now, here's some more!  (Do you like my rhyme? :p)

One of my fabulous grade-level teammates gave me this idea and the slips for it.  Big thanks to her!

This pic certainly wasn't taken on a Friday.  That thing is overflowing by Friday!

When I introduced Sunshine Notes, we talked about how they are a way to say thank you when someone has filled your bucket and a way to fill other's buckets.  We also talked about how specific things fill our buckets better than "you're nice" or "you're a good friend" and brainstormed some specific things.  For the most part, the kiddos are writing great, detailed notes.

Writing Sunshine Notes is one of their options when they finish work early.  We read some Friday afternoons and then just pass the rest out. The kids leave clutching their Sunshine notes like they are made of gold! It is such a great note to end the week on.   I'm keeping a close eye out for students who consistently aren't getting any, but so far no kiddo has gone more than one week without getting at least one.

I love how much classroom community this builds with such a small amount of class time used!

Writing Wednesday - Snapshots, Talkshots, and Thoughtshots

Since I love writing so much and feel like it is one of my strongest teaching areas, I'm going to try to regularly write about what we are doing in writing.  I already posted a bit about writing here.

In my district, we don't have a set writing curriculum.  It's a bit of a hodgepodge, do-what-you-want sort of thing.  Our Language Arts curriculum, Treasures, has writing in it.  A few years ago (before I was there), they did 6 Traits of Writing trainings.  I have the materials they got at the trainings.  We each have a teacher's edition and half a class set of Write Source.  Using any of these as the set curriculum  does not prepare students at the right time of year for the three district-wide writing assessments and certainly won't get our 4th graders ready for the state writing test in March.  

So we just do what we want, basically.

Right now, we are working on narratives.  Our first district assessment, which is mid-October (yikes, that's soon!), is fictional narratives, but we start with personal narratives and then move into fiction because it's easier for kiddos to put details in about something that has really happened.

Last week and the beginning of this week, we worked on Snapshots, Talkshots, and Thoughtshots.

For each one, my lesson went the same way:

1.  Read a published example from books most students know (Harry Potter and Rick Riordan books to the rescue!).  

2. Have a class discussion about how they felt as readers (they make you feel in the story) and what kind of information they got from the excerpt. 

3. Take notes.  I do my notes under the document camera, and they copy.  We have a special section in our writing notebooks for notes.

4.  I model from the story I'm working on with them.  I pick out a scene from my Backwards S (our picture mapping) and then do think-aloud writing on the document camera.  I make sure to talk a lot about how I don't remember every exact detail, but I make up reasonable details.  They just watch and listen. Some try to give me ideas.

5.  I tell the students that when they get back from lunch, they will do what I just did from one of their own Backwards Ss. I remind them they need to come in silently.  

6. We have lunch.  I write a reminder of instructions on the board.

7. They come back from lunch, and 99% of them silently get to work.  It is far and beyond the best transition time of my day!

8. When writing time is almost over or I see them getting antsy, they share their work with someone.  We do elbow partners, face partners, stand up - hand up - pair up, and back partners on different days to mix it up.

9. The next day, we start writing by reviewing the most important things about a Snapshot/Talkshot/Thoughtshot to make our mini-poster for our writing wall.  I laminated these before hand and used whiteboard makers, so I'll just be able to erase and use them next year!

We're starting to get good at writing for longer and longer!  Half an hour is my goal for them!

I'm hoping we get through our full personal narrative unit in the next two weeks.  I think for fictional narratives this year, we'll write spooky stories to read on Halloween!

How do you teach writing?  Do you have a curriculum?

Birthdays!

Outside of school, I LOVE birthdays!  In my house growing up, you had a birthday month.  Birthdays were big.

In the classroom, they tend to stress me out.  I think it's because I want to do so many academic things each day with the kiddos that taking even a few minutes for birthdays stresses me.

But, because I love birthdays, we still do a bit.

First off, I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' for their Birthday Display Link Up.

Here is my display this year:

I love how all the different fonts look together.  I also adore the cupcake border that I inherited with my room.  I cut one strip up to go above each month.

I had originally planned to do the whole pictures of students holding up their birthdays for each month (I've seen it so many places, I don't know where to give credit!). But ... I didn't do it the first week because there were kiddos absent each day ...  the second week, I kept getting told I was getting new students in two or three days, so I waited ... and then it was Back to School Night, and I needed birthdays up, so I just wrote names and dates.  I'm sure some of you deal with that each year and still manage pictures, but it is very much not normal at my school!

 Each month's spot is big enough for a 4x6 picture, so I'm hoping to do that next year.

Our Little Tiny Celebrations:

• I write Happy Birthday, ________! on the board, and it stays up all day.
• They get a "birthday balloon pencil." My two kiddos who have had birthdays so far have been so excited with them!

I pick a pencil I think the kiddo will like from the literally hundreds of pencils in my prize box.

• We have a wellness policy that says no food for birthdays (yes, you read that correctly, not no unhealthy food for birthdays, NO food for birthdays).  If a kiddo wants to bring something, I have them pass it out as the bell rings at the end of the day.
• I usually have the class sing Happy Birthday, but I just realized we haven't for the two birthdays so far this year!  Opps!  One thing I learned from my wonderful cooperating teacher when I was student teaching was to ask the birthday kiddo if they wanted "cha-cha-chas" or not.  If they say no, no one is allowed to make those sounds at the pauses.  Most kiddos say yes, though, so the class goes crazy cha-cha-chaing at each pause!
• I also do "un-birthdays" for summer birthday kids on their half-birthday (or as close as we can get ... end of June's birthdays have their half birthdays during Holiday Break).  I will teach the kiddos part of the Alice in Wonderland Unbirthday song for us to sing (if I get on that singing thing again this year) and they will get an "unbirthday balloon pencil."

How do you celebrate birthdays?

Behavior Management

Natalie and Rachelle at What The Teacher Wants are hosting a behavior management linky.  I am so excited to link up because What the Teacher Wants was the first blog I started reading.  It is what introduced me to the wonderful world of teacher blogging! 

Last year, I felt like behavior management was my weakest link.

This year, I've put lots in place to make sure that doesn't happen again!

First, foremost, and number one is my clip chart:

Do you see the black clips?  Those two kiddos have already gotten to  Excellent Effort six times, so they got to take their old clip (now covered in six stickers) home and now have a black clip.  Next time, it will be a blue clip!  They are working toward the elusive glitter clip.  I know I got the colored clip idea from someone, but I'm not sure who. Let me know if it was you!

I didn't do a clip chart last year because I thought 4th graders were too old for it.  WRONG!  They love it, and it makes such a great impact.  The third day of school was first time I had a kiddo clip down.  Later that day, I told him he could clip up.  "Even though I clipped down before?" he asked.  "Yes!  You are making better choices now.  You're showing me you're ready to learn," I responded.  He happily clipped up and we had quite a while before our next issue (which is quite a feat with this kiddo).

I also have a class raffle, so sometimes I hand out raffle tickets.  I like to do this when kiddos are going above and beyond in some way, when a kiddo is already on Excellent Effort, but deserves another clip up, and with my math class (a partially different group of kiddos, so I don't have clips for everyone).  We pull raffle tickets any day that we are ready to go home before the bell rings.  It's a great way to make our afternoon routine go smoothly.

I am also going to start a class paper chain, but I haven't yet.  We don't seem to need it yet.  The paper chain will start at the ceiling and they will get a link when the whole class deserves a reward.  When it reaches the floor, we'll have a little celebration.

What do you use for behavior management?  Link up with Natalie and Rachelle to share!

One Class, Many Cultures - Freebie!

I've mentioned this project/bulletin board a few times, and now that this year's group has done it, presented it, and I've (almost) finished reading their reports, I'm going to tell you more about it!

We tweaked it this year, and I'm so happy with the results!  We tied it into our social studies curriculum by telling the kiddos (and putting it on the instructions sheet for the parents) that we will learn throughout the year how California is made up of immigrants and migrants from many places, so their first task as 4th grade social studies learners is to find out how their family got here and learn about the country/ies their families came from.  This tie-in wasn't as specific last year, and I'm really excited to be able to reference this project throughout the year!

Here are the parts:

1. Report - we give very detailed instructions about what should be in the report.  I modeled for students that if their family has come from many different places, they could start with something like "My family came from many countries, such as ___, ___, and ___.  I am going to focus on my ____, who came from _____."  So that the kiddos with many countries didn't feel overwhelmed.  Most of my students' parents moved here after they got married in another country, though, so they just had one country to write about.
2. Presentation - The students presented on their family history, one interesting fact they learned, and showed their Mini-Me.
3. Mini-Me - I give them each one of these cute little popsicle sticks.  Last year, I let them choose from the boy or girl ones ... which left me with about 25 girl sticks and 8 boy sticks.  One of my fabulous teammates suggested breaking off the skirts.  Yay for not having to buy more!  I broke off the skirts for all of the boys before handing them out and, then had any girls who wanted the skirts taken off raise their hands, and I quickly did theirs.

Click HERE to get them on Amazon
... so much cheaper than they were at the teacher supply store!

Most of the kiddos did fantastic on the presentation, though there were some who just read their report (totally not following directions)!  I did have to have a few re-write their reports for handwriting/neatness issues and a few whose parents clearly helped a bit too much, but overall the reports came out great (especially for the beginning of the year). 

This is such a great project because the kiddos love it, it gives me a great baseline of their writing (and how much their parents help) and presentation skills, and we get to know about each other better!  I'm working on planning some activities for them to compare and contrast their history or country with others.  We're definitely going to do a Venn diagram.  You could also do a lot of things with graphing and data as far as how many kiddos are from where (just look at all my kiddos whose families came from China!).  

It also makes a wonderful board that can be left up all year long!

I didn't do great at planning os the kids were spaced out.
 I'm thinking about putting some flags in the blank areas.

Now for the freebies!  

(Click on pictures to go to google docs!)

**Note: These documents are a collaboration between my grade level team and myself**

My bulletin board letters:

The letters are a bit crazy when you look at the document.  Just print, cut, (laminate), and put them in this order.  It will work, promise!  For those of you who don't want the California flag in there, the font is Oh Photo Shoot by Kevin and Amanda.  I just put it on outline (in the format font menu) and then put the flag image behind it.

Assignment Instructions:

Monday (Thursday) Made It Time Again

I can't believe I forgot about Tara's Monday Made It!  When I logged onto blogger Monday morning for my short burst of wake-up blog reading,  I was excited to see everyone's made its.  Ah, too bad I don't have a made it to post about my 5am brain said.

WHAT?

I have made so much in the first week of school!  It seems like every time I have a moment to breathe I'm making something!  I realized this after I got home.  My brain was apparently working better last night.

BUT ...

I didn't have any pictures.  So I'll take pictures tomorrow and post tomorrow night.

Tuesday night:  I forgot to take pictures.

Wednesday night: Took pictures but just too tired (didn't get home until 9:30!!!!).

So here I am now, somewhat awake, knowing that I have made things, and armed with pictures to prove it.

My Math Board

I'm trying Math Workshop this year.  My district is starting to heavily heavily suggest we do a Daily 5 type structure for math.  Since I'm just dipping into Daily 5 for reading this year, I don't feel ready to do it for math too.  When I read about the Math Workshop Rotations on Clutter-Free Classroom, I realized that would fit perfect!  I just changed my M from Math Facts to Mental Math.  Because of that change, I made my own board items instead of buying Clutter Free Classroom's.  Once I have a  few days of workshop under my belt, I'll post about that, but for now, here is my board:

The whole board.  The student's names are listed under their group in the blurred out area.

Close up of assignment part of board.

Close up of rotation schedule

Behavior Clip Chart

I'm trying out the ever-popular clip chart this year.  I'm not sure where I first heard this idea from (let me know if you know!), but here's my incentives:  Get to Excellent Effort, get a sticker on your clip.  Get 6 stickers on your clip, get a new, prettier clip.  Repeat until you get the gold sparkly clip.  They're into it, and it's been working great so far ... until today when I basically forgot it existed so the entire class was still on Ready to Learn at the end of the day, even though they were fantastic.  Oops!

I just printed black letters on white paper and then used scrapbook paper to make it colorful.  I laminated each one with a thin piece of cardboard behind it.

I'm excited the monthly Made-Its start next week.  With back to school night next Thursday, I know I'll be busy this weekend making more!

My Classroom

Yikes!  It's been almost 3 weeks since my last post!  Since I got my classroom keys, I have been so focused on getting the room ready and going to my district professional developments.  But now I've survived the first three days, so I can take a breath.  Right?  

I've been so excited to share pictures of my room.  It is so different - more organized, brighter, more welcoming - than last year. My BTSA mentor was amazed when she walked in for the first time!  I just wanted to wait until it was "all done" to post about it. Silly me, I forgot our rooms are never all done - just done for now.  So yesterday afternoon, I finally took pictures of my room in its "done for now" state. (To be completely honest, there are a few corners I skipped because they don't even qualify as done for now).

Ok, enough with the rambling, here are some pictures!

View from the door.  The board with the pink boarder will be my science board, the board with the blue writing you can't read is my writing board, the map is for our culture project (I mentioned it here and will post more about it once this group of kiddos does it).  My desk is in the back right corner.  I didn't have a desk last year, and I'm not so sure how I feel about it yet.

View from my desk.

Right next to the door.  Social Studies board and We're So Proud board.  For We're So Proud, students choose assignments they want to put up.  More about that later.

Cubbies and we're so proud.  I love how nice and neat the cubbies are at the beginning of the year!

Classroom Library
I am so excited about how it turned out.  Last year, I had two tall book cases.  I arranged the books by AR level, spines facing out.  This library is so much more welcoming and easy to find interesting books!  The AR levels are still on the spines, so they can check that, but they are organized by genre/series/author.  In the bottom right, you can see my make-shift chart paper easel.  It's a bookcase for front facing books.  The chart paper is in it and then I used pushpins to hold the top to the wall.  It's working, but not great!

Math board and mailboxes that my mom's boyfriend refurbished from his work for me.  Sorting student work to hand back is going to be a breeze now!  There are 36 cubbies for my 32 students, so I'm using four of the boxes for extra copies of worksheets, newsletters, etc.  That way the paper passers don't have to hand them to me and the students they skipped accidentally don't have to ask me!

Right side of my whiteboard.  I'm really excited about my When You Finish Early list.  I have a bunch more options laminated and cut that I will slowly introduce.

Close up of my desk and student supply table.  My new turn in boxes are working great!  The black magazine holders on my desk are for all my copies.

Science board, computer area, birthday board (not done yet, but the border is super cute cupcakes!), and the edge of where students' writing will hang.

 Now I'm off to spend my Saturday at a professional development.  And I still have to plan for next week.  Busy busy weekend!

I hope you enjoyed seeing my room!

Edit:  I was just reminded of classroom pictures linky parties and blog hops from Fearless in Fifth's post.  So I'm linking up!  Head on over to these blogs to see some fabulous classrooms!