Helpful Hints!

The teachers of Blog Hoppin' are hosting a week long linky party! I'm so excited to participate in today's linky- H is for Helpful Hints.

I've got three helpful hints for you today...

My students use to always argue over whose turn it was to be on the computer. We only have 3 student computers and 20+ students. I decided to assign each student a computer for an entire day. Each card has the student's name on the front and their individual login information on the back. The cards are hole punched and hooked together with a book ring. Each ring of cards hangs from a 3M hook on the computer. My students know each day whose turn it is for the computers and can even check to see when their next day is going to be. It's also really handy having their login information on the back of their card to eliminate questions, disruptions, etc. So easy!

Last year, I used one turn-in basket for all of my students' completed work. It was a nightmare! The basket would pile up, I'd have to sort the papers, and I'd get overwhelmed and procrastinate with grading (sound familiar?!) This year, I found this really neat 5-basket organizer from Really Good Stuff. I thought about labeling each basket with the days of the week but decided to organize them by subjects. I have mine organized into the following five categories: morning work, math, word study, reading, and other. This has been such a tremendous help in managing papers to grade. It's not so overwhelming and the papers are already organized at the end of each day. I love it!

We all know that classroom storage space is limited so we have to get creative when it comes to hiding storing all of our materials! An easy way to do this is to use the extra cubby space in your classroom. If you have a couple of empty cubbies, use a piece of fabric and Velcro to cover the extra space. You can store a ton of materials by doing this! Whenever you need something, just pull back the fabric, grab what you need, and velcro the fabric back on. It's so simple and looks cute too!

Alright, those are my helpful hints for today! Tomorrow I hope to blog about activities that I love to use in my classroom. Be sure to head over to Blog Hoppin' and check out all of the helpful hints being shared!

My Classroom Tour... Finally!

I am so excited to share my classroom this year with all of you! Since I am looping with my second graders from last year, I wanted to change up my classroom theme a little bit but didn't want to start completely over again. I spent a ton of time sewing and creating things for my room last year and couldn't bear the thought of not using it.

I came across Schoolgirl Style's Road Trip theme classroom décor set and knew that it would be a perfect fit for my third graders. A little more mature but still fun and colorful! I love the way it turned out =) Here are some pics from my new classroom...

 

In the hallway leading to my classroom door, I wanted a fun welcome message for my kids. I saw this idea on Pinterest {here} and fell in love with the hallway display! The cars were actually very easy to make and Melonheadz had the cutest faces clipart that I used for the little third graders in the cars!

Don't you just love pennants?! This welcome pennant is hanging right inside my classroom door.

I have this funky little corridor right inside my classroom door and wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Since I have a massive hallway display (the cute little cars) I decided that I needed a space to display my students' work. I used ribbon, mini clothespins, laminated sheets of black paper, and road trip nametags to make this display. It is so easy to change out student work using the clothespins!

Here is a close up of one of the student work displays. (Please don't mind my reflection in the paper!)

This is the area where I display our daily "I can" statements and anchor charts. I stole the idea for the magnetic curtain rods from Christina at Second Grade Sugar and Spice. It has worked for me very well so far! I'm always looking for more space to hang anchor charts and this idea was perfect!

This year, I'm using a vocab wall instead of a word wall. Each week, I introduce the new vocabulary terms as we learn them and add them to the wall. I refer to the words throughout the week and the kids use them for their vocabulary homework. To make the display, I just used ribbon and Velcro. The Velcro makes it really easy to change out the words each week.

Here is a close up of the vocabulary cards. Each card has the term, definition, and illustration of the word.

I wanted to keep the lanterns that I used in my classroom last year, but wanted to put a new twist on them. In Schoolgirl Style's décor set, there are postcards from all 50 of the states. I decided to name each table a different state using the postcards. My kiddos LOVE being called to the carpet by their state!

Okay, I have to admit something here- I went a little crazy over the summer buying chapter books for my classroom! With the transition to third grade (and the fact that most of my students have already read the majority of my books), I figured I needed to add many more chapter books. I found these amazing bins on Really Good Stuff and filled them up in no time!

Each student has their own chair pocket this year where they store their data notebooks. On each pocket, I put a license plate with the student's name. They are attached to the chair pockets with Velcro so I can easily switch them out!

Here is our "Road Trip Through the Writing Process" bulletin board! My students always seem to think that once they write their draft in writing workshop, they are done. Does anyone else hear me on this?! I thought my kiddos could use a visual reminder of the ENTIRE process!

This is our student computer center. Nothing fancy, but my students LOVE when it is their day on the computer!

I HATE clutter. So last year, I made this curtain to cover up the last few cubbies that I wasn't using. Behind the curtain, there is stuff shoved everywhere! With very limited storage space, I have to hide things anywhere I can!

Okay, can I just tell you that I am in love with this 5 drawer organizer? One of my biggest issues last year was trying to manage my turn-in basket. It would get so full with papers all mixed up and out of order. This organizer from Really Good Stuff is FABULOUS. Each drawer has a different label (morning work, math, word study, reading, and other). It has really helped me stay on top of grading papers. I couldn't live without this thing!

Alright, you made it to the end of my tour! I hope you enjoyed checking out my classroom!

Guided Reading Progress and Interactive Writing

Last week, I decided it was time to reorganize my guided reading groups. My kids have made so much progress since the beginning of the year and their groups needed adjusted. Some kids jumped up several reading levels and needed to move out of one group and into another. That's what I love about flexible grouping in guided reading. The kids aren't "stuck" in one group. I can move them around easily depending on their needs at that time.

Since I needed to make changes, I collected the guided reading books out of their browing boxes. They keep these browsing boxes in their cubbies and bring them to guided reading when I call their group. They get out the book that they read the night before (this is in their guided reading bag) and reread it. This is when I take a running record on one of my students. When they are finished rereading the book, they place it in their browsing box. During reading workshop, they can choose from the books in our classroom library as well as the books in their browsing boxes. This is an easy way to help your kiddos that are struggling with fluency. Rereading familiar books helps them to read quickly and fluently. My students love reading books out of their browsing boxes because the books are at their level and are familiar to them. (Although lately they've been telling me, "These are sooo easy!")

Here is a pic of my guided reading table after collecting the books out of their browsing boxes...

 

It was crazy! You can't tell in the picture but I also had books on the window ledge, books on chairs, books everywhere! After putting all the books together, I bundled them up and placed them in the red bins that I use to keep my guided reading groups' books in.

 

 

It was so exciting to move up levels for each group and get rid of the lower books altogether. I used post-its to help me remember the level of each group while I was putting the books in the bins. (And yes... if you can read the post-its, I have a span of level from C to O!!!) Now we are all set for guided reading groups this week with new groups and new books! Woo hoo!

 

 Last week, we had an in-service about guided reading and one of the points that was brought up was that interactive writing can and should be incorporated into guided reading. To be honest, this is something that I hadn't really thought about and wasn't doing. I really liked the idea of having a 5 minute lesson using interactive writing at the end of guided reading with each group. The only problem was that I didn't have any sort of chart paper to use that was small enough for my guided reading table. My teammate, Casi, and I were brainstorming and thought that it would be easy to just cut a regular sized chart paper tablet in half. I already have a table pocket chart at my table, so I could just put the chart paper over it. Here's a couple pics of the table pocket chart before and after.

 

      



I'm so excited to start incorporating interactive writing in my guided reading groups. I think it will be especially beneficial for my lower readers and writers!

"Friday Box"

Do your students have a hard time keeping track of their things? Every day at the end of the day, I go around picking up glue sticks, scissors, dry erase markers, pencils, etc. (even though we have two floor cleaner class jobs that are supposed to do this!). My students are losing things like crazy! To teach them the importance of taking care of their things, I introduced them to the "Friday Box" this week.

The Friday Box is just a container where things that are found on the floor or out of place are kept until the end of the week. If a student loses their glue stick on Monday, they don't get it back until Friday. When I explained this to the class, you would've thought the world stopped turning! Instantly, they started asking "What do I do without a glue stick for the entire week?" or "What if I left my eraser on the floor. How can I fix my mistakes?" I told them that they would have to be problem-solvers and figure out a way such as borrowing, etc. Now I know this may sound a little tough but for some of my kids, not being able to find something that they lost was wasting SO much time. I introduced this box on Tuesday of this week and it has already made a HUGE difference in the amount of items found around the classroom. We did have a pretty good collection going though- pencils, scissors, glue sticks, bookmarks, chap stick, Pokemon cards, among many other "treasures". Today, the kids got their things back at the end of the day. I saw some of them putting their materials in their pencil boxes right away and pushing it towards the back of the desk. I really hope this helps them develop resposibility for their things! We'll see how next week goes =)

A Little Bit of Everything!

Warning - this post is very random! It's been a busy week (and it's only Tuesday!) so I have a little bit of everything to share. Over the past week, we've been learning about making connections. I explained to them that there were three different types of connections that good readers make: text to self, text to text, and text to world. It's so funny- as soon as I teach text-to-self connections, they all have connections to EVERYTHING in the story. (You know how these go- "I have a brother named Timmy also!" or "I have a shirt like that character.") So needless to say, we spent a lot of time talking about which text to self connections helped them to understand the story and which ones didn't. I think they get it now! After they learned about the three different types, I made this chart for the students to record their connections as they made them while reading. They wrote their connection on a sticky note and posted it on the chart. At the end of reading workshop, we shared some of the post-it notes on the chart.

In writing workshop this week, we are focusing on oral storytelling. We had several trainings last year about the importance of students orally telling their story before writing. This has proved to be very helpful! This week, I introduced the story structure chart that includes the rise and fall of a good story. It shows how there is a want/problem in the story, obstacles in the middle, and then a conclusion at the end where the problem either gets solved or doesn't. (We talked about how not all stories have happy endings where the character gets what they want.) After introducing this diagram, I read several stories that followed this structure. A couple of books include Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes and Thundercake by Patricia Polacco. Today, I modeled how to tell a story and traced my finger along the diagram to make sure that I included all of the parts of my story. Then, they got a turn to oral storytell to a partner. I had them sit "eye to eye and knee to knee" and trace their finger along the lines while telling their story.

The kids loved doing this! At the end of writing workshop, I had a few volunteers tell their story to the whole class. This really helps get them ready to transfer the ideas from their head onto paper. They can't wait to start writing!

Okay, now for the last piece of my random post- the desk fairy visited our classroom today after school! I found these cute little award coupons to give to students when you find nice, neat desks in your classroom at the end of the day.

I told the kids last week about the desk fairy and then totally forgot! They've been coming in the past few mornings and saying "Oh man.... the desk fairy must not have visited last night!" Today after school, I finally delivered some awards and even added a little bit of curly ribbon to spice it up. I am so excited for them to see who she visited tomorrow! =) I also learned that I need to remind them how to organize their desks because it took me quite a while to find two desks to award! Some of the desks looked like a tornado hit them. I'll do a little refresher tomorrow on organization!!

Well I hope everyone had a happy Tuesday. Tomorrow is hump day... hang in there!

Monday Made It {a day late!}

I can't believe this is my first Monday Made It! I've made many things over the summer and have been following everyone's creations, but have yet to post one myself! I am so excited to use the "Teacher Toolbox" that I created last week. I love any and all things organization, so when I saw this idea on Pinterest, I knew I had to make it.

I'm not completely finished adding the words to each drawer, because I'm not sure what all I want to store in here. Let me tell you though- my desk and drawers have never been more organized because I moved everything into this! To make this toolbox, I just used solid colored scrapbook paper, black and white polka dot tape, black scrapbooking letters, clear packaging tape, and this organizer from Lowes:

It was super easy to make and is going to be a big help with keeping things organized. I love how it turned out! For more information on how to make this "toolbox", click {here}.

Happy Tuesday everyone!


 

How To Create a Cozy Classroom {and a Sneak Peek!}

Creating a classroom where students feel safe, comfortable, and valued is so important to me. I also want my classroom to be cozy, because it is really their "home away from home" for about 10 months out of the school year! Over the past couple of weeks, I've been working in my classroom a little bit at a time and I thought I'd share some ideas for how to create a cozy classroom!

1. Curtains- Curtains make a classroom feel very homey. You can do either short or long curtains. Every year up until this year, I've done short curtains at the top of my windows. This year, I decided to try something different! I bought long red curtains at Wal-Mart, cut them off and sewed them so they were the right height and then added a polka dot tie-back. I love how they turned out! Curtains are such an easy way to change your classroom feel.

2. Chair Pockets- Adding chair pockets to your classroom provides color and functionality. These are very simple to make! I made 12 total for my classroom: 6 for my guided reading table, 3 for computer center, and 3 for writing center. These pockets will be used to hold activities for each center and books/reading response folders during guided reading. There are great tutorials all over the web for how to make these. I just made up my own as I went!

3. Classroom Rug- Adding a rug to your classroom is not only colorful and cozy, but it is also beneficial so that students know where your meeting area is. You can purchase large rugs at Wal-Mart, Target, or any other store that sells home decor items. I was lucky enough to have this amazing rug donated from some generous donors on DonorsChoose.org. If you don't know about this organization, you need to check it out {here}!

4. Paper Lanterns- I was so inspired by Schoolgirl Style when I saw these adorable paper lanterns on her website. These add a bit of whimsy to the classroom! I used matching ribbon to tie a bow at the top and then hung a table number below each lantern.

5. Ribbon- Speaking of ribbon, here are a couple of ways that I incorporate ribbon into my classroom. The picture on the left is a trash can that sits on top of each table. I found these adorable buckets at Garden Ridge. I used the same ribbon that is on the paper lanterns and tied a bow around the middle. The picture on the right is my calendar area. Using fun ribbon is a great way to hang pocket charts, posters, or anything else that you can think of! I used the green polka dot ribbon to hang my calendar and my Common Core posters.

 6. Wooden Bookshelves- I found this cute little bookshelf at a garage sale a few summers ago. It was in pretty bad shape but I knew it had potential! I painted it red and use it for my students' check-in area. They clip in here and also get their lunch envelopes from the baskets. Garage sales are great places to find cheap bookshelves that can be painted to match your classroom!

7. Pillows- Adding pillows to your classroom gives students comfy areas to sit and adds some coziness to your classroom. I love these pillows from Lakeshore Learning! They are great because they are easily cleaned and wiped off. (You know all about the germs that float around our classrooms!) The health inspector especially liked these pillows that weren't made of regular fabric =) I use these at my listening center so that students can sit and enjoy listening to a good book! I also had these donated to my classroom through DonorsChoose.org!

8. Plants- (Please don't mind the SOLO cup and label!) Plants are a great way to teach your students to take care of something and be responsible. They also enhance your classroom's appearance! This is actually a picture of a plant that we used during a science experiment, but if you look at the picture of the classroom curtains above, you will see the red pots that I use to hold our classroom plants. I just bought cheap clay pots and spray painted them red to go with my classroom. We have a classroom job called the "Plant Caretaker" who is charge of watering the plants each day. They love taking care of these and the plants just add a nice touch to the classroom.

Well that's about it! I know that you may not be able to do some of these ideas due to rules at your school (such as hanging things from the ceiling) but I hope this gave you some ideas for adding some coziness to your classroom! I will be posting more pictures of my classroom as I continue to work on it (there is still a long way to go!)

Have a great Thursday everyone!

Fourth Grade Common Core Posters and Tell Me More Linky!

Calling all fourth grade teachers! I've finally completed the Fourth Grade "Kid Friendly" Common Core Standards Posters. I have had many requests for these and have been working on them for quite some time. I am exited to share them with you!

These 4th grade common core posters are unique due to the fact that the standards cards are two-sided: one side is the exact standard written and coded for your records, the other side is the same standard written in "kid-friendly" language so that your students will be able to understand what it is they will be learning. (NOTE: I've taken great care in trying to preserve the meaning of the standard when I changed it into terms that the students can understand. I kept most verbage the same and used synonyms for more challenging words to help fourth graders understand!)

This document includes ALL standards for Language Arts (reading, writing, language, etc.) and Math.

Also included are subject heading cards for your display, information explaining how to read the coding on each card, and directions on how to print and make the cards. Making the cards is very simple-- you just need to print, cut around the solid black line (but DO NOT cut the line in the middle) and then fold in half. One side will be the "teacher" side and the other is the "kid-friendly" side. Just laminate, if you wish, and display in your classroom to make the learning goals more visible to your students!

Two different options for display include:

#1) On a hanging ribbon- just use velcro to change out the cards each day to align with what you are teaching.

#2) In a pocket chart- these cards will fit in virtually all pocket charts. No need for velcro, just change them out daily!

Check them out... Click {here} to be taken to the link! I hope these posters help you with the new transition to the Common Core!

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Okay, on to something a little more fun! I am linking up with the fabulous Amy Lemons to share some quirky facts about myself! If you'd like to join in on the fun, just click the button below to link up!

Alright, here goes:

1. Growing up, I HATED being tall. I am about 5'10" and have recently embraced my height. I always felt like a giant (especially in middle school when the boys were about half my height!) but now I'm beginning to realize that being tall has its perks!

2. I am a Big Brother fanatic! I love the TV show and drop everything to watch it all three days of the week =) Now I don't go as far as watching the live feeds online like some people do, but I'm a pretty devoted fan of the show!

3. I have terrible eyesight! I thank God every day for contact lenses because if I had to wear my glasses, it would not be pretty... ha!

4. My favorite place to be is at my family's lake house at Seneca Lake. I grew up spending my summers on this lake. Three years ago, my husband proposed to me on the cliff at sunset. Ahh... I just love it!

5. I absolutely love reading! My favorite authors include Jodi Piccoult and James Patterson, among many others. This summer, I read a series of books that start with "50"... haha... very interesting reads to say the least!

6. I am a bit of a perfectionist... okay, maybe more than a bit! Since becoming a mom though, I've learned that things aren't always just so. I'm letting things go (you should see my house!) and realizing that those little things don't matter in the grand scheme of life =)

7. My hubby, Brandon, is the love of my life! Every day, I just can't believe how lucky I am to be married to someone so loving, helpful, and funny!

8. Okay, I have two loves of my life-- my son, Grady, is the best thing that ever happened to me. He makes me laugh every day and is such a joy!

Alright, that's it! I know this is the longest post ever so thanks for reading! Be sure to link up with Amy above =)

Have a great Thursday!