Still trying to organize...

There are only 41 or so days of school left in my "first full year" of school, and I am still trying to perfect the organization technique of my room. I swear I'll get it eventually.  Because I'm visual and a lister (and my schedule's different every day), I decided to try listing my schedule like so:

I have this skinny wall space right across from my desk, and near our focus walls. I decided to utilize this space and add a splash of color to this corner. All I used was scrap bulletin board paper, a little bit of bulletin board border, strip velcro and laminated index cards. This is a super quick way for us to change our schedule that's different daily. It's also portable. Since it's only on with tape, you can lower it or move it based on your need.

Now, you may notice that there are no times or pictures. For the beginning of the year, I would have pictures next to the words, but sine it's the end of the year, I want my class to rely on using their decoding skills to figure out what the cards say. And honestly, they know what most of them say just by knowing the order of our day. I am not finding the time is necessarily working for me. While I do stay close to the times, sometimes you just need to stray from your time slot- this prevents you from getting stressed about feeling "time restricted". Another plus to not having times is that the students can have this as a job. It's much easier for them to order based on the days that it happens rather than the time. If anyone tries this or finds another way works, I'd love to hear from you!

Meet Grumpy "Gr"

Week one of Fairy Tale unit was a success! I am thrilled at how well they responded to our activities and more importantly how much they remembered the story elements and were able to retell the story! Tying in nicely with The Three Billy Goats Gruff, we have been continuing our study of blends. This week I taught the blend "Gr" along with the long o vowel "o". I found an awesome poster for the long O on pinterest, but I wasn't able to find anything on blends, so I made one myself.

What's fun about posters like these is when the kids find the blend in a story or in a word, or even in their own writing, they take pride in being the one to point out "grumpy gr".

Welcome Back!

Spring break came and went extremely fast, but I am very glad to be back at school. Nothing's better than seeing all those little faces light up when they see you and they're excited to be back in their daily routines. Even my challengers were happy to see me and happy to be back at school. Everyone bombards me with all of the things that they did while they were away. One of my little kiddies who I missed greatly came up to me immediately and says "Miss Satos, I got my teeth cleaned. Want to smell my teeth!?" Oh how lovely it is to be back in the realm of 5 year old minds. :)

Once upon a Time

I have been feverishly working on a Folk and Fairy Tale Unit for school. It's composed of 7 fairy tales and 3 nursery rhymes. I organized each story on a weekly map that outlines all of the literacy lessons to go with each story. If there's a science, math, or social studies connection, I listed that too. Definitely a strong feeling of accomplishment after completing this!

These are some of the books I'm using in my unit. I ordered a few more from Scholastic.

The unit includes the following stories and poems:

Goldilocks and the Three Bears by James Marshall

Leola and the Honeybears, an African American Retelling by Melodye Benson Rosales

The Three Little Pigs, by James Marshall

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by Jon Scieszka

The Three Billy Goats Gruff, by Scholastic
The Little Red Hen

Red Riding Hood, by John Marshall
Lon Po Po, by Ed Young

Cinderella, by Barbara Karlin
Hickory Dickory Dock Poem

Jack and the Bean Stalk
The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe Poem
Humpty Dumpty Poem

This is an example of the week long map for each fable. Every week has at least 2 stories that are focused on. I love when things work out perfectly! I love that I was able to tie in blends with this unit.

I am also planning on tying in the Jolly Postman in this unit. Not sure if it should be at the beginning or the end,  but I know that it's absolutely appropriate to what we've been doing at school. We have been starting to write letters to students in Pennsylvania (it's actually my college roommate's 1st grade class). Letters + Fairy Tales = The Jolly Postman = Happy Teacher!

I am very excited to try these activities with my class! Their activities will be posted soon!

Spring "Break"

I'm sure many of you can relate that your time away from school is being spent doing things to better your classroom. My list of things to do is a mile long, but now that I'm actually on vacation I'm finding it hard to motivate myself. I think it's because it's early in the week and I know I have "so much time" left to complete that list. Today I went to the Learning Resource Center.

For those of you who don't know who it is, it's a place for teachers to play! They have all of the materials you could think of to make posters, centers, decorations etc. They have the Ellison machine, laminators, poster makers, overheads and lots more. I was there for 3+ hours with another teacher. Since our school doesn't have a laminator, I was able to catch up on a lot of laminating so that when I return to school my class can actually use some of my materials! I am planning on making another trip out there before my week is done.

Here is what I've been working on this week. I feel so accomplished!

I'm very proud of my Science poster! It took a while to trace, cut out each letter, and glue everything- but I was able to do all of that AND laminate it in one shot and in one place! Love it!

These wall decorations were made using transparencies. Simple and easy!

Because we don't have a laminator that we can use regularly, or that we can operate on our own, I had to take a bunch of things to the LRC. I finally was able to laminate my center folders. I slit the top with an exacto knife and I am keeping all of the papers that go with each center in these so that I 1.) have a place to store the extra copies and 2.) so that the kids can be independent and help themselves.

One of the biggest things I've been working on was my Fairy Tale Unit. For more details on that check out my next post.