Some Changes in Room 117

As the school year has changed, so has my classroom. I have discovered some things have worked wonderfully, while I others I have had to change to meet the needs of my kiddos that I have. One of the major changes that I have made has been to my classroom library. I had already redone it once, but I was not quite satisfied with it. I got sick of my kids putting their books back in the wrong baskets and I wanted to help them with that. I went on a serious labeling overhaul.

I had some baskets from the Dollar Tree that I of course paid a dollar for each, but they were not holding up as well as I would have liked. I splurged and ordered these colorful baskets from Really Good Stuff. I love them. my kids love them, and the other teachers in my hallway are jealous of them. I did have to pay a little more for them, but I have a feeling that they are going to hold up nicely.

I labeled each basket by genre and also put a small round sticker with a number on it. The number represents which basket number it is for that genre. I think I have 9 Fantasy baskets in my library.

 Depending on the number that is on the basket, the books in that basket also have a small same color sticker on them too. This way students know that it goes in the 1 basket.

I also added a sticker on the spine of each book that says the genre too. I told you it was label overkill. However, it has worked great and I am not stuck reshelving tons of books at the end of each day.

Another one of the big changes in my classroom has been the addition of an A-Z word wall. I always thought that this was only for the elementary classroom, but my kids have loved it too. This was actually a suggestion that Valerie (the Shletered Instruction observer) gave me during her first observation in my room. I am pretty sure that I got this as a freebie from the Teacher Wife.

Right now I only use it with my 2 regular classes and we place their vocabualry words up on it each week. We write the word and then draw a small illustration to go with it to help us remember what it means.

Here is a closer look at what we do. I have just been using unlined 3x5 index cards for this.

This board is what I intended to use as my word wall, notice the catchy letters at the top. It took a good few weeks before one of my students actually noticed that it did not say Hollywood.

This is where I display our word maps and such. Before these I had up their illustrated idioms on it. The one that is not cut out belongs to one of my ED kiddos that refused to cut it out. Sometimes it is just not worth the battle. Here is a closeup of the square that I use. I purchased this through Lightbulb Minds which is the older grade version of Teacher's Clubhouse.

I have been really encouraging my students to write in complete sentences, but of course this student did not do that. Her illustrations were great though. :)

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It is also time for Giveaway #2 for the Holly Bloggy Christmas. They are working with Jennifer Mecca for a Christmas Card design. I have been searching for the perfect design for mine and I have a few of hers that I am really eyeing.

Sign ups for the Holly Bloggy Giveaway also end tomorrow, and trust me, you do not want to miss out on this fun!!!