Monsters

Please tell me I am not the only one with a class that has turned into a bunch of little monsters this last week of school? They started off they day as chatty monsters then transformed into giggle monsters then the next thing I know, they were full blown throwing-pencils-across-the-table-and-running-in-circles monsters. I had three students absent today leaving me with only 7... Yes, you read that correctly. I only have 10 students in my class... I am sure you have now lost all sympathy for me after reading that, but let me plead my case: the majority of the class is boys (7/10) and they all have big enough personalities to make it feel like a class three times the size on a normal day. On a day like today when we have all checked out and are ready for our summer holiday, it feels like a class 5 times the size! If you don't believe me, feel free to pay us a visit. :)

Because we were already acting like monsters, I thought a great way to get some of our energy out while still incorporating math was by reading the book Monster Musical Chairs. On each page, one monster is out of the game. After reading and discussing the book, we played our own game of musical chairs. As each child sat out, they helped me write the equation on the board. Once we played the game a couple of times, students went to math stations. When students came to work with me, they used these cute monsters pictures from First Grade Best to make up their own subtraction problems.

I couldn't believe they were capable of sitting still long enough for me to take this picture!

Another task I took on today was Step 2 of my library organization project. I gave my students the choice of either going to literacy stations or helping me sort through our library books. Only two chose to go to literacy stations and the rest were eager to help. I gave them each a box of books and told them to pick one book each. Those books were the start of our piles. Two students happened to both pick Dr. Seuss books which gave me the opportunity to show them how and why to put those two books together. Then the rest of us looked through our boxes to see if we had any other Dr. Seuss books to add. After we found all of the Dr. Seuss books, we moved on to alphabet books because another student had picked Chicka Chicka Boom Boom as their first book. It continued like this for awhile until we had most of the books sorted. There were a few that we couldn't decide where to put them. What do you do with the books that don't fit with any of the others? I may just put them in an unlabeled box for now until I build up more of a collection.

My floor after we were finished.

I realized I have A LOT more piles of books than I do book boxes, so I will be on the look out for some more. If only we had a Target here...

Storage Organization

I tried to post this yesterday, but my internet was down... Oh, the joys of the Philippines...

This weekend was my last weekend here before I leave for the summer. I wanted to take advantage of my time and make sure I have everything in my classroom organized so that when I return at the end of July I won't have any messes to clean up and can jump right into the new school year with a fresh start. I spent many hours trying to clean out and organize all of my (two) storage cabinets. Because of the limited space, I tend to try and cram way too much into way too small of an area. At the start of the year, both were neatly organized, but as the year progressed, I began to haphazardly add things anywhere I could fit them just to get them out of sight. The result:

Overflowing plastic containers, piles of different types of paper, bags of art supplies, games and puzzles hidden in the far corners... It wasn't pretty. I headed over to Ace Hardware and stocked up on some more storage containers to try and make sense of everything I have. I started from the top and worked my way down, and now it is looking so much better!

My top shelf is now dedicated to all office supplies, each in their own closable container! Imagine that.

On the shelf below I added a stackable paper tray that has white copy paper, white cardstock, colored copy paper, and colored cardstock. I left the rest of the shelf empty because I am going to add a set of three drawers for my guided reading supplies (one drawer for each group) along with all of my other guided reading materials. My guided reading table is right in front of this cabinet, giving me easy access to everything I will need when working with my guided reading groups.

The third shelf is all of my construction paper (arranged by colored) and cartolina paper. Construction paper doesn't exist here (I shipped mine from the States because I couldn't live without it. What teacher could?) and instead everyone uses what is called cartolina. It is comparable to very thin posterboard and comes rolled up very tightly making it difficult to flatten. I am not a big fan of the stuff when it comes to craft projects, but it is perfect for anchor charts.

The fourth shelf is home to all of my art supplies. The shelves go back further than they appear; there's a second row of containers behind what is visible. I have a large stock of pipe cleaners and googly eyes, both not sold here either.

Underneath has all of my math manipulatives and games that are not currently in math stations. I sorted everything by topic (addition/subtraction, number sense, time, and so on). Below that I stored all of my Language Arts materials.

The last two shelves holds some bulletin board materials, holiday items (Easter eggs and witches cauldrons) and a lot of empty baskets and plastic containers. Who knew I had so much extra space!

Once I have the momentum going, it is hard for me to stop, so I moved on to my file cabinet next. I do not have easy access to a printer so I like to keep master copies of most worksheets so that I can make copies if and when needed. I did have separate folders for different subjects and themes, but it was difficult to find particular folders because I never knew what color I was looking for. That's when I had my AH-HA moment and decided to color code by subject. Yellow is Language Arts, green is Math, blue is Science/S.S., red is thematic units, and orange is miscellaneous papers such as assessments and homework assignments.

The bottom drawer holds my Homeroom File, student portfolios, and scrap paper (arranged by color). I also cleaned off the top of the filing cabinet. I have a magazine box for each day of the week where I can put everything I need for the day in one place. The colored folders in each box also correspond to the different subject areas.

I am so relieved to have one less thing to worry about next year when I return. The last two years, I started in new classrooms and had to spend the days leading up to the first day of school de-cluttering all of the things the old teachers left behind. I feel so much better knowing that when I come back at the end of July this year, I will be all set to go!

Classroom Organizer App

I love to organize... and then reorganize... and then reorganize again. I make simple projects into step by step drawn out processes to make sure every little thing has its proper place, and if it doesn't belong somewhere, then I don't need it! That's my rationale anyway.

Lately, I have been on a bit of an organizing spree. So far I have tackled my computer documents, my Pinterest boards (See what I mean? Reorganizing already organized boards!), and my file cabinet. My latest project is my classroom library. As a newer teacher, I am still trying to build up a classroom library. Since I didn't have too many books before, I didn't feel the need to organize my library. I thought it would be a bit silly to have an entire box dedicated to shape books when I only had two books about shapes. Now that my collection has grown to over 150 titles (and is continuing to grow... here I come summer yard sales!), I think it is time to make sense of everything I have.

Step 1: Make a list of all classroom books. To do this, I used Booksource's Classroom Organizer. The website has a free app that I used to scan the titles of all of my books onto my account.

It was super simple and took no time at all. I now have an alphabetized list of all of my books available on my phone, my iPad, and on my computer.

I can add genres to help sort the books, and I can export the list to excel (which will both be part of Step 3). I will also be able to use the app in the future as a tool to keep track of students who have checked out books from the classroom library.

Another similar application that I found is The Classroom Library Company's Book Retriever, but it costs a whopping $0.99.

Tomorrow will be Step 2 of Project Library Organization. I am going to enlist the help of my kiddos in deciding which books go best together. I think this will be a great end of the year project for us to take on as a group. We are getting antsy for summer and this will engaged all of the students in a meaningful task. I will keep you posted on how it goes.

How do you organize the books in your classroom library? Did you allow your students to help in the organization process?