Quick Note

I found another benefit of teaching in a portable today; we still have heat when the boiler in the building breaks. Tell me, how are kids supposed to learn when there's no heat in the building and they're still cold, even while wearing their coats all day? Some things in education just need to be fixed and someone needs to find the funds to do so.

Still a negative of teaching in a portable, walking in the rain and jumping over puddles to anywhere we have to go. I'm figuring out the path between the puddles from my door to the building.

Update

Ok... it has been FOREVER since I have posted. I'm sorry for any of you who follow my blog. As most of you know, the start of school is crazy!! I have been trying to take pictures of things that I knew I would eventually blog about, but I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff.

Just before the start of school, my wonderful dad finished building my mailboxes. Aren't they beautiful?!? They look even better up close! Each slot has a number to the left and they have been amazing! They save so much time! They are near my desk so as I grade papers in the evening or when I'm given handouts from the office, I can throw them right into the student's box. 

On parent night, I did a few things that I had seen on other teachers' sites and it made the night run very smoothly. First, I had students fill out this Parent Night Kid Quiz which I found for free on Teachers Pay Teachers. The kids filled out the left side and folded the paper in half so their parents had to fill out the other side and couldn't see the answers. Then they could check their answers and write a note. The kids LOVED reading their parents' notes in the morning! 

As parents walked in the door, I had this desk set up. Parents could pick up a star if they could help to provide some of the extra supplies that we'll need this year. I forgot to take a picture before Curriculum Night so these are the stars that were left over. 

I like to offer parents handouts at curriculum night, but don't want to make a bunch of copies if parents don't end up taking them. Instead of making copies, I just provided one or a few copies. When there is only one copy, parents can sign up on the post-it and I'll send a copy home with the child the next day. Then, I only need to make copies for the parents who are truly interested. 

I've received a lot of compliments on my chart organization. I can't remember whether I saw this idea on another blog or adapted what one of my coworkers did last year (sorry!). This year, I am labeling my charts so students can go back to review them without them taking a ton of wall space. I have two spots for reading charts and two spots for writing charts. As I make new charts, I put them up right on top of the old ones and add a post-it with the topic of the chart. It makes it easy for students to flip back to the chart they're looking for and looks organized, avoiding that visual clutter that seems to take over in some classrooms. 

Since taking this picture, I have changed the post-its to start on the left side. I'm not sure why I started them in the middle at first. 

Tonight, I saw this idea on Krazy About Kiddos. Lately, my students have been urgent to talk to me while I am conferring with other students. I am going to revisit our conference norms mini-lesson soon, but I am also going to add this light to my conference table. When I reteach the mini lesson (about how to get help when I'm conferring) I will also make an anchor chart (and reprint it on smaller paper) to put right next to my conference table so I can just point to it if students try to interrupt me. 

For any new teachers or future teachers reading this, I wanted to share this graph with you. There is also an accompanying article here. I found it very accurate last year and think that it still is this year. Last year, I don't think I ever reached the rejuvenation stage and feel that even my reflection phase was shortened and replaced by a longer disillusionment phase. I'm hoping for better this year and so far I feel better than I did last year at this point in the year. 

New Ideas... Maybe

As I've walked around my classroom as I have been making decisions about how it would be most functional for me this year, I realized that some of the things that do not seem very creative to me might be more exciting to someone else.

This year, I waited until the first full week of school (the second week) to lead a discussion about classroom expectations. I wanted the kids to have experienced the routines and schedule so they could make their expectations more specific to what will actually happen in our room. I started the discussion by having students come up with rules they think we should have in the classroom. Once they got started this list became really long really quickly. The rules were all listed individually and were very specific.
Then, I had students work in groups to try to put the rules in categories. (I had categories in mind, but wanted to see what they would come up with.) With prompting, discussion, reflection from past years and some guidance, students came up with the categories Safety, Respect, and Responsibility. Then, I had each group use the original list along with new ideas to write about what each of those things looks like, sounds like, and feels like in the classroom. We reconvened as a class and made a giant list in three categories (looks/sounds/feels) for each expectation. After charting them together, I made them into smaller posters to display in the classroom all year. Here are the pictures.

I hung these on our heater since wall space is becoming limited and they are not something that students need to be able to see at all times. They just need to know where they are for a reminder now and then. Just a note, our heater (as far as I know) does not seem to get hot, so it shouldn't be a safety concern. 

I know the idea of generating examples about what rules/expectations look, sound, and feel like came from my amazing mentor teacher in college! I don't remember whether she did it for class norms though ( I think she did). 

This is my daily attendance/lunch count system. Students come in the door (just to the left of this picture) pick up their card, check the lunch menu, and put their card in their lunch choice (cold, hot lunch 1, or hot lunch 2). Any name left in a pocket is a student who is absent and the lunch count is done for me. I usually have a student count how many students selected each lunch and report to me while I'm recording the attendance on the computer. (This idea is also one I've been using since learning it from my college mentor teacher.)

I bought a large, shallow Rubbermaid container for each student's desk. This is where they keep all their loose supplies. Most supplies in our classroom are community supplies, but this works for the daily stuff and the supplies that it doesn't make as much sense to share. It acts as a drawer in their desk and doesn't take up much space. Also, it limits the amount of junk they can collect. I plan on checking these every once in a while to make sure that students are only keeping the essential supplies in them. I stole this idea from my partner teacher this year although my containers are smaller than the ones she uses. I couldn't find hers but this size works fine! 

Good finds at Target

I went to Target tonight to find that all their school supplies and teacher stuff was on the end caps on clearance.
I found a whole bunch of space themed die cuts, window clings, and a solar system poster for half price! They were each $1.25. There was a bunch of stuff for other themes too including safari, ocean, sky/planes, baking/cookies, bugs/garden, etc.
The end caps of aisles are where it's at during this time of year! Their leftover school supplies were also reduced by at least 50%.

Since my job chart is still not done and I haven't made any more progress on it since before school started, I'm abandoning the idea to make the space shuttle with kids' pictures in the windows. Instead I'm going to use some of my new rocket die cuts for the job labels and laminate them so I can use Vis-a-Vis pens to write students' names on them. The board will still be space themed, but will be much easier to put together.

5th Day of School

The kids and I are finally getting settled into the classroom. Workers are still coming in and out periodically to redo wiring and connect the other portables, so it certainly isn't done yet. I started working on my classroom library yesterday, since my book bins were finally delivered from The Container Store. I bought 3 cases. I was anxiously waiting for them to arrive and was at school until 7:30 last night trying to finish it (which I didn't). I have way more books than I realized!

Portable Life

The portable has been working out nicely. It is a little tight on space, but I changed the seating arrangement today which freed up a lot more space. I'll try to remember to take a picture soon. I'm hoping to do a lot of lessons and practice on working in groups so students learn to work effectively in the new arrangement. 

Bathrooms and water have been my biggest pet peeve so far this year. Students often do not want to use their recess time to do these things (I don't really blame them since the bathroom and water fountain are so far away and take a lot of time to get to). However, I'm not willing to compromise learning time for students to go all the way into the building. 

For water, I have encouraged students every day so far to bring water bottles. Those students who have still not brought one have very little sympathy in my book. 

My solution was to let each student go to the restroom or get a drink in the building once a week during class time. It's Tuesday and 4 students have used their weekly pass, not too shabby. Teachers, have you ever noticed the phenomenon where if one student asks to go to the bathroom/get a drink, five other kids shout out that they have to go too? Maybe this just happens in my class, but as soon as I remind them that it would be their only pass for the week, most kids say "never-mind." 

Since we're away from the building, I make students go to the building with partner for safety. The phenomenon mentioned previously helps me to find a partner because often there is someone else willing to use their weekly pass. I try not to send friends and always gender match the partners. If there isn't someone else who wants to use their pass, I just assign someone to go with the other person and don't count it against them. 

9/11

It was kind of strange to teach students who were just days old or not born yet about what happened 11 years ago. To most of them, it seemed like history. Some students had stories about what their siblings or parents were doing on that day. One of my student's parents had to postpone their wedding because of all of the airport closures. Other students asked what 9/11 was and acted as though they had never heard of it. 

Last year, I saved the September 2010 issue of Scholastic News and used the cover story "I was 11 on September 11th, 2001." Then, I found a video on BrainPop and invited the two other 5th grade classes to join us in watching it (since they don't have computers for their presentation stations yet). It was a tight squeeze for about 80 5th graders in one portable, but we made it work with standing room only and the new desk arrangement. 

After the other classes left, I read September 12th: We Knew Everything Would Be All Right to wrap up.