Busy, Busy!

A week from tonight I will be able to write to all of you about the very first day of school!  Time sure is flying, but I do believe that my room is about done to start the year (though with room for constant improvement, as I believe a teacher's work is NEVER finished!).

The district was back to work today and we began our morning at the high school with a welcome back presentation from Superintendent Pinion followed by time to work in our room.  The welcome back presentation was encouraging and it was neat to see the entire district staff all together in one place.  After working in my room for a while, I went for lunch with some of the Starry Staff.  I am going to be working with some truly great people!

Here are some photos of what I worked on yesterday and today...

In my classroom library, I added animal "fix-up" strategies for when students come across a word they don't know including "Chunky Monkey", "Lips the Fish", "Stretchy Snake", etc.  Hopefully these will be good visual reminders!

Once the clutter is off the table and I get a little more organized with the leveled books and materials I have, then this will be my guided reading instruction area.  On the wall I got our "Text Talk" book covers printed and posted to then add our vocabulary words as we introduce them.  They definitely add some color to the wall!

I taped together this project this afternoon....I think it is good to have options for students when they finish a task early, so I created this visual.  The first priority for any student that finishes a task early will be the task outlined in red-work on incomplete work.  Once they are all caught up then they can choose any of the tasks outlined in blue including pick an extension activity (I will have a bin with supplemental learning activities/games/worksheets), read a favorite book, and write a story.  I hope that this will help with my management plan in the room to keep all of my students engaged!

Tomorrow is a full day of meetings but hopefully in the afternoon I will get into my room to do some more organizing in the library and work on some other details!  Thanks for stopping by!  Check back again soon!

Mrs. Clough