Classroom Makeover: Reading

The next parts of our room that I'm sharing are all about reading. When I think about reading, the library is the first thing that comes to mind. It's truly the heart of our classroom and is essential for reading workshop. I just love how cozy it is! 





I wrote about our library organization and shared some of my free library files when I first started blogging. You can find those here.








Another important reading area of our room is our meeting area. We have our mini-lessons, read alouds, and sharing time here. We also use it for writing workshop. We use our spinning wire rack to hold book recommendations for students from students.





I use our "Books We've Shared" board to track our classroom read alouds. Any book that we've shared together (just for fun or for lessons) is written on a small cut out book and stapled to this board. It's a great way to track genres or authors we've previously read. Students can also use the board as reference when they're having trouble picking out a good book.

Finally, we have our reading reference boards. Free reading genre posters from both Beth Newingham and Dots-N-Spots hang above our reading and writing boards. We refer to these often and it's a big goal of mine that my third graders head into fourth grade having read a variety of genres. The posters' backgrounds are color-coded to match the basket labels in our classroom library.

I use our main reading board to hold reading strategies, themes, and other important ideas. I love having this board right behind our classroom meeting area for easy reference. I made the reading strategy posters based on Mosaic of Thought, Second Edition: The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction. I'm not sure if copyright restrictions will let me share them, so I have to check into that first. The other posters are free from Beth Newingham.

I still have writing resources to share, but until then let's talk about reading. What are some of your favorite reading pieces?

Monday Made It: Table Skirts

It's Monday again, so you know what that means: Monday Made It. This time I made table skirts to hide the junk supplies under our computer table. I think they turned out pretty cute. After I played with the first one, the rest weren't too hard to make at all. 


I decided to do purple polka dots to stick with our bright, polka dot theme. I added a bright green ruffle to the bottom edge. The edges of my table are 40 inches, so I need to cut the ruffle a bit longer to make up for the gathers. The green fabric ended up being 6 x 92 inches. I had to cut two strips and sew them together in the middle because my fabric was only 46 inches long. I also hemmed the green fabric across the bottom and up both sides.

Next it was time to gather the fabric. Just like my curtains, I used the gather foot so I didn't have to zigzag them and pull by hand.

Then it was time to attach the green ruffle to the purple table skirt. Our table is 25 inches tall, so I cut the purple fabric 26.5 x 41 to leave room for the hems and velcro to attach it to the table. I folded the bottom of the purple fabric under to hem it and attach the ruffle at the same time.

I used a zigzag stitch to make the finished edge a little more attractive.

After the skirt was all sewn together, I hemmed around the sides and the top to make it look finished and prevent unraveling too. I used a skinny hem along the sides and a double hem along the top (by folding it over twice instead of once) to provide extra support for the velcro when I attach it to my table. I need to add a few more pieces of velcro to hold the skirt tight and keep it off the floor, but this is what it looks like so far.

That's it! It wasn't too hard at all. I repeated this process for the remaining two sides of my table. I kind of adore the way it looks. Much better than my supplies anyway. ;)

Mystery Blog Hop Sign Up

I thought a mystery blog hop with QR codes might be fun. Even if you don't think you know what QR codes are, chances are you've seen one. They're these little boxes that you scan with free apps on your smart phones, iPads, etc. I've made a couple worksheets with the QR codes where students scan them to be taken to a website where they'll solve problems or read information. It's a little extra "kick" that catches their attention. Now I know we don't all have the technology to scan them, so I'm going to make them "clickable" too. I thought it would be fun because you don't know which blog you'll land on until you scan the code or click the image. Chances are you'll find a new blog along the way.


If you want to join in, here's how it works.

· *First, you’ll need to make your own QR code. It’s free here: http://www.snapmaze.com/

· *Then, decide which post on your blog you want to promote. This could be an old fan favorite, new idea, fabulous freebie, or even a paid product. You must have a blog to do this step!

· *Finally, email me (msfultzscorner {at} gmail.com) your QR code image, the link to your blog post that you want me to promote, and the grade level target (preK-2, 3-6, or special interest).

*I’ll compile the data. After I have the data compiled, I’ll send you a link to add to your featured post that will send readers back to the QR page to hop to the next blog.

*I’ll do most of the work and all you’ll have to do is promote it to get visitors scanning (or clicking). If you want to participate, email me your information by June 30^th.  It’s my goal to roll this out for July 4^th.

Can't wait!

Classroom Makeover: Organization and Time Savers

I'm following up my classroom management ideas with a few organizational tips and classroom time savers. I think it's so important to use your time wisely in the classroom, multitask when you can, and get your students involved in the daily "to do" tasks as well.

Teachers deal with a lot of paper during the week, I have three easy tips to help you keep up with it. First, I use drawers to have students turn in work. I use two of the three-drawer ones and label the front of each drawer with a content area. I forgot to take a close-up of mine, so this is the stock image. These drawers must be emptied daily, sorted into alphabetical order using student numbers written next to the names, and then paper clipped by stack. Here's the best part... students do this for me! Then they take the stacks and put them on my desk for grading. This is done every day at the end of the day. Before going home, I decide what needs to be looked at or graded that night and what can be left for my assistant or I to work on the next day.

Second, my biggest complaint/issue with the paper stacks are missing assignments or no name papers. For some reason, some students don't regularly remember to put their names on their papers. A few also have trouble getting the work into the drawers. Again, this is something that I have my students help me manage. When they sort the drawers of work at the end of the day, any no name papers are put in the "Return to Sender" bucket. After all papers have been sorted, the students in charge try to collect missing work. They personally visit student desks who don't have papers in the sorted stack and collect the work. If the work isn't there, the student with the missing assignment is asked to check the Return to Sender bucket. So easy! Doing this daily helps prevent papers from become permanently lost. It also improves throughout the year as students become more responsible.

My third tip for your paper organization deals with passing back graded work. At our school we do this in the form of Friday Folder. I've seen many ways to do this (mailboxes, filing folders, students who pass back the papers), but my favorite is a paper rainbow. This is actually a little trick I learned at my previous school. After grading papers and recording scores, I keep each stack separated into those alphabetized stacks my students made for me. Each paper-clipped stack goes into a pile on the shelf behind my desk. On Fridays, I lay all of those stacks out side-by-side around each of our kidney tables (thus, they look like rainbows). I take the clips off and have students line up in number order. Student 1 takes the top piece of paper off each stack and has all of her work for the week collected by the time she reaches the end of her rainbow. The rest of the students follow right behind her. I also add any notes home, fliers from the office, etc. right to the end of this rainbow.

Ask you can see, to keep my students involved in our classroom organization, we have room jobs. Paper sorting is just one of them. I have tons more. Students sign up for their desired job and I let them change every other week or so. You can grab an editable free copy of our jobs here.

One last tip...
New this year, I made classroom clocks to display important times of our day. Somehow I managed to lose a letter from "Specials", so I'll have to fix that on my next trip out, but you get the idea. I'm also making a headline that will say "It's time for..." to go above them. You can read about how I made them here. The clocks should help with classroom management and reinforce math skills too. My students are always asking what time "X" is and the digital time written on a poster didn't seem to help them much. 


Reading ideas are up next. Until then, what organizational or time saving tips can you share?

Classroom Makeover: Management

I know I've been showing you sneaks along the way, but our classroom is finally complete so it's time to give you the full tour. You can see our entire room at once in our Classroom Makeover Facebook album. On my blog, I'm going to break the posts apart to show you similar parts of our room, how they're used, and point you to places where I found some of the sources. I'm hoping you'll pick up a few ideas along the way and I'd love to hear any suggestions you have too. I'm starting with classroom management tips.

Our class motto this year will be Dare to dream it, work to achieve it. I tell my students every year that they are very lucky to be in our classroom. I reinforce this throughout the year and encourage them to work hard, respect each other, and live up to our classroom expectations. Third grade is hard work but everyone can do it when we all work together and do our best every day.


This ties in with our classroom expectation to make good choices at all times. I stress that my students are responsible for their own actions. We brainstorm our classroom expectations at the beginning of the year and I post them on this behavior board. I also have my students sign a classroom promise on a big piece of paper and hang it in the hallway outside of our room. Our consequences vary depending on the expectation that wasn't met. Students may miss recess time, have to clean up after others, etc. This is something we decide together on a case-by-case basis. I track student behavior using color-coded sticks. For example, if an assignment isn't turned in, the student must pull a green stick. If it's a respect issue, the student pulls a blue stick. I communicate this behavior to parents through a weekly report.

Fultzopoly is another part of my management system. I wrote about it earlier on my blog. It's my modified version of Homeworkopoly. We play every Friday afternoon, but students are only allowed to roll if they have completed all of their work for the week.You can download your free copy of the board here. There are also free Brain Binders here that go with it.







I'll be back with organizational tips and classroom time savers next. Until then, do you have any management tips to share? Let's talk over on my Facebook page.

Curriculum Mapping

At this point every year, I begin to reflect on my units and think about what next year might look like. Which units worked well? Which units need to be tweaked? Which units need to be tossed entirely? Do my units need to be rearranged? Where should my focus go this summer (other than the beach, haha)? All of those decisions are reflected in my curriculum map, and I wanted to share my decision-making process with you. I wish someone had set everything out this way for me!

As a new teacher, I didn't use a curriculum map. My first year, I followed the other teachers in my grade level and mostly moved through the basal. It was safe, met the standards, and provided me lots of support as a new teacher. During my first year, however, I also attending a series of professional development courses on reading and writing workshops. Our school began trying those ideas, and I started noticing more growth in my students as a result. 


In my third year teaching, I decided to throw out the basal map, most of the workbook pages, and the spelling program too. I've received tons of questions about this and know I know it can be an overwhelming process, so I hope this helps.  

I kept any stories from the basal that I felt were truly quality stories. They were the ones that were well-written, engaging, and most loved by my students the year before. I did the same with the leveled readers that came with the textbook. Lots of them went out the window. This meant I needed more guided reading books. I went into the old textbook adoption materials and pulled out more leveled readers. I picked through them the same way. I also went into our school book room and organized it by genre (yes, myself while I had a student teacher). The books were already sorted by level, so I only had to regroup them by genre and make little shelf labels. In the process, I noted favorite books that I wanted to use in addition to leveled readers. I played nice and left them in the book room (ahem, that's the way book rooms work people you can't use the same books all year so please share them). When I finished that process, I had the bulk of my reading material.

Now what do you do with all of those books? I took the reading material and sorted it by genre. This meant breaking up basal stories and their assigned leveled readers. Then I pieced everything back together into my monthly units. Instead of following the basal themes, I was now following my own curriculum map. It just made more sense to me to teach this way.

My last step was to start pulling and creating materials for minilessons within each unit. This part changes from year to year depending on my class, but I've created binders to organize myself. Now when I'm looking for inferring lesson, I have a whole toolbox of them. I'll share more on the specifics of the binders later, but for now I want to let the idea of creating your own curriculum map set in.

Here are some of my documents so you can see my thought process. This is my first attempt with sheets for reading, writing, and word study. I obviously didn't only teach the strategies and skills for one month, but the months listed were the ones where I knew I needed to hit those skills heavily. I was still using the basal map more than I wanted to and some classes needed different skills at different times. I was glad I had all of the materials organized into binders, but I needed to be less rigid with my map. I tossed out that part of my map and tried again.  

This is my current version. It's actually copied from my lesson plan book so you can see the specific stories I taught for whole-class reading as well as my colored guided reading groups. It also lists my writing, science, and social studies units. It makes long-term planning so much easier! I'll be back to share my binders just as soon as I can get pictures together for you. Until then, I encourage you to create something like this for yourself if you don't already have it.

Blog Design, Anyone?

I have a confession to make... I've been bitten by the design bug. It's been just another way to get out my creative bursts, especially now that school is out for the summer and our classroom is finished. I don't claim to be a professional, but it is something I've dabbled with before. My high school how-to speech topic was website design with html. I remember my speech teacher saying she had no idea how to grade me on it because she knew nothing about it. :) 

More recently I've designed (and redesigned, ha!) this blog, my personal blog, and a friend's blog too. I'm currently working on my classroom website and a few extra blog designs too, like this one:

That sample blog is available for $20. It comes with everything you see (header, background, button) plus a favicon. I can add on social media buttons, a signature, a Facebook cover image, etc. for $3 each. I can do the same design is pastel colors too.


If you're thinking about a new blog design, shoot me an email. I'd love to work on something just for you. And in case you missed it...

My blog was nominated as a finalist for Really Good Stuff's classroom blog contest in the "Best New Blog" category. I'm nominated with some pretty fabulous bloggers, but if you enjoy reading my blog I'd love a vote. You should check out the other categories while you're there too. They're awesome. Really!

Monday Made It: Classroom Curtains

I'm completely surprised to tell you this, but my blog was nominated as a finalist for Really Good Stuff's classroom blog contest in the "Best New Blog" category. (Side note to whoever nominated me: Wow, thanks!) I guess I feel sort of humble, just plugging away over here sharing my ideas with you. I'm nominated with some pretty fabulous bloggers, but if you enjoy reading my blog I'd love a vote. You should check out the other categories while you're there too. Amazing!

Okay, blushing aside... I'm linking up with Tara over at 4th Grade Frolics again for Monday Made It where we can link up to share some of the crafty things we've made for our classrooms. Today I'm sharing our new classroom curtains with you. I hang them on our door's window as well as the actual exterior windows too. They are surprisingly easy, promise!

I stuck it on our front door to show it hanging.

The size of your curtains will depend on the size of your windows. For our door, I cut my fabric 20x13". Just remember that you'll want to cut your fabric slightly wider than needed to make up for the gathers you'll add to your curtains. How tightly you gather the curtains will depend on how much extra fabric you'll need to add. Our finished size ends up being 9.5" across the top.

When it's time to sew, I hem my curtains all the way around by double turning over the bottom and left/right edges. I like to do a skinnier hem so I turn the edge over about a quarter of an inch two times, iron it smooth, and then sew it down. I do the sides first.

Next, I do the top and bottom edges. Because I'm going to gather the top, I turn the top over one time instead of two. When using fabric with a pattern like these dots, I try to turn my edges over along the pattern so it will look uniform on the front. The top of my curtains are facing you, so you can see how it's turned one time.

After sewing the top and bottom, the curtains are now hemmed all the way around. They look like placements at this point. ;)

Now it's time to gather. This intimidated me at first, but it's actually really easy. I upgraded to a gathering foot so my sewing machine automatically gathers the curtains for me now, but before that I had to do it myself. I like to use a zigzag stitch for that. There's a really good tutorial here that shows you how. If you're using a gathering foot, I like to sew at a tension of 8 and stitch length of 4.5. The bottom curtain in this picture is right off the machine. The top curtain has been ironed and attached to a magnet already.

Now you're ready to hang up your curtains. Our window frames are all magnetic so I don't bother with curtain rods. I add an adhesive magnetic strip to the top of our curtains and pop them right on easily. I've also used hot glue to attach magnets before in a pinch. Either way works.

I think the curtains make our room so much cozier and help tie in our color scheme too. 

Now that's enough about curtains. Click on over to see the other Monday Made It posts and be sure to check back here for my next one. I'm excited to see yours too!

Book Giveaway with Common Core Graphic Organizers

Last week I posted a link to sign up for Laura Candler's webinar using graphic organizers to create reading mini-lessons on my Facebook page. I'm excited to follow that up with a review of her new book Laura Candler’s Graphic Organizers for Reading: Teaching Tools Aligned with the Common Core and give away a digital copy to one of my readers too. Whoo-hoo!

First, I want to start by saying that Candler "gets it" and this book isn't about having your students do worksheets. I've seen a definite swing against worksheets in the classroom where teachers cringe at the thought of using a copied page. However, these graphic organizers are much more than worksheets; they're tools that can really improve your reading workshop. Unlike many other books of graphic organizers, Candler also walks you through the lesson planning process step-by-step to help you get the most out of your mini-lessons. I love how she's broken down the Common Core Standards by grade level (grades 2-6) and suggested graphic organizers to use in teaching each one.

Let's move on to the organizers (and foldables!) themselves. They're broken down into two sections: multipurpose organizers and informational text/literature organizers. For the multipurpose organizers, Candler describes seven organizers and then gives suggestions for how to introduce each one to your class. There are also short sample lessons with completed organizers to use as  examples or clarify your own understanding. Many of these have suggested resources (children's books, websites, etc.) too. 

The final section has 23 more organizers for informational text or literature. Five are included for nonfiction and ten apply to literature. My favorites are the eight focused on reading strategies because they can be used for both informational text and literature. I especially like one on making step-by-step predictions. There are great ideas here for poetry too. That's pretty rare!

If you're thinking you already have all the organizers you need, I'd encourage you to think again. I was pleased to find new ideas for organizers I've already used in our classroom so there's definitely something here for new teachers and veterans alike. There were also many organizers that I haven't used before. Adding the new Common Core Standards is icing on the cake. 

Now for the giveaway. Yay! I especially love the digital copy because it makes printing/copying really easy. As a bonus, you can click on the links throughout the book to jump right to the related pages. You know I love that! To win your digital copy of the book, enter with Rafflecopter. The giveaway closes Saturday night so you have a week to spread the word and increase your chances. If you aren't lucky enough to win, you can buy the print version and get a digital copy free. How awesome is that?
a Rafflecopter giveaway I'm really eager to use this book in our classroom next year and am sure I'll learn even more from the webinar so don't forget to sign up.
 

Also, my blog was nominated as a finalist for Really Good Stuff's classroom blog contest in the "Best New Blog" category. I'm nominated with some pretty fabulous bloggers, but if you enjoy reading my blog I'd love a vote. It starts at midnight Sunday, so vote away starting Monday morning. Thanks so much!

Adorable Classroom Calendars

Thank you so much for letting me get my thoughts out about our principal leaving. As promised, I'm back with an educational idea that you can use in your classrooms. I use these cute calendars for so many purposes during the year and I just finished updating them for the new school year last night. Sure I could use blank printable calendars, but where's the fun in that? =) I make them in two versions, one with blank squares and one with black and white icons. 

The blank squares have more room for writing. I use them for unit planning, recording parent contacts, and even give them to my students for keeping track of writing workshop deadlines, book reports, etc. They look great on monthly bulletin boards and newsletters too.

The icon squares don't have much room to write, but I use those for reading logs. Students can color a picture every night they read for at least 30 minutes at home (or are read to). I've also used these in individual behavior plans too and have students color the picture if they met their daily goal.







I've uploaded the templates to my TpT store, but I'm giving them away to my first three teacher friends to leave a comment saying how you'd use the calendars in your classroom. Be sure to leave your email address so I can send you the files!