First Week of School

Honestly, I don't think I have ever been more intimidated by a first week of school than I was this year.  I have been (and still am) so excited about this multiage adventure, but when it came time to start, it was very scary!

The first two days were such a whirlwind that I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked, but regardless, I am very pleased with how they went.  Friday was our third day of school, it was what I considered a real 'first' day.  We had every student there, and we were no longer doing those introductory activities, but where attempting to hit the ground running.  I know that if this multiage thing is going to go smoothly, I have got to train my babies on how reading (and math) rotations work.

The whole concept of moving independently is not an easy one.  It wasn't easy for my third graders, and I KNOW it won't be easy for my littles either.  We began today by introducing and practicing our basic rotations.  We have word work (stamping, writing on white boards, and using the magnet board), writing, and reading.  For those of you familiar with The Daily 5, this is simply a modified version.

  When we begin rotations for real, I won't have all 3 word work stations available at the same time, but wanted them to have an opportunity to practice all three.  Once they ARE completely trained, I will exchange these stations for different word work stations, but since we are still rolling it out, i'm limiting their options.

The stamping station was a big hit.  Right now, students were 'stamping' sight words that we had written on index cards, just for the purpose of practicing.  When we are actually rolling with these rotations, each student will have their own set of words, which will provide immediate differentiation for each child.  

This is a new station for me.  I purchased this giant oil pan (magnet board) from Wal-Mart for only $12!  It is huge.  I actually think it is 4 feet tall.  My kids were allowed to spell their names at this station, but as mentioned above, they will have more specific instructions when we are actually doing rotations.  I plan to use this station more for kindergartners to practice spelling each others names, or to build word families (a very tactile way to see that ending sounds don't change when working with word families)

Read to Self - I have a great leveled library as well as a thematic library.  I think this is my easiest to roll out, but scariest for me, because I want them to be soooooooo trained in how to return my books.  I hate to put that much work into leveling a library only to have all the books go back into the wrong tubs.  I let them look at a limited selection of books today.  Next week, one of our reading rotation minilessons will be on how to select and return books. 

Finally, our writing station.  I want my children to learn how to write and to enjoy writing.  Right now, that means free writing.  Simply the act of putting words on paper.  I had one kindergartner who got upset at this station, and when I got him to talk to me, I learned that it is because he 'can't draw a person'.  Luckily there is a SUPER book I have been reading called "Talking, Drawing, Writing: Lessons for our Youngest Writers" which focuses on helping beginning writers to learn how to draw pictures (one of their biggest hurdles) and then how to write about it.  

This is just a snapshot of our reading rotations, which I'm sure will have to be tweaked, altered, and changed before I am completely happy with them, but for 3 days of school, I think we are off to a pretty good start!!!

A Change is Gonna Come

Well folks, it is time.  The big reveal.  The Change.  New beginnings. I am leaving the third grade world and am going to be starting the new year as a K12 combination class.   A K12 combo is exactly that, a Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade combination class.  The dynamics of this class are going to be perfect to help scaffold for students who need it and will provide individualized learning for those high flyers.

Before I could get started on this new adventure, I had to tackle my classroom library.  I am a self admitted book hoarder.  I love books.  I buy them at Goodwill, I get them from Scholastic, I circle the discard pile in the library like a hungry vulture.  I LOVE books.  In third grade, I had them leveled on the back in a way that made sense to me and my kids.  Unfortunately this way was not appropriate for my upcoming little people.

I took every book in my class and dumped them in a giant pile (gasp).  It was scary, yet surprisingly cathartic!!


This is just a small sampling of my book pile (when I ran out of floor space, we started using desks and tables)  Please ignore all the undecorated/covered walls.  We had just finished state testing. . . blech.

In our district, we use MClass as one of the testing tools to help determine our students' reading levels.  I wanted my library to mirror this.  It was very important to me, however, to make sure that my little people, my kindergartners specifically, weren't limited to those easy, predictable texts.  As good as those are for building reading fluency, they aren't always the most exciting of stories.  

So, I took all of my books and sorted them first into thematic book tubs.  These will be used by every student in my class, regardless of reading level.  If your school does Daily 5, this would be a great option for 'read to self' time.  I want to foster a love of reading, and providing them with options by theme will hopefully be a good way to start that.  

These book tubs are a sturdy plastic.  You can get them here

I leveled all of the other books from A to Z (A-D being Kindergarten level and so on).  Most of my books could be leveled using scholastic.com.  For the ones that weren't there, I googled the title with "guided reading level" and just hoped for the best. 

 These books each have a letter on the inside of the front cover and have a bin to match.  With some training, my students will be able to self select books that are on their appropriate reading level. 

The labels I used for my book bins were just nametags from a local teacher store.  You can get them here  Any label would work, these just matched my chalkboard decorations in my classroom :)