Items filtered by date: May 2012

Getting Your Books In Order And Keeping Them That Way!

Help your students easily sort books and get them back into their appropriate tubs by putting an easy-to-understand label on them.

Decide how you want to divide your books up, get tubs that are all the same size so that the shelves look neat and organized, make sure they are large enough to hold the various sizes of books, and deep enough to grow with you as your collections expand.

Pick categories that make sense and are easy for your students to understand.  Assign a color to them.  Buy color sticker dots at an office supply store and you're in business to get organized.

Print off a set of my labels and color the balloon to match your color-coding system. i.e. All math books have a yellow dot sticker on them. The Math tub has a yellow dot sticker and a yellow balloon.

There are a variety of tub labels to choose from, including a blank set to program with your own categories.

I’ve made labels for all of the months too, incase you keep those in tubs.

Because I have such a huge collection of books, I keep those at home in boxes that are the same size that I buy and label with the month.

I put the seasonal books that I read to my students next to my rocking chair on a wooden display rack.  These are rather expensive and include pop-up books, so I don’t let my students read these.

They have a large plastic tub at the head of the classroom that I dump anywhere from 20-50 seasonal books for the month in, for DARE time, as well as an option for Tummy Tubby Time, where they can use a beanbag.

Scholastic points, and going to a zillion garage sales and picking up books for dimes and quarters has helped me to grow quite a huge collection.

I just found this “personal reading space” idea on Pinterest from Mrs. Goerend's 5th grade class, and thought it was an awesome idea! How easy to tip a chair over, plop a pillow down and read in comfort! "Way cool!"

Click on the link to view/download the Book Tub Tags

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"Do what you love!" -Henry David Thoreau

30 Days Hath September...

Summer is a great time to start collecting new things to spruce up your room, tweaking things like your calendar board and adding a few new items to make it fresh, and designing some games.

All that can get a bit expensive, so it’s nice when you can get freebies on the Internet.

I’ve been busy all week designing lots of anchor charts, posters and calendar items.

You only have so much room for huge posters, so I think mini-anchor charts the size of a sheet of copy paper are wonderfully effective in reminding students of a variety of things.

Smaller versions can be made into a booklet for them as well or used as flashcards or made into games.

I’ve done just that with Phillip Martin’s calendar clip art.

Print off a set to freshen up your calendar, laminate a set and put on a split ring to use as flashcards, put a mini set up as a “What’s Missing?” activity.

Each day remove a month and have students guess which month was “stolen”.

Laminate extra sets and make Memory Match Concentration games.  Be sure and put the matching pair on a buff or off white shade so that matching is a bit easier.

Play “I Have; Who Has?” after 12 students choose a card, to help learn the order of the months, and then repeat the game so that everyone gets a turn.

Run off enough copies to make a “Speed” card game.  Students choose a partner.  They each mix up their deck of cards. Partners say in unison, “Ready-Set-Go!” and then proceed to put the months in order.

The 1^st one done is the winner.  You could also have students alphabetize their cards before they put them in sequential order to make their Itty Bitty booklet to take home and share with their families.

Click on the link to view/download Months of the year cards.

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“Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard and then succeed on purpose” –G.K. Nielson