and breath

ahhhhh....yes as the third week of school has started I think I took a breath.  We had our open house last Thursday, so it was a busy first week and second week of school...looking back not sure how I got all my introduction lessons, visit from the new principal, safety patrol induction, and open house project (which have failed to stick to the wall due to the lack of air conditioning in our school, high 80's, and almost 90% humidity last week) all complete! I have to say that I am enjoying my class of 30, they are a great group who actually seem to want to be in school...vast difference from some prior years.  
I have almost made it on schedule two days now, my groups and schedules are set for my independent reading/guided reading/center time, and our support staff is all ready to start as well.  Just have to get Scantron testing out of the way beginning of next week and I think my year will officially be in full swing, which means more frequent posting.  I have a few photos to share of what some of the things I have done/do in my classroom.

This is my 'mathtastic' work board. It will hang creative work we will do in math, as well as, 'A' tests.  Right now it is hanging "Math About Me" an idea and template taken from 'Create Teach Share' blog.  Next to this board I have a 'wordarific' work board which will hang writing pieces or other creative projects that are Language Arts based.

This is my Language Arts bell ringer.  Each student gets a star which I place a magnet strip and their name on the back.  The cards used I bought at our local 'Teaching Touches' store.  They are short paragraphs that deal with different tested anchors Main Idea, Inferencing, Drawing Conclusions, Fact/Opinion...best part is that they are leveled.  I bought mostly 3.5-5.0 to support and encourage all learners in class, the next level is 5.0-6.5 and I thought those might frustrate some students.  The procedure is that students in the morning read the paragraph and place their star in the column of what they think is the correct answer.  Then each day one student gets picked from the board (I pick first and then student from the previous day picks the new star) that student has to talk about why they chose their answer with evidence from the card.  If 90% of the class gets the answer correct we add pebbles to our star jar. I switch the focus of the cards every month, trying to correlate to our curriculum study as best possible.

This is a derived from a pinterest idea :) One of our essential questions for our first unit of study in the Language Arts curriculum is "Why do We Read" after seeing may different forms of this poster I decided to have my students give me ideas of why they read.  Then they chose one of those choses of why they read and illustrated a 3" by 3" card, and this was the end result.  One idea and project that I will continue to do each year, which will change due to that classes interest.

and view of my room clean :) before open house.  Finally, came up with an idea for my 'Got Books' board which the students seemed to get excited for, we are going to graffiti it with the book titles we/they read all year.  I right now am reading "The Pillars of the Earth" which is taking FOREVER to read, but plan on adding my book club books to help model reading at home.