2. Everything Has a Purpose!

Before doing anything in my classroom I take a minute to think – why am I doing this and what can be gained from it? Clear examples of this are the bulletin boards in my classroom. Bulletin boards should be meaningful and used for two purposes - to support student learning and to display student work. The majority of the displays in our classroom are used to enhance student learning. For example, our word wall and math tools board offer support to students during lessons and activities. 

Word Wall: When students enter our classroom, the word wall is empty, aside from the headings and strips of Velcro. As we learn each others name and begin to read new words as introduced through our reading program, we add them to the wall to reference during reading and writing lessons. As I stated, I have placed a strip of Velcro under each letter. Each word is laminated and backed with a piece of Velcro, which makes for adding words to the wall a quick and easy task!

Math Tools

 This is posted in our math center. Students reference the tools on this board throughout the day during all math related activities. Numbers and shapes are posted year round. As new skills are introduced, images, descriptions, and/or examples are added into the existing sleeves. 

Student Work: In addition to being resources, our walls are covered in student work. Not only does this help students feel proud of their accomplishments, but it also allows parents and family members the opportunity to see what their child is doing in school.

To the left are examples of student work that can be seen on the walls of our classroom at some point during the school year. First is an activity we do at the beginning of the year to help learn the letters in our names. After reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Each student has the opportunity to build their name on the Smartboard, which they will then transfer to a sentence strip. We finish the project by illustrating our own coconut tree and adding it to the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom bulletin board.

 Second is our Look At Us bulletin board. Before coming to kindergarten, students draw a self-portrait of themselves and bring it to school with them on the first day to add to our board. At the end of each month, students make another self-portrait to add to our board. At the end of the year, I assemble the portraits into a book and students give them to their parents as a gift. Parents LOVE seeing how much their child has grown throughout the year!

1. Organization

A little bit of organization goes a long way in creating a successful and smooth running classroom. Not only does it keep me sane, but it also fosters independence in my students. In my first year of teaching I often felt like a chicken with its head cut off. In preparation for the next day’s lessons, I would run around each afternoon grabbing paper from my closet by the door, markers from the writing center by the window, and getting distracted by a million other things along the way. You know you need to make a change when you are too winded from work to go to the gym!

 How I Stay Organized:

• Location, Location, Location! Everything in my classroom has a place.  After my first year of running here and there I realized I needed to give each area of my room a theme. For example, everything related to math is found in or around the math center, all reading materials are located behind and next to our reading table.  It seems obvious, but it has turned my life around.

• Always Plan Ahead! It took a great deal of trial and error to establish my planning system. Plan books that can be purchased at teacher stores just didn’t work for me. Teachers are much like students in the sense that we each have our own learning style and therefore, there is not just one way in which we should all plan and document our day’s lessons. In addition to my weekly plans, I also (for my own sanity) fill out a grid to organize my reading block including Weekly Objectives (letter, word, skill, book, vocabulary), Literacy Centers(what are the activities, who is going where), and Reading Groups (who am I meeting with each day and when). 

• Save the Good, Toss the Bad! After my first year of teaching I switched classrooms with another teacher. As I was packing up my room, I quickly realized I had become a hoarder. Anything and everything that colleagues passed along to me I held onto as though it were gold. This did not make the move very enjoyable. The light bulb went off in my head and I made the decision to cleanse! My filing cabinet is organized by month. each hanging file contains the folders for the lessons and activities that fall within the month. The front of the hanging file lists these lessons, which makes it easier to find them, as well as put them away. At the start of each month, I pull the corresponding file and store it in a basket on my desk for easy access. When I am finished with an individual folder, before returning it to the monthly file, I will sort through the contents and consider which lessons were successful and worth holding on to, which need to be adapted, and which should just be tossed. By going through this process, I am not only reflecting on my own teaching, but also preventing any future hoarding situations! The system I currently have in place has worked well over the past three years and I don’t see myself changing it in the near future. Unless of course I find another brilliant idea from stalking other teacher blogs! :) 

How My Students Stay Organized:

Everything should have a place and should be labeled with words and/or pictures. If this is done, students are able to find things on their own, as well as clean up after themselves, without needing to depend on me!

• Baskets – Everything has a home. During the first few weeks of school, we spend a great deal of time walking around the classroom and noticing what we have, as well as where it all goes. It is important for students to know where to find/put things before we begin using them.
• Labels – Each basket has a label, identifying what should be inside. Again, seems obvious, but not everyone does this – and they wonder why students are unorganized or always interrupting them! Some baskets I have labeled ahead of time, while others are labeled with words and pictures during shared writing time.
• Guided Discovery – Allowing students the opportunity to explore and discovery the tools in our classroom, as well as their purpose and/or function is extremely important. I have found that if I just tell what something is, they are less interested in utilizing it to help their learning, than if they have examined and discussed its purpose with my guidance.