Ginger Snaps: Linky

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Monday Motivation {Daily Schedules}

Hey friends! I am back today sharing about my daily schedule! In truth, I haven't had a schedule that I have been truly happy with in some time. We don't really have much control over when we do certain things (recess, activity, lunch) and this year, we were required to give up an additional 30 minutes to do RTI four days a week. Our Friday schedules are also different do to PLC time. I will not be including that information here, but here is what the layout of our day looks like.

When I was setting up my room a couple of years ago, I found these ADORABLE daily schedule cards from Amy Groesbeck! You can grab yourself a set HERE!

This schedule ended up changing as the year went on. Here is the schedule that I ended up sticking with for the year.

When students come in, they have a this message on the board.

We are a Title I school and offer free breakfast every day. We didn't always use morning work, but when we did, we used this, from Kiki's Classroom. You can purchase the yearlong set HERE!

Sometimes, students would just get on the computers and do Reflex Math or work on Cursive Workbooks. Eating breakfast in the classroom made it difficult to complete the morning math fully. We would try to finish it later on in the day.

After morning routine, we jump right into Reading Workshop. I had the resource students this year and we did inclusion, so the resource teacher pushed in each day. In our district, we use the Fountas and Pinnell balanced literacy model and we also use Literacy By Design. We also have the freedom to supplement our mini lessons with whatever resources we choose. I only use the LBD leveled readers during my Guided Reading time. Each week, our mini lesson focused on a specific standard. During our Guided Reading group time, students do Daily 5. You can read more about that HERE. As students are doing Daily 5, they have the week to respond to the skill we are focusing on in their reading notebooks.

After reading, we go straight into writing. Because of our tight schedule this year, I felt like writing was always where we had the least amount of time. Guided Reading would always run over. I really am hoping our schedule allows for more writing time this year.

I used Ashleigh Swinford's writing units this year. They follow the writing workshop model and they are wonderful! You can purchase those in her shop HERE! The one thing that I feel like I really didn't do a great job with was teaching grammar. Ashleigh's units do have a small grammar focus, but they are not lessons. This coming year, my team will be using Rooted in Reading and I am excited that they will have a grammar focus each week.

After writing, we had a 45 minute activity block. These are our specials, related arts, whatever you call them at your school!

We are required to have PE twice a week in order to abide by state law, so library isn't an official activity block. We have to carve out 20 minutes once a week to go. I would prefer that it be a full activity time, but hey....I'm not the one running things!

When we return from activity, we have one of our favorite times of the day - Read Aloud!

These are just a few of the novels we read this past school year. We also read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and The Swamp Fox. I would love some more 3rd grade novel suggestions for next year!

After read aloud, we have math.

About a month into the school year, I discovered Hope King and Amy Lemon's Magic of Math for third grade and it totally transformed our math time! Students have never been more engaged in math in my classroom. I will say that it required lots of copies and preparation, but now I have a ton of it ready for reuse for next year.

If you are interested in purchasing the third grade Magic of Math, just click on the image below!

You will certainly not regret it! These movable fraction number lines took me some time to assemble, but now I have them for years to come!

After math, we had recess, lunch, and a quick restroom break.

When we returned, we had about a 45 minute content block. We had to alternate between Science and Social Studies because we didn't have time in our schedule to do both in one day. For the sake of grading, we usually alternated after completing a concept, instead of a whole unit.

We tried our best to make this time as hands on as possible. We did have a couple of Science Kits to use and we pretty much planned our own curriculum for Social Studies as the text books don't make for much excitement.

The last 30 minutes of the day was reserved for our intervention time. While I was meeting with these four students, the rest of the students would be on computers or devices working on Reflex Math or Imagine Learning.

This coming year, I plan on using these progress monitoring cards from Mrs. D's corner! You can snag her freebie HERE!

After RTI, we pack up and dismiss for the day!

I hope you have enjoyed this insight into my daily schedule!

Monday Motivation {Word Walls}

I am linking up with my friend Jen Ross over at Teacher By the Beach again this week to talk about Word Walls.

Word Walls can be so many different things and can be very useful. I hear teachers say all the time that kids don't even look at them, so what's the point? I might have actually said that myself a time or two! The thing is, you have to teach students how to USE the word wall and what it's purpose is and it can be a VERY powerful and useful for tool for students.

What I don't recommend doing if you implement a traditional word wall like this...is placing it somewhere up high where you can't easily get to it each week to add your words. I promise your words won't get added if you do this...I sure didn't add mine like I was supposed to when the word wall was out of reach.

I'm ashamed to say that this was one of my first word walls and it's pretty pitiful looking. I have NO idea what possessed me to put the letters on gingerbread men other than the fact that my name is Ginger and I thought it was somehow cute...

It was suggested to me to have strips of paper and add velcro dots so that the words could be easily added each week and reused from year to year. This plan works well if you have your words already planned out before the year begins like our district did for each grade level.

As the years passed, my word walls became more functional and more appealing.

This particular year, I had room for two word walls and I loved it! One was for the traditional word wall words and the other was for content words.

The first word wall, I created with laminated letters and 2 inch wide ribbon. As the week's passed, I would add our weekly no excuse word wall words to that word wall. It was also at a reasonable spot on the wall that I didn't have to climb like a monkey to get to it and add my words!

My other word wall is my ALL TIME favorite! It is a writable word wall for content words. I wish that I had taken a picture of it later in the year when it had words that had been added to it, but it was marvelous! Each content word was written in a different color which made it easier for students to distinguish between and use. Math words ended up taking up the most space and were what students used the most. It definitely served its purpose!

I haven't ended up having a room that enabled me to do the writable word wall again, but I'm hoping to figure out a way to make that happen this year. It was so SO easy!!

I have also done content related word walls.

Excuse the poor quality of the following two pictures.

I would place the words on the board next to the anchor chart or poster. The board's words changed with each unit.

I don't have a picture of this, but I have also done a personal word wall folder for each student. When we would add a word to the wall or when students had a word they wanted to add, they could do so to their own individual folders. This was very effective and it was like they had their own mini dictionaries.

I would love to hear how you use word walls in your classrooms! You should definitely go link up with Jen if you have some fabulous ideas of your own to share!

Classroom Progress and Teacher Bag Linky

I was able to go into my clasroom today! I was soooooo glad to get out of the house and do something useful.

Being that my interview is tomorrow, I tried to limit myself to things that could be used in whichever classroom I end up in, even though I decided to rearrange the room anyway. I figure whoever is there if I leave will appreciate it. =)

Here is what my room looked like when I walked in this morning! YIKES!

The teacher who was in here before me didn't take anything off the walls....ugh.

But here is some more of the madness!

Those computers are so heinous and ancient and so is that table....I tried to see our computer guy had any other options, but it's not looking great! He did say that I will get more Dell Tablets this year to hopefully compensate for those worthless computers! haha

One big project I wanted to tackle was to reorganize my library books into the new bins I purchased at Target! They were only 79 cents! I'm getting rid of all of my neon baskets so that my bold color classroom theme is more prevalent.

I also plan on covering that awful looking chair...

I got a lot of them organized, but there are SOOOO many left to do!

I have to go purchase more of those bins, but I think I'll wait until after my interview tomorrow and see how that goes first.

And my friend Jen Ross over at Teacher By the Beach is hosting a fun little linky to show off your teacher bag!

I am a Thirty One girl. I love all of the compartments they offer. I love the prints. And I love that they are monogrammed. It makes my heart happy!

Here are a couple of the teacher bags I used last year!

I'm also loving this bag from Elizabethsplace on Etsy!

Go link up your cute teacher bag with Jen! Cause I wanna see it. =)

More updates to come on my classroom and my interview tomorrow! =)

Teacher Week 2013 {Now Teach: Organizing for Instruction}

It's day 3 of Teacher Week and today is all about organizing our classrooms!

I am far from the final product so many of these pictures are just small projects I've been working {many unfinished} but I had to participate anyway! I will be updating everyone with the final product next week, but in the meantime, here are some tips for organizing your classrooms!

{That ugly green color caddy bugs me so I have NEON ones coming soon! I also plan on printing pretty labels for my plastic drawers.}

I took all of the leveled reader lesson plans and organized them by Fountas and Pinnell level to keep in a binder for easy access! It has been a HUGE time saver!

I have new plans for my meet the teacher handbook for this year...

Oh my-lanta, I'm in love with this! =) Just click the image above for the TPT link!

Now head over to Blog Hoppin' to link up with your organizational ideas so I can snag em'! ;)

Teacher Week 2013 {Classroom Digs}

It's time to check out my classroom abode!

It's nowhere near being complete but I am going to post some photos of what I have comning along so far! I will be posting my final reveal next week!

In the meantime, here are some projects and things I have going on. Many of these things may look familiar as I am sticking with last years NEON theme! =)

These two items are new additions to my classroom theme this year and I love them!!

I used my same bulletin board borders as last year but I added some Cameo cut out letters for each subject area. I am in love with the way they turned out!