TIP ONE
TIP TWO
I am kind of very much obsessed with organization. Our entire house is labeled. It drives my husband nuts, but he knows that it makes me happy so he is very sweet and lets me label everything in the pantry, bathrooms, etc. {However, he did draw the line on labeling the garage and all of his tools.} I found organizing my classroom so much fun and it was great because it was always evolving and improving (especially once Pinterest went crazy).
At the beginning of the year, I give each student a number. I usually assign them in alphabetical order. It never stays completely in alphabetical order throughout the year due to kids moving and the school receiving new students, but in the main, the students are in alphabetical order. Once I have their number assigned, I put that number EVERYWHERE. It helps organize the students and all of their supplies. Here some more examples of how I use these numbers in addition to the binders above. I will do a more in depth blog post at a later time about this, but I wanted to quickly share these with you now.
You can download these numbers for FREE {here}.
TIP THREE
I always find that the first ten minutes of the morning are a little hectic. You have kids coming in at staggering times, parents asking you questions, students asking you questions, teachers asking you questions, attendance, lunch choices, announcements, and let’s be honest, any last minute prep for the day. I found my mornings so much easier when my students came into the classroom and got right to work. Trust me, this is not something that just happened. It took a lot of teaching and reteaching, but they learned it and those first ten minutes of the day make the rest of my morning golden.
I tried several different things for students to do for morning work. I tried free journal time, free choice reading, AR reading, sit on the carpet and wait quietly (HA!), and none of these worked quite like doing this morning work product I created. You can find this product {here}. It did take a little bit of time to teach the kids how to complete the pages, but once they got it, they could complete it independently while I dealt with the craziness of student arrivals.
This product contains ALL Dolch Sight Words, in groups of five. Every single week you will have five words and six activities to complete. These activities are as follows: rainbow words, word scramble, word shapes, read, trace, write, ABC order, and write a sentence. Each morning the students complete an activity and one day they do two activities. I turn these six pages into a little booklet, front and back and two to a page to save on paper. Once students complete their morning work, then they can work in their jot journal or read a book quietly at their desk.
Leave a Reply