Organizing ...

Hi all!

I like to think of myself as being organized, but the truth is that I am not organized when it comes to paperwork.  I am a logical, sequential thinker, but I tend to put papers into piles.  When one pile gets high, I start another.  Sad, very sad .. and definitely not organized.

But there are some areas of my classroom that are very organized:

1)  My student drawers ... 

I do not have cubbies, so I use these drawers from Costco.  The drawers are numbered from 1-30.  (In the past I only had 20 students, but now I have gone up to 26.)  My students are numbered from 1 to 26.  After I correct their work, it is placed in the correct drawer.  Then homework folders are easy to stuff once a week with their finished and corrected work.  (I am so blessed to have an amazing volunteer aide from the middle school next door; she spends about four hours a week helping me with this type of clerical work.  I love her dearly and will be sad at the end of the semester when I lose her!!!)

2)  Our classroom library ...

I have about 2,000 books in the classroom library.  (The longer you teach, the more books you accumulate!!!  In other words, I have been teaching a long time.)  With that many books, I needed to create a system that would allow students to both find and put away books.  I sorted books by topics and then put each topic into a different tub (example: weather).  I have about 50 tubs.  This photo shows just one section of tubs.  Each tub was given a number and each book in that tub labeled with that number.  My previous post has more information on this system.  I also have a "book hospital" for books that need repair.  My students place books there when they notice a rip (even if the rip is invisible to the naked eye).


Okay, now on to my goals for organizing ... 

I will create an organization system for my paperwork.  This will consist of:
1)  A tub for papers I want to copy.
2)  A tub for papers that need to be corrected.
3)  A tub for papers that need to be sorted.  NO MORE PILES!

I also want to create a better system for my stations that are supervised by parent volunteers.  I plan to have five tubs (one per station) that I can label and prep ahead of time.  No more scrambling around in the hours before dawn (not really, but you know what I mean).

Whew!  If I keep these goals it will be a HUGE positive change for me!!  Wish me luck!

For more tips on organizing, head on over to Second Grade Shenanigans.  Here is the link!

Love to all,

Camille

Silence for Sandy Hook

Silence to Honor and Remember

A parent came up to me after school and threw her arms around me.  With tears in her eyes, she said, "I just felt like hugging you today."  Then she told me the news.

My heart is broken for all of the children, teachers and parents of Sandy Hook.  We will hold our little ones a little closer to our hearts as we remember you.
Love to all,
Camille

In Honor of 12-12-12

Tomorrow is 12-12-12!  I got to thinking about it and realized that there won't be another 12-12-12 for one hundred years.  That means this is the only one any of us get in our lifetime.  That is pretty monumental!  So .. I came up with 12-12-12 challenge for my firsties.  I found other ideas online, but I needed to simplify things for my kiddos.  We will be using this form tomorrow.  Here is the link in case you are interested:

12-12-12 Challenge

Love to all,
Camille

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving my dear bloggy friends!  No special graphics, no brilliant ideas, just a wish for you.  We all have so much to be thankful for ... my wish for you is that you are able to spend time savoring the special moments on this holiday!
Love to all,
Camille

Make a Turkey ... One Feather at a Time

I am swamped!  Assessments, report cards, special projects, just plain old survival in this crazy world and so what do I do?  BLOG!!!

Okay, this is a simple, fun family project from 2011.  (You could also do this project in class.)

Here is the finished bulletin board:

Here is a close-up:

(The hands were from a previous bulletin board that I loved and just couldn't bear to take completely down so for the rest of the year, those hands were a backdrop for everything that went up on this board.)

Family Feather Project:

I sent home a white feather cut from cardstock.  I asked each family to work together to design a feather to add to our very bare turkey.  The directions said they could use any materials they wanted to decorate the feather.  (One child used his sight word cards from our HM reading series to decorate the feather. Made.me.laugh.so.hard.  It is the feather with the red rectangles.)  We talked about how we needed all of our feathers to create the turkey.  Just one feather would not be enough.


Note: A thousand apologies for not knowing where I got the adorable turkey from.  It was a TPT purchase and students were supposed to measure the turkey, but I made an extra copy for this bulletin board.  But after searching through all of my purchases, I cannot find the original.  (Note to self: If you must purchase so many items from TPT, please keep your purchases organized!)  If you are the creator of this cute, cute turkey, just let me know and I will tell the world how wonderful you are!

Love to all,
Camille

Guess Who?

I haven't posted in a month so I think it is super ironic that this post is entitled "Guess Who?"  But the title has nothing to do with my lack of blogging.  (Although I am hoping you all remember me!)

Here is the true meaning of the title:

My students are working on their questioning skills so I pulled out one of my favorite activities to help with this:

Guess Who?

I bought this game at a garage sale for 50 cents a few years ago.  I hadn't played the game before, but I figured it would be worth at least 50 cents in my classroom.  Well, it has been worth quite a bit more than that!!  The price of the game is $18 at Target.  I am not sure I would pay that much, but many of you may have this game tucked away in a closet at home.

We play this game during our station rotation.  Here are the rules we use:

Guess Who?  A Game of Logic

1) Adult secretly picks a yellow card.

2) Children take turns asking yes/no questions to determine who the mystery person is.  Example: Is it a woman?  Does she have red hair?)

3) The adult answers each question and the child asking the question gets to “slide” down all of the people who cannot be the mystery person.  (example:  If “Is it a woman?” gets a no answer, then you must slide down all of the cards that have the picture of a woman.)

4) Continue asking and answering questions in turn.  When only one card is left, that must be the mystery person!  Compare the final card to the selected yellow card and see if they match.  Of course, they do!

5)  Prep the cards for a new round.  Once the children get the hang of it, they can pick the mystery person and answer the yes/no questions.

Challenge the children to ask questions that will eliminate as many people as possible.  Example: “Does the person have a hat?” eliminates more people than “Does the person have a green hat with a feather?”

After playing this game, the children have a much better understanding of what it means to ask a question.  Hurrah!

Love to all,

Camille