So much to do ...

I LOVE reading and seeing all the photos of the classrooms for this upcoming year!!  I just went by and saw my new classroom, let's just say there is A LOT of stuff in there I need to go through and organize before I even bring in my stuff!!!

On the bright side I have tons of storage and my room is HUGE!!!!  I am going in next week to start cleaning and organizing and hopefully start decorating soon :)  Animal print Safari theme coming soon!!

Do you Sqworl?

I'm sure many of you have already seen or heard about this cool website called Sqworl!  I finally checked out what all the hype was about and made a few groups for my kiddos to easily access websites during Daily 5 and other times throughout the day.  Feel free to browse the groups I've created!

Listen To Reading

Language Arts

Addition & Subtraction

Money Games

Some of the websites are for primary grades since I was teaching 2nd up until now ... I need to find some Websites for 4th grade!

STAR Binders...

I have seen many posts about the different binders used as communication between school and home.  I used them last year for the first time and they were a HUGE hit.  I did have to invest my own money so I was a little concerned about students loosing them or ruining them since the year before I felt I was replacing homework folder every six week if not more!!  I did not use a 3 ring notebook, but instead found the 3-prong poly folders at staples for 49 cents which is much cheaper than most places.  These held up ALL year long and not one student lost or ruined it!!  The parents loved them and so did I, helped me to keep things going home and coming back from home more organized.  


So last year I called them S.T.A.R Binders (Students Taking Awesome Responsibility).  This year I am going with a animal print theme and might change it up ... here is a website that I found to be helpful for finding different Binder Acronyms.

Binder Acronyms

As soon as I find a new name, I will be sure to post pictures of the new Folders and the components!!

To all my D5 people??

Ok so this will be my first time implementing D5 and The Cafe ... I am super excited about it, but I have some questions for those of you who have done it before and might have some suggestions for me ...

A little background first -- I will be departmentalized teaching reading/social studies ... so I will see 2 different classes each day.  Soooooo here are my questions??

** For my Cafe do I  just share the board for both classes?  I'm just thinking for when I introduce a skill for the 1st time and add it to the board ... I guess for the afternoon class I could take the skill down and re-introduce it or just wait to put it on the board??

** Book Bins -- I have a decent size classroom library but not huge by any means, how many books at minimum should the kids keep in their bins, I'm worried I wont have enough for 2 classes to have filled at the same time.

Thanks for your help, it's hard to visualize how this will work being I have not done it with one class and I'll be doing it for 2!!