Weekend Warriors-Pinspirational June Day 2

This is day 2 of Pinspirational June.

Yesterday I brought you ideas I found on Pinterest you can use in your home. If you missed it you can read that post {HERE}. Today I want to share some ideas for your classroom. Click on any of the pictures to be taken to where I found the pin.

The first one I did in my classroom this past year. An awning for my CAFE board out of wrapping paper. It doesn't have to be used for CAFE only. The possibilities are endless for this awesome idea. It took a while to get it all straight but thank goodness it stayed up all year!

The next idea that I want to try this next year are the adorable girl scout seats. 

are so many ideas for these....take them outside when you hold lessons outdoors, let kids use them to read around the room, time out seats, etc. All you do is cut out 2 circles of vinyl and put a piece of quilting between them and sew the edges closed with a ribbon. Easy Peasy!

There is not a link for this next one but it's pretty self explanatory. 

I was totally going to do this in my classroom until I got moved to a room with not ONE window. It's like being in a jail cell. Any who all you do it put up a curtain rod with command hooks and use tissue paper, ribbon, or fabric to tie on to add a pop of color to your room.

This last one I want to share I also used last year in my room and all of the other teachers loved it.

It looked like it might be difficult and take some time but it really didn't. Just pick your favorite color tissue paper and grab a stapler and get busy. You'll be finished in no time!

I hope you found something here today you can take back and use in your own classroom. Thanks for reading!

Lucky To Be In First	A Burst of First	Bright Concepts 4 Teachers	Primarily Speaking	Second Grade Perks
Sailing Into Second	Hippo Hooray for Second Grade	The Tutu Teacher	First Grade Smiles	A Sunny Day In First Grade

InLinkz.com

Weekend Warriors-Pinspirational June Day 1

We're back...The Weekend Warriors and this month's theme is "Pinspirational June." We will be bringing you some of our favorite pins we have discovered for anything from the home to yes, of course, the classroom. I recently moved and so I'm devoting day one's post to awesome pins I found for my new house. I literally decorated my house based on pins I found. Someone actually came in one day and said "Wow this is like walking through Pintrest. 

There is no way I can share everything I did in my new house so I picked a few of my favs. The first is my DIY crate coffee table with my cutie patootie dog, Tucker posing on the couch. This was so easy to make. You just take four crates (I got mine at Michaels) and stain them then screw them together. I found the feet at Lowes and just screwed them on. Last, get a vase to stick in the middle. 

The next Pinterest inspired idea were these baby gates. There is one at the top too. My hubby made these for me because you had to measure and cut wood which I'm not great at, but it was super easy fr him to make and looks so much better than the regular baby gates. 

We finally got around to painting my daughter's bedroom and playroom which was Pinterest inspired. We did her playroom in a coral/teal theme.

I saw this on Pinterest and LOVED it. A chalkboard for her wall. We just bought that chalkboard paint at Lowes and rolled it on then framed it with chair rail molding that I painted to match the coral. As you can see family wrote at the top and my lovely 2-1/2 year old's work is at the bottom. Ha!!

 Here is her bedroom. I wanted something to hang over her bed but not really a mobile since she's not technically a baby any more {insert sad face} I found this idea and bought these tissue poms on Etsy. Loved the way it turned out!

I had actually made this a long time ago which inspired the color choice of her bedroom {another Pinterest idea}. It was really pinned from an Etsy seller for a pretty high price so I whipped one up myself with the colors I liked. 

If you follow me on Facebook you can get these four sunshine sheets under the fan freebie tab! The frames were like $2 or $3 at Wal-Mart.

And last but not least, my favorite part of the house. This is right in the entrance. I got the red bookcase and lamp at Target and just added the rest. The frames just have fabric in them and I watched a you tube video on how to make a burlap wreath then hung it on a curtain rod.  I was thrilled with the way this came together.

Wanna check out more. Just click any picture below. Thanks for looking!

Lucky To Be In First	A Burst of First	Bright Concepts 4 Teachers	Primarily Speaking	Second Grade Perks
Sailing Into Second	Hippo Hooray for Second Grade	The Tutu Teacher	First Grade Smiles	A Sunny Day In First Grade

InLinkz.com

Organization Of Literacy Block

This summer we have been bringing you "The Diggin' Into Series."

This week we are talking about the organization of our literacy block.

I am going to combine here and tell you things I did last year along with things I plan to change next year.

I use Daily 5 but last year just felt like my kiddos started to play more than have meaningful time at their choices. I decided to give my daily schedule a little makeover. At the end of the year I attempted to have mainly small group lessons for reading and WAY less whole group. I combined Daily 5 with reading workshop as I'm sure most of you do that use Daily 5. 

From 7:45-7:55 I plan to do my first reading mini lesson for the day. I just created an entire packet of reading mini lessons with tons of organizers to help keep my students responsible for their learning. {Keep reading to see those}. After this I am going to meet with one small group while the rest of the class is engaged in practicing the skill from our mini lesson or they will be in one of the Daily 5 choices. 

Now here is where I was stuck on making sure they were doing something meaningful. I usually just stuck a list of spelling words in the Word Work area and they have different choices such as stamps, dry erase boards, etc. There was nothing really for them to turn in and they started to just goof off and were not practicing their skills at all. I have decided to start putting my language centers here as well. I'll use a lot of stuff I bought on TPT as well as some of my own products. My products include a recording sheet that I will require them to turn in. I know Daily 5 is about choice so I plan to require that they complete the recording sheet during the week at Word Work and once it is complete they can choose what they want to do. 

My students will start to fill out a reader's response page next year which is where my read to self/someone and listen to reading accountability will come in. I found these forms for free {HERE} There is one for fiction and nonfiction. They will not need to complete one of these every day just as needed so if they are not completing a response they are participating in share time at the end of literacy block. I laminated the response options front to back and they keep a copy in their Daily 5 book bag.

From 8:15-8:35 I will be meeting with my 2nd small group. I have decided to try doing my main phonics/language lessons during small groups on some days (not all). This way I can really differentiate for my students. I still have a time set aside in my schedule for language and phonics for whole group too since we won't have time to cover everything in small group.

Next, from 8:35-8:50 I will allow students to share things they learned about themselves as readers that day or things they discovered while reading using their responses on their graphic  organizers from my reading strategy mini lesson packet. 

               

Make sure you check out the linky at Where the Magic Happens for more ideas!