Classroom Set Up 2019-2020

A new school year is upon us!

One of my favorite things to do each year is set up my classroom. I love seeing the change from boring old grey, sad space to bright, colorful learning environment!

Here are my 'before' pictures:

One of the challenges with this classroom is that is pretty small for 24 students. So I have to get creative with how I organize the desks and other furniture. I do not believe that students learn best in rows, so my class is always set up in table groups. But with this space, I've split some of my table groups into what we call workstations. These are 2-desk table groups scattered around the edges of the room.

I use modified flexible seating in my class. 

This means that I don't assign seats, and students are free to move around to where they learn best. Some kids know that they do better with less distractions at one of the workstations. I also have a bunch of light stools that can be moved from place to place as we need them. I picked these up from Walmart and they were only 80 pesos (about 4 dollars) a piece.

Word of Warning: I have had dads come in and try to sit on these stools and totally fall off! I don't think they are really built for adults...

Another one of my beliefs that features prominently in my classroom space, is that we should be learning in a cheerfull, pleasant environment.

Our classroom should be somewhere we want to be!

I try to make the room bright and include touches to make it feel more home-y and less institutionalized. In order to make the room brighter, I hit up The Dollar Tree when I'm visiting the states in the summer, and when I'm back in Mexico, I go to Waldo's.

This year, I hit up the party section and got a whole bunch of those tissue paper balls and flowers. I also picked up some bright fabric storage boxes and some plastic buckets for table supplies.

These are cheap and useful ways to bring some color (and storage) into the room and you would not believe the difference it makes!

Another of my favorite ways to make the room feel good, is by bringing in some life! I really CAN NOT handle a class pet, so plants it is!

This year I got one pothos or spider plant for each table group. I figured those were pretty hardy plants that could survive occasional bouts of forgetting to water them... The kids love them and occasionally I find one of them gently stroking the leaves as they work.

I also created a little "zen area" for myself on the corver of my desk. I included a tiny succulent, a little cactus lamp I made last year, and the oil diffuser. My classroom is always warm and I found that it can get quite stinky after recess. A few drops of peppermint in the diffuser and the room becomes pleasant-to-the-sniff once again!

Now, let me give you a quick tour of the different areas of the room! Starting with our front door...

Every year, I print out a life size picture of me using the cringily-named website Rasterbator.net. This free website is amazing! You can upload any image and decide how big you want it to be, the website then splits the image over multiple pages and you can print it out of your normal printer and then glue it together to make a poster sized image! I change up my speeck bubble message every few weeks. 

Then we move on to...

And there we are! A beautiful, welcoming, bright classroom!

How to get your students writing...And loving it!

 

I've been at an international school in Mexico for the past two years now and one thing I noticed at the beginning of this school year was that my students weren't getting as much practice free writing as they needed to. Sure, they were all getting writing instruction during our mini lesson and they were completeing the required writing assignments, but many of them weren't regularly choosing Work on Writing during Daily 5 and I could see some of their basic writing skills slipping because of lack of use.

I really wanted them engaged and excited by writing!

To do this, I looked into what I had already set up for Work on Writing and then thought about what changes I could make.

My Work on Writing table has gone through a few different iterations through the years, but it always has a bunch of interesting materials, like special monthly pencils, fact cards, prompts, writing templates, and list papers. Most of this stuff was suggested by this amazing Second Story Window blog post. Check it out here! Second Story Window Monthly Writing

I also always make space for my Write It Out! writing template pages. These are fun pages that encourage even reluctant writers to think of ideas and get started! They are especially good for students who become overwhelmed looking at a page of blank lines.

Throughout the years, all my second and third graders have loved these templates! 

Writing Templates

- Write It Out! Blank Poster Writing Templates

- Write It Out! Blank Letter Writing Templates

- Write It Out Blank Recipe Writing Templates

- Write It Out Blank Newspaper Writing Templates

- Write It Out Blank Comic Strip Writing Templates

But, like I said earlier, all this wasn't enough!

About halfway through the year, I made some changes. I created a set of journal prompts and and put one, or two, up each week in the Work on Writing center. It become one of our weekly nonegotiables that the prompt had to be answered in paragraph form, worked on during Daily 5, and be ready to be checked by Friday.

To my surprise, my students LOVED it and we never had a single complaint! 

The 80 total prompt cards are a mix of recount, reflection, description, appreciation, and persuasive writing. They are varied enough that the students don't get bored with the questions. Click here or the picture to see this product in my TPT store!

Another change I made, was that each of these weekly prompts had to be rainbow edited. I know there are many different rainbow editing versions out there, but I created one for my classroom that fits with what I am looking for in my students' writing. Click here or the picture to get my version for free!

I find that using the Rainbow Editing helps my little friends who make careless mistakes to catch themselves, and it provides a clear way for me to diagnose those students who aren't remebering concepts taught earlier in the year. 

**cough, cough, capitalizing proper nouns, cough, cough**

Another strategy I added is the our You Try, I Check chart. This is basically just a T-chart where students write a word they are struggling to spell on thier side of the chart, and any time I have a free second during the day, I wander over to check it. If their word is spelled correctly, I just put a check mark next to it. If the word is spelled incorrectly, I circle it and rewrite it on my side of the chart. Any time the chart become full, usually after a week or so, we just put up another sheet of chart paper ontop of the old one.

It's quite interesting to see the progression of words that they want assistance spelling through the year!

As a part of the rainbow editing process, students have to circle words they may have spelled wrong. I find that this makes them more aware of their spelling and helps them to focus on using the spelling patterns that we learn. The You Try, I Check chart gives them another avenue to correct their spelling and outside of the dictionary and keeps them from breaking into my reading conferences. 

As a side note, my students took offense to the teacher centric language of the chart title and we've been trying to think of a new catchy name for it. Please feel free to let know if you guys can come up with anything better! 

So, in summation, here are all the different cogs and wheels that I keep spinning during independant writing to keep my kids interested and motivated to practice their writing skills during Daily 5. 

Enjoy!