Simple Insights: Student Material Organization & Five for Friday

Hello world! I have been pretty absorbed in my own little world consisting of my classroom and my family. This year is a big change for me in school since I changed grades and math programs.

I'm going to start off with how I have organized my slightly small classroom.

First of all, I already rearranged my desks from my classroom tour. I was excited about Kagan Structures and they suggest using pods or clusters. It drove me insane! I don't think any of our upper grades ended up keeping them. We are a very structured school and a lot of us tend to like the rows of some kind. My desks are now in 4 horizontal rows with 2 outside rows facing in. I have 30 desks so each row has 5 desks. At the end of row is a 3 drawer tower.

The top drawer has the team supplies.

It includes highlights, red correcting tools, markers (2 sets), colored pencils (2 sets), glue and a hand held sharpener for colored pencils.

There is also a scissors basket because I have the 7" blades and they are too tall to be upright.

This is also the drawer I use for my social studies class. You can see some green folders under the tub. It currently is holding the Native American packet from Rockin' Resources. These folders will change colors every 3 weeks depending on which homeroom class I have for social studies.

The second drawer is for math.

They have their "entry folders" and their journals.

When students walk in, it the the #1s job (the student sitting next to the tower) to get out everyone's folder. The students then work on their Daily Math while I walk around and check in homework.

You see the example says Math Minute. I am not currently do the Math Minute due to time.

They also have their time math fluency in their folder. After fluency, I have each row stack their folders into two piles, those that finished and those that did not.

At the end of the day, I quick swap out those that did no finish and put their folders back in their tower. After I check those that are finished, I put in what they need and back in the tower.

The bottom drawer is for reading.

We do a lot of work in our white binders or our notebooks, both kept in their drawer.

In the white binder they have:

bell work- spelling words and DLR

fluency passage for the week

writing for their workshop time- Paragraph a Week by Teaching in Room 6

lined paper for workshop tasks

a copy of the week's story for note taking

I received my Alaska postcards that I created thru Heritage Makers to send out!

I've already gotten a postcard from PA and CT!

My kiddos were excited! :)

and

My math kids are ready to have me back in the classroom. For the last 3 afternoons, I have been able to spend the time filming some math videos. My hope is to be able to somewhat flip my math class. They will be watching the videos in class but independently on their iPads. It is definitely a chore to make the video, but I keep reminding myself that I can use these for the next 5 years since we are on a 5 year program adoption plan and this is our first year with it.

Here is what my instructional coach and I jimmy rigged to use as an iPad holder.

One thing about technology is wait time…here's what I did while waiting for one of my videos to upload to YouTube.

Check out my first three videos off my school website {here}. I have them unlisted so you have to have the link to view them. They are definitely rough but I'm learning!