Class Organization

Woo Hoo! What a day! The kids are crazy! I can definitely tell that it is May.

My class was wonderful this morning (for about an hour) and then they went to their Special Area class. I don't know why, but it was crazy after that. Luckily, our testing today was first thing this morning. I think my mistake was in having them work in groups on comprehension activities. Right now, they are getting on each other's nerves and/or they are such good friends that they are acting up together.

Sooooo, tomorrow they will have lots of independent work to do. They had been doing well at that lately.

Anyway, at the end of each year, I start thinking of how to better organize my classroom for the following year and what worked well and I want to be sure to keep.

Here is a picture of how I helped my kids keep track of their AR tests. I think I downloaded it from Teachers pay Teachers last fall. (I changed the word "points" to "books" just so it was simpler.

This has been a good visual for the kids. Our First Grade goal has been 3 points for the past 2 9-weeks. (which would be 6 tests if they got 100%). Unfortunately, I just found out that since the AR program is going to be web-based next year, the cost is going to increase A LOT and my school can't afford to spend the money on it. My kids really enjoy taking the quizzes on the computer and it makes them feel so grown up. I hope to find a website that has quizzes for the kids based on books they read- hopefully for free:) If anyone knows of anything, I would appreciate the info.

Math Material Organization

Here are some more pictures of my Math materials area.

These are the shelves my husband built. I have 5-6 baskets of the most frequently used manipulatives since I have 5 tables the children sit at. This makes it very easy to pass out materials and I don't have to get them ready ahead of time. The empty shelf holds the baskets of pattern blocks that we were using when I took these pictures. After trying many ways of organizing the items, I have found that this works best for me. I do have a few other materials put away that we don't use as frequently such as Base 10 blocks.
We start using math materials the very first day of school and go over the rules and procedures for getting them out, using them and putting them away. The children are very good at taking care of the materials. They love using them and this set-up has helped me avoid many headaches concerning the mess that materials can make.

Math Organization

Today I am home sick with strep throat. I thought I would show how I organize my Math games. I loooove teaching Math. (First Grade Math anyway). Here is a picture of the top of the wonderful math shelves that my husband made for me a couple of years ago. It is 8 feet long!

Anyway, I have been trying to adapt the Daily 5 reading to math. So, above the shelves is a display listing 5 areas of math activities. Under those are the names of some of our activities for each section. On the top shelf I have 5 file crates. They are the skinny ones you can find when all the school supplies come to the stores in the summer. The areas we use are: Partner Games, Working with Numbers, Fluency, Math Writing and Math by Myself.
In the crates I keep the activities and games for each section that the children choose from. I don't put a game or activity in the crate until the children have learned how to play it and we have practiced it a couple of times.
I will post a picture of the math materials another day.