Teaching Quotes

Hey Friends! We recently took a road trip so I made a bunch of quotes and memes!! You could say I'm alittle addicted!! Feel free to use these images, you can credit @teachtreasure on Instagram or @The Teacher's Treasure Chest!!

Library Organization

Classroom Library Organization

Hey friends! 

I wanted to share a few tips about organizing your classroom library. The classroom library is simply one of the most important components to your classroom. In the primary grades, this is where students can fall in love with reading. I want to have a neat and inviting area so that my students WANT to go to the library. Part of the task of building your students excitement up about reading is providing them with a plethora of books to pick from. 

I have a serious problem. Like, seriously, I'm addicted to books and bookshelves. I've had my husband build four new shelves this year and he will likely add four more over the next year! I am constantly searching and sorting  through garage sales and the Goodwill for new books for the library. Don't even get me started on Scholastic Book Clubs...I seriously need an intervention :) 

(Please note, these pictures were taken in the middle of my labeling process)

I'm very blessed, because my teaching mentor shipped this system to me pretty much 100% complete. I just had to add a few additional labels and I was good to go. She also sent me so many of her own books and I'm forever grateful for her kindness!! I wish she had a blog so I could credit this idea to her, but she doesn't. Sad face! She sent me a binder and the stickers to label my books!

Here is a view from inside the binder...

Each series has a corresponding sticker. One sticker goes on the book, and another sticker goes on the  book basket label. This way, the students can match the stickers together to verify that they are putting the books back in the right place. I know this seems like a lot of work, and it is! However, after using this system, I have had about a 85% decrease in lost, misplaced and damaged books. The students see the system and understand that I take a lot of pride in my literature selection. I purchased the dots: HERE

Labels inside the binder. Like I said, this wasn't my system, so I don't have ALL of the labels yet. You can click here  to grab some of the labels  I do have. I am updating these so the file will continue to grow and updated!!

Each book gets a label inside the cover. This identifies the book as my personal property. Each book series has it's own label. You can edit these to add your name. The labels print on AVERY 5160 templates!

My next step is to label the back of each book with the sticker that corresponds to the series. All students have to do, is check the back of the book to be sure it matches with the sticker found on the book basket label.

I sort my library by book series and theme. I also have a small area in my library that I'm adding leveled books to. I do this because I want my students to have a genuine love for reading and the option to "browse" a book even if they cannot read it. Students should love to read, and having high interest books available will help that.

We also have our separate leveled books so that each student has a collection of books in their independent reading level.

This picture was taken before I added the stickers to the book baskets. I keep the leveled readers close to my guided reading area so the students can browse the boxes after our reading groups. The leveled labels are labeled by Founts and Pinnell Guided Reading levels and are printed on Astrobrights Fireball Fuchsia paper! I used these stickers to label my books. 

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101st Day of School

What a busy week we've had! After Valentine's Day, we started preparing for our 101st Day of School. We wanted to do something different for our first graders this year since they celebrate the 100th day in Kindergarten. We wanted to get the students excited about learning, kinda of re-ignite the fire they once had. We've had a lot of testing lately and thought these ideas would work to get them in the spirit again!! 

We decided to have three different rotations. One teacher did Reading Stations, I did Math Stations, and another teacher had writing.

In the math room, we had three stations: Fast Math Facts, Frisbee Toss, and Estimation Station! In Fast Math Facts, a parent volunteer showed the students a math problem. When the students were ready to solve, they tossed a ping pong ball into the correct bin. 

The Frisbee Toss game was SO EASY! My husband made a stand out of foam board. 

 I went through my math flash cards that I already had and pulled out addition and subtraction problems with the answers of 10, 15 and 20. I set it up in the hallway so the frisbees wouldn't be an issue for the other games :)

My kids LOVED this game! 

Last, we had Estimation Station. This was SO easy to prep and the kids LOVED it. I'm going to use it again next week with different items! 

For reading, we also had three stations. We put the kiddos into groups of three before rotating! 

At the first station, the kids played "Toss A Digraph". The ping pong balls were labeled with ch/th/wh and ph words. They had to read the word and toss into the correct bin. 

Who knew reading could be SO much fun!! *wink, wink*

Next, the kids moved over to "Toss a Sight Word". The same concept, except just sight words on the balls and one bin to toss it into. For some reason, I guess all of the excitement, I didn't get very many pictures of this game :(

Next, the kids moved to the Build a Tower Station. This idea from the fabulous Cara @ The First Grade Parade. We jut modified it a bit because every station had to have a specific SOL or standard tied to it. All I did was add sight words to the towers. We also had students who built sentence towers. The kiddos loved doing this activity. 

You can get all of the signs and game cards for the activities shown by clicking here!!

For writing, my next door neighbor used Deanna Jump's 100th Day writing project.

This was so.much.fun. The kids were so excited about WRITING which is so hard to do with firsts. 

All and all, it was such a great day! Our students were engaged and learning at the same time!! 

Here's a few goofy pictures of some of my team members and I!! Love them!