Laying the foundation from the start

Laying a strong foundation for your classroom culture, whether you're a homeroom teacher, a specialist, or an interventionist, is a significant task.  No matter how long you've been teaching, you definitely map out those first few weeks of school to cover your expectations, procedures, and the ethos.  All your read alouds, morning meetings, and activities revolve around building this important foundation so that the school year can run more smoothly.

1. Simple guidelines with specific acceptable behaviors

For my students in grades 3-5, I begin with the foundational classroom culture statement: I want everyone to grow and succeed.  Which means we need to agree on certain expectations so that all learners have the opportunity to reach their goals.  This leads to the presentation of 4 simple guidelines: 

• Be respectful to the teachers, your classmates, and the school.
• Be responsible for your learning and your decisions.
• Use kind and polite words and actions.
• Make safe choices.

Assessing Elementary Readers Digitally: Thoughts & Questions

It's been awhile, friends.  I hope that this blog post finds you well!  Or at least persevering through the challenges.  Because there are plenty of them.

I could make lots of excuses of why I haven't been writing on this blog.  Eventually I'll write a blog post about some of my personal challenges, taking a deep dive into the importance of healing.  (I would love it if you followed me on Instagram...my *favorite* social media platform.)  Nonetheless, I'm here now, and I've got some deep thoughts about assessing children's reading via purely digital methods.

Back to School: Teaching is a Work of Heart

So, it's back to school season.  And I remember writing a post a few years ago about setting up my classroom, and I was secretly so proud of myself for having matching caddies and baskets for each table color.  I was impressed that I copied another colleague and used clothespins to hang up student work to save myself time when I need to change their work.  I even printed out my own signs.  On white cardstock.  I felt so cool with my classroom set up skills I was practically high-fiving myself creating the blog post.

Fast forward to 2017, and things have changed in the classroom set up department.  With the explosion of Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, teachers are taking this classroom set up thing to a whole new level.  I mean, I think Chip and Joanna Gaines should be inviting some of these talented educators onto their show to help them out with fixing up some houses.  I'm simply amazed and inspired by all you teachers out there who are decorating and color-coordinating champs.  I'm pinning your ideas, drooling over your pictures on Instagram, and following you on Facebook and Teachers Pay Teachers.  I know I am a better teacher because of you.

However...

Teachers in September: Under construction

Must. Stay. Organized.

One of my goals this year is to get organized and stay organized.  But it definitely requires a huge time investment in the beginning of the year.  I'm really committed to making these changes, to improve my teaching and my personal life.  Therefore, I haven't been blogging or developing products much over the past couple of weeks. Because my life looks like this right now:

Book explosion:  I'm re-organizing my library!

The pretzels add some glamour to this shot.

Clean. Organize. Assess. Repeat.

So hopefully in the next couple of weeks I can share some more pictures of my small-space classroom that are actually an improvement.