Instagram Update

These came in the mail on Friday and I can't wait to wear them this week! #tieks #teachersofinstagram #teachersfollowteachers #kindergartenteacher #tieksbygavrieli #newtieks

Organizing the Wonders Reading Series

My school just got a brand new reading series this school year. The Wonders reading series is new in itself since it only came out in 2014. Since it's so new there is very little out there about it from fellow teacher bloggers. The biggest problem I had at the beginning was where to store it all! It came in about 12 boxes (no joke) and contains vocab cards, interactive read aloud cards, sight word cards, picture cards etc. basically a whole lot of cards. There's 10 units in the kindergarten series and finding a place to store all that was causing me stress. I didn't want to lose any pieces of this brand new reading series but I also wanted to be able to find what I needed. I finally think I managed to figure something out that works for me! I took some pictures to show you how I store all these materials. 

I got this file box at staples. Each unit has its own hanging file and within those are folders for each week of the unit. These folders hold my vocab cards, sight word cards, and retell cards. This is so much easier than just piles of unorganized cards!

The top shelf is the guided reading books. Wonders organizes them into three categories which are color coded: green for beyond level, blue for on level, and orange for approaching level. There is also a purple level for ELLs which we don't have. I organized them in order of unit within each basket since each book is part of a weekly unit theme. Now they are easy to find and put away.

Here is a zoomed out view of that shelf. The second shelf holds the unit teacher manuals as well as the alphabetized picture cards, the letter sound cards and the small versions of the unit big books. 

The hardest part to figure out storage for was these large interactive read aloud cards. They didn't fit in the file box so I had to get creative. I ended up sorting them by unit and binder clipping them together. I store them in a crate also on the brown shelves. I even went crazy and used my label maker to label the binder clips so I can quickly find the unit I need. 

I hope this post helps someone else who is dealing with the struggle of storing all the Wonders reading materials! 

Target's Dollar Spot is filled with the cutest Valentine's Day things right now so I obviously had to take advantage. I should buy stock in Target...

New Years Resolutions

As 2015 came to a close and 2016 began I have been thinking a lot about New Years Resolutions and what I want to accomplish this year. I've started a list in my notes on my phone of things I'd like to incorporate into my classroom starting when we get back from break. 

But aside from those things there are a few things I'm determined to focus on in my classroom for 2016. 

1) Consistancy: I seem to come up with these new ideas or find inspiration online just to try them for a week or two and then forget about them. I'm going to work to maintain these ideas for a longer period of time before I decide to do away with them. 

2) Organization: I'm usually an organized

person but there's a few pieces to my room I'd like to find a way to organize and keep that way. First is my Wonders reading series. We just started this series in September and although it's working well there are SO MANY PIECES. I have yet to find a way to organize them all so I can find things easily and put them back quickly. I've seen some great ideas online so I'm excited to tackle this. Also, keeping my desk from becoming a dumping ground for everything is a goal of mine. 

3) Finally, social emotional support for all my students needs to happen. I was under the assumption that because most of them went to pre-k that it was something I didn't need to focus as much on. Wrong. We have a huge issue in my room of solving problems by ourselves. It just doesn't happen. That's going to be a huge focus of mine in 2016. 

Maybe by writing down all these resolutions I'll actually accomplish some of them. Here's to hoping! For now though I'm going to continue enjoying my vacation until I'm back to school on Wednesday. 

Wishful thinking...

Door Decorating Contest

One of the events our school has during the week before break is a door decorating contest! There are very few rules although I wanted my students to do as much of the work as possible. Each cluster (grade groups) has a winner. This is our winning door!!

We won the primary cluster (kindergarten-grade 2). The prize was a free tag (no uniform) day in January! The kids were so excited! I put up the paper and did the cutting of all the materials but the painting was all done by the kids. They did an awesome job!