This month Hodge Podge!

I'm learning that I'm normally good for 1 post a month!  I still try to do more!  I feel like I work almost all awake hours and hardly take time to share with all of you what I am doing.  :(  January is right around the corner- perhaps I will try to make the goal of twice a month to blog!  lol hopefully I set a low enough goal!

Here are a few things that I have done new this month:
First up is my guided reading area:

This is the wall behind my reading table and is visible to the students.  A few years ago I had a full CAFE board.  I LOVED it but my district has teachers use Guided Reading so I haven't used it in 2 years.  I decided to make a simple adaptation.  Students have their post it note on their "goal" strategy.  We refer to it often and it actually is more of a reminder to myself to use the wall- not just have it up their to be cute.  :)  I bought these from Lakeshore and just jazzed them up with left over zebra border.

 
I also was getting sick of either A) handing out materials too many times during a lesson or B) expecting 6-7 year old students to keep their reading area clean and organized.  So I bought these green organizers 3 for a $1 at the Dollar Store. 

This is what is inside each organizer:
 

Here is how nice it looks from far away right after I completed a reading group.  The students totally did this- it was NOT staged!  :) 

Up next is a routine chart:

A little boy in my class cannot seem to get those routines down!  So I created a notebook for him to use!  It is working well so far!  His response to getting it was, "Wow!  This is cool!"  lol... first grade students are so easy to please!



Up next is one of the cute charts that I made thanks to Kim Adsit!

These are laminated and students are allowed to put sticky notes on them as one of the choices for read to someone (share with someone) time.




Also rounding out the next 2 weeks are some fun filled times!
-Next week is our assessment week so I'll be breaking it up with some fun with the Candy Corn Bandit!  If you haven't purchased this yet- DO IT!  It is so much fun!

-The week after is our 50th day of school!  I use a lot of materials from Cara Carroll's unit but I found a few FREE items as well. 

• http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/50th-Day-of-School-Activities-FREEBIE-351008
• This one is awesome!  I converted the PDF to Smart Notebook so I can just read it aloud from the projected screen. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/50th-Day-of-School-Book-and-Venn-Diagram-Worksheet-168962

-The week after are our parent/ teacher conferences!  Here is a link to some free conference forms:

• http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/FREE-Conference-Forms-361693

I hope that I will blog again BEFORE the end of October but I thought that I'd better write a HUGE post now just in case that I don't find the time.  Do I know myself or what? 

Have a wonderful week! 

To those Central Ohio teachers- Happy COTA day on Friday!  :)

P.S.  I JUST remembered that I totally forgot in my madness of writing math lesson plans from scratch and making all of the smart board files... that I FORGOT to send out free stuff from my last post.  I am REALLY sorry!  I am going to do that RIGHT now!