Changes to the room. . .

The countdown has begun.

The last three days have been absolutely insane, as we have been sitting in meetings from 7:30 - 4:00 both days.  In other words, I have spent every possible second before and after school trying to get my room put back together before we get kids on Monday.  Chaos. Organization Madness.  Monday with children.  No wonder I haven't been sleeping well (not to mention I've just HAD to stay up and watch the Olympics!).

There are a few things I am changing this year, and am pretty damn excited to see how it works.

Change #1 - An Organization Center.  After reading a post from Teaching in Room 6, I was inspired to add this area to my room.  One thing I noticed yesterday was that my kids, even after thousands of reminders, seemed to get temporary amnesia when it came to finding things or putting things away.  My thought was that if I had all supplies in one place and labeled, we will drastically reduce the number of "Where is . . . ?" questions.  This is my hope anyway, we'll see how well it actually works.

Change #2 - Group bins for independent reading books.  I know that a lot of younger grades keep their independent reading books in bags on their tables, and this eliminates the getting up and wandering around in search of your book.  I figured if 8 year-olds can do it, so can we.  Instead of bags, I created a bin for each group to house both class' independent books.  I paired them up with supply boxes for each group and gave them their own home on top of the bookshelves.  I would prefer that there were bins of organized books up there, but I think this is a relatively adequate use of this space as well. 

Change #3 - Library organization.  Last year each classroom received 500 books for an independent reading library from the network.  These books have been separated from my own personal books since last May, knowing that I was going to reorganize things this fall.  SO, I labeled each of my books with my own personal label, and color coded them (with sticky "dots" on the spine) according to genre.  Then, I mixed them all together!  I now have over 1000 book library in my classroom and it looks awesome (if I do say so myself).  They will no longer be able to complain about not finding a book to read!

I'll be posting more pictures as this next week progresses and my room continues to add a little more personality on the walls!  Only two more days until the kids come. Still so much to do . . .

School supply shopping!

I have decided that a large percentage of the reason most of us became teachers is due to our obsession with school supplies.  For me, today was one of the few days that I let the animal out of the cage and just went shopping.  I sat down this morning and decided that if I only have one week left of summer vacation, and will be spending most of that time up north, I had better make the most of today and find the best deals.  So, I made a spreadsheet.  Yes friends, I made a spreadsheet.  I looked up the sales at Target, Office Max and Staples and compared all three with the things I needed to purchase.  (Just a quick side note, I have not found ANYTHING useful at Office Max in the past few years.  How Staples has a 15% of School Supplies card that cost me $7.00 and I can use it every time I go in from now until the middle of September! are they still open?)  Then, I went shopping.

As usual, I had to be careful at Target because I can easily walk out of there with $200 worth of stuff(as I'm sure most of us could), but I had a list, and I stuck to it.  The purchases included:

• $.99 for 6 glue sticks

• $.99 for packages of big markers

• $.99 for packages of 8 bic mechanical pencils (I sell them in class to those 8th graders that have forgotten their writing utensils.  Proceeds go to class parties.)
• $.99 for 12-pack of colored pencils
• $.49 for personal size pencil sharpeners

Now, I realize that if I waited I would be able to find better deals, however, I start back to school in 9 more days (Aaaahhhhh!  Where did my summer go???), and would like to get some of this taken care of now.

Then on to Staples where I found the greatest discovery yet!  Staples has a 15% of school supplies card that cost me $7.00 AND I can use it every time I go in from now until the middle of September!  Just my purchases today covered the price of the card.  Genius.  Simply Genius.  Somebody's finally thinking up there.  I didn't get as much of the little stuff at Staples, but they did have 5-packs of highlighters for $.50 (limit 4).  I may go back tomorrow and get four more packs.  I did however get some larger things that I am going to use to reorganize my room.

This morning I spent some time reading through Teaching in Room 6 and really liked some of her ideas for organizing.  Specifically having an Organization Center that has everything the kids need, all in one place.  I've noticed that when I try to designate different areas of the room for different things, they forget what goes where.  I'm going to try putting everything in one spot this year and see how things go.

Happy school supply shopping friends!