Ahh...It's October!

Wow! Here we are in October and I am just getting to this blog for the first time this school year! We have become completely overwhelmed with CCSS Core Knowledge Listening & Learning and will begin the math modules next month. This new curriculum has really cut into our ability to be creative with our students learning styles, but I'm not here to complain. We have done some really neat things this year and I hope to be sharing more regularly. 

First, based on my evaluation last year I needed to create a way for my youngest students to evaluate themselves. Since they really can only consider their effort I created these 1/2 sheet evaluations for them to complete on random activities of my choosing. With practice, this will hopefully help students to better meet my expectations and complete work that makes them proud. 

As a multi-age classroom, every couple years we end up with a large split in our classroom. This year we have 4 second graders, 1 first grader and 4 kindergarten students. This makes creating effective independent centers difficult. So we created a set of 5 centers for the kindergarten students and word work stations for the 1st & 2nd graders. We use their first day of school pictures as a management system so we know who has finished which centers. The small pocket charts are from the dollar store and I just used picture frame stands to hold them (also from the dollar store). 

 This is the beginning of our Alphabet Museum. I found this idea on pinterest and put my own twist on it for my classroom. We collect objects through the week that begin with the letter of the week and save them in shoe boxes. We also use our bodies to create the letters and take pictures to go in the box. This is a large bulletin board outside my classroom and it will be filling up as we move through the alphabet.