Friday, February 22, 2013

A Busy Week

It's Friday already?  This week went by so fast.  It helped that it was only four days and I was busy trying some new things in my classroom.


The first big change was my math rotations.  I talked about them earlier this week and I'm still happy with them.  The biggest difference in my new rotations was not having a whole class lesson.  I now teach the daily lesson in small groups and it is working out so much better.  I can slow the lesson down for some kids and speed it up for others.  Why didn't I ever think of this before?  The three rotations are: meet with teacher, paper/pencil and games/manipulatives.  I was inspired by some posts on another blog: www.3rdgradethoughts.com.


3rd Grade Thoughts


Another change was the space in some of my cabinets.  I posted last week that I was participating in The Clutter-Free Classroom Project.  This week the assignment was to streamline our teacher resources and create an organized place to store them.


I am so fortunate to have a bunch of cabinets in my room, but sometimes that can be a bad thing.  I end up holding on to books and papers because I have the room to store them.  This week I went through all my books and got rid of about half.


My philosophy was: If I haven't used it in the last two years, get rid of it.


I laughed because I put them all in the teacher's lounge at 8:00 A.M. and by lunchtime they were almost all gone.  I wonder how many of the teachers that took books will end up putting their new treasures in a closet and forgetting about them just like me?


Here are some before and after shots of the cabinets.  There are not big changes, but I can tell there is a lot more space available for new books!

The Cabinets Before
The Cabinets Before
 
The Cabinets After
The Cabinets After

The cabinets and math rotations were different organizational changes, but both made me feel like a better teacher.  If you are interested in joining The Clutter-Free Challenge, click below and start organizing!


Clutter-Free Classroom


Hope you have a great weekend! 


cropped-blog-pic2.png

1 comment: