Well, change is good... my new classroom at my new school is coming along. I went with teal and black and white polk-a-dots as the accent. I do have one bright pink wall near the entry way just to bring a pop of color into the room. I found a great, inexpensive rug at IKEA and tons of teal bins in the same color at Dollar Tree. I'm excited and getting ready for the new year! I spent a ton of time leveling and sorting books. I leveled until level L and from there organized by topic, favorite authors, and genres. I also went through and pulled a ton of books out of my classroom library to use as mentor texts for writing. This took a TON of time, but I feel so organized and can now go right to my box that has great mentor texts for openings, transitions, or similes for example. I also pulled books for all our social studies and next generation science units. This way those books will be easily accessible when I work on the unit. Since I'll be teaching a 1/2 combo I also organized my guided reading sets so that I could be really strategic in my planning for my groups. I plan to hit content and standards explicitly through the guided reading so every minute has to count so that I can address all common core standards for each grade level. One week until my new little guys come to check it all out...7 days and counting:)
