A few weeks ago we spent our last day with our intern (not a student teacher...the placement they do now right before their actual student teaching). As we were having a discussion about Science I noticed she was leaning on one of my bookshelves. I kept thinking..."surely she won't do it...I mean we have only talking about not leaning on them, sitting against them, pushing on them since the beginning of the year, naw I don't need to say anything" then not even a minute later...BAM! The top of the bookshelf collapsed! Thoughts: "Yep that just happened, she just tried to sit on it!" She was pretty embarrassed to say the least. If you have these bookshelves then you know that they aren't made with the best material. I always tell the kids not to lean on them or rest on them because of that. It doesn't take much to break them.
Then not even one hour later one of my students was walking back to her desk when she tripped. She tried not to fall and in doing so she caught herself on one of the bookshelves and....BAM! Down went number two. In her defense the shelf was already a little "wobbly".
So after investing in two new bookshelves I decided it was a good time to rearrange. So this is what I came up with!
I combined two groups across the back of the room. They are very talkative (like most classes) but by having the majority of them face the front I am able to see who is doing the talking. I can also see their work a little better when I am walking around the room.
Another group of six comes off the board and then I have a small group of four sort of floating to the side. They are four of my students with a greater need in the work habits areas, if you get my drift.
So far it seems to be working out okay. I have an idea or two for my group table that seems to keep getting pushed back into the bookbags, but I didn't have time to rearrange much else before the break. I may spend some of my teacher workday tackling that.
We did finally wrap up the state reports! WHEW! It was a huge task, but I am proud of what my kids turned in. You can find a state report packet as well as a president report packet in both my TpT and Teacher's Notebook stores.
I loved how neat this one was
This student had access to the computer at home and printed all his pictures then brought them in.
This one was about Alaska (couldn't include the cover due to his whole name being on there)
but he drew ALL of his pictures, his captions were great!
This last one was on Rhode Island, she also drew all of her pictures and wrote some great captions
Each student had to write a paragraph about the author (themselves), and write it in the third person. She did a great job, very entertaining!
Stay tuned for some interactive note updates, a New Year's bulletin board idea, and some Social Studies ideas (including an amendment booklet).
