20 Day Blogging Challenge...Day 2

Today's blog assignment on the 20 Day Blogging challenge is to "share an organizational tip from your classroom."

Over Christmas Break I reworked my reading notebook that I use to keep track of my student's reading data, and I'm super excited about it.  To start off, I found some super fun fluorescent paper at Walgreens.  I save it for special occasions and my reading notebook seemed like a good one.  Then I thought about what I wanted to have tracked for the year.  For me, it was students' scores on their MAP tests, their AR points, and the genre's that they've read.  After writing most of their information out by hand, I decided that next year I would use a typed version (which I have shown below).  Also on my chart is an area for the students to set goals for themselves for their MAP tests and AR points.  One of the things I do during my reading conferences with the students is go over their goals.

At the beginning of my binder I have a calendar that I use to keep myself on track with my reading conferences.  I have a tab for each student, where I keep their tracking form & my conferencing forms.  I've found this binder to be incredibly helpful keeping me on track, and keeping my information organized.

20 Day Blogging Challenge...Day 1

During my snow day yesterday I was checking out Twitter & I saw a link going around about a 20 day blogging challenge.  As someone who has sort of fallen off the blogging wagon, I was looking for something to kick my butt into gear, and I think I might have found it.  While I doubt I'll be able to blog everyday, if I could get all 20 in by the end of February, I think I'll be doing pretty good.

The first day of the challenge is: Tell about a favorite book to share or teach. Provide one example of an extension or cross curricular lesson.

This is a fun 1st topic for me because I LOVE reading.  When I taught 3rd grade, my absolute favorite read aloud was Because of Winn Dixie. I found it so easy to get into character.

I've now taught 5th grade for 4 years, and probably my favorite read aloud, up until this year, is Bud, Not Buddy.  Again, it's super easy for me to get into character, and the fact that my school is in Grand Rapids makes it really interesting to students.  

This year I have 2 new favorite read alouds...my first I haven't actually read to my kids yet (it's coming at the end of the year when we study mysteries).  That book is Capture the Flag.  I enjoyed it so much that I am sure my students will too.  The book I'm actually going to share a lesson from is the book I started my year with, Wonder.  Wonder is an amazingly enjoyable book that the students can all relate to.  In the book their teacher has monthly "precepts", which we talked about while we were reading, and the students really got into them.  They are now starting to pick up on morals/lessons of different books that we read.  I always start my year with a classroom vision, and this year was no different.  What I thought was really interesting was that after we read Wonder, my students wanted to revisit the vision & at the end they decided that we need to add "to be kinder than necessary" and That. Was. Awesome.