Prepare for New Student Orientation During Back to School Season

In September, we're prepared to welcome a class of new students.  But midyear, hearing, "You're getting a new student this morning" made me break out in a sweat.  I realized I need to be prepared for new student orientation all year.

Here's how to eliminate the stress that goes along with welcoming a new student to your classroom, even when it's sprung on you at the last minute.

Prepare for New Student Orientation in September.

Keep new students in mind while you are in “Back to School Mode.” Here's how to make a new student feel welcome even when his or her arrival is sprung on you unexpectedly.

Set aside at least 3 extras of whatever materials you make for your students (name tags, journals, and so on).  Put them all in the same place, such as a large manila envelope or Ziplock bag so that you have everything together when a new student arrives.  If you have an extra student desk in your room, put 3 stacks of larger items, such as books, notebooks, and folders right inside.

 

Keep a current supplies list.  If there are items you can't compile in a set space, keep a list on hand.  Update this list at the beginning of the year when you’re in the mindset for creating an organizational system for new student orientation from day one.

Delegate.  At my school, the assistant principal has the key to the textbooks closet.  This is why I’ve separated my “new student checklist” into books/other items.  I give the left half to her so she can get the textbooks and I keep the right half for myself. 

 

Keep extra “beginning of the year folders” for papers you hand out at the beginning of the year.  For example, many schools have student handbooks, emergency contact forms, surveys designed to get to know their students better, and so on.  Have extras on hand for a new student in one location.

Have "ice breaker activities" on hand.  Look through your back to school ice breakers.  Have materials ready to go, be it "find someone who" worksheets, "getting to know you surveys," or Morning Meeting greetings.  Depending on your class, you could pull out an old favorite or try something you didn't have time for in September.

 

Keep a New Student Orientation Checklist.

To get you started with your preparation for new students, you can download a free, editable new student orientation checklist. 

Prepare for Parent's Night.
 

Being in the mindset of welcoming your new students will also help you get into the mindset of welcoming their parents.  Here is my editable Parents’ Night Packet.

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How I Run Literacy Centers with Journeys

A while back I wrote about how I set up my Literacy Centers.  My school has been using Journeys for a few years now, and I'm more familiar with common core this year than I was at the beginning of last year, so I felt ready to really delve in.  You can see how I set up my literacy center rotation topics and schedule here.

Organizing Upper Elementary Literacy Centers

Today I thought I'd share how I organize my materials.  Let's face it; the best instructional activities will not engage students if the organization behind them doesn't work!  And if it's too complicated for us to manage, we're not going to want to use it either.  There was some trial and error when it came to different locations in the room and moving desks, which the kids HATED.  Who knew how nervous they would get about other people sitting at their desk!  

Literacy Center Materials

So I scrapped that first idea and instead created a file folder system.  It worked for my math games, so I shouldn't be surprised that it turned out to be the best solution for my literacy activities.  They know where to access the folders, how to distribute materials, and they can stay at their own desk.  There is only one activity in the course of the week that requires a single group to move to a separate spot in the room, and fortunately I have the space to accommodate that.

I keep the bin with 3 file folders right in the middle of my leveled readers.  My literacy centers rotations are right above this set of bins as well, so everything is within reach.  Other than "read with the teacher," each of the other stations has its own file folder of activities.

Literacy Centers: Topics

Inside each file folder I can "preload" the activities for the week.  The Mentor Sentences page has 3 different activities in one, so it keeps them occupied in the "Editing" station for 3 days, and I load the spelling in on the final day.  The Vocabulary pages look different enough from one day to the next, so the kids don't mix up which one to do first, second and so on.  I clip the "not yet" pages to the folder as a gentle reminder, and their current pages are loose in the folder for them to take.  And finally, the Independent Reading Response folder has 3 separate envelopes.  These are clearly labeled for each Close Read slip they need to do, in order.  The kids know they need to tape the first into their notebook and complete it before they take the second.  This is the most time consuming center, so often they come back to it when they finish a different literacy center early.  

Considering that this is my first year running literacy centers since moving to fourth grade (and since Common Core began) I think they are going pretty well!  I plan to offer my Close Reads in my TPT store this summer, so if you are thinking about trying stations next year, stay tuned!

[Edit:  I've started to post my Mentor Sentences products in my TPT store.  There are a few freebies in the section I've linked to if you want to give them a try!]

Organizing the Classroom Materials Shelf

I made a few minor changes to the Students' Materials Shelf a while back.  Since I decided the theme of my changes this year would be "consistency," I swapped out the few Sterilite shoeboxes to give my Math Manipulatives Area a cohesive look.  So I thought it would be a good idea to get more lime green and aqua containers for this shelf.  I love the little Unitz crates from Staples, so I thought I'd just get more of the same.

The Before Photo

Unfortunately, it appears they have been discontinued.  :(

My next dilemma was what to do with the larger items, like rulers, hole punchers, tape dispensers and staplers.  I've never been sure how to house these, and then I got a great idea:  paper trays.  I could create vertical storage and the kids could take a whole tray with them when it was time to distribute them to groups.

Unfortunately, that was not meant to be either.  They're not tall enough, the rulers fell out of them, and they sagged under the weight.  But other than that...

So I'm still not happy with my materials shelf situation.  If anyone could give me advice in the comments below I'd be grateful! 

On the other hand, I made a few positive changes.

I found some lime green baskets in Target's Dollar Spot.  They're not exactly what I wanted since I can't stack them, but they're a good size for my highlighters, Sharpies and scissors.  I also found some tiny striped boxes at Target that fit inside my wooden box to hold paper clips, staples and erasers.  That's a plus because the paper clips could slide under the dividers in the wooden box; hopefully this will contain them better.  And finally I found some cute pails, also in the Dollar Spot that I'm not sure what to do with; I only found a use for one of them (holding my chart paper markers).  That plus some Frixion pens on sale meant a successful shopping trip that day!

The next improvement I made was to my mini trash.  It fits in with the theme with the help of a bit of Duck Tape.  The mini trash was a real success last year when it came to reducing sticky note wrappers and the like being stuffed any old place on the shelf by kids who were too lazy to walk 15 feet to the barrel, haha.  Seriously, my class this past year was one of my neatest ever and I think organization tricks like this help.  Now it also fits in!

Another good use for the Duck Tape was to create a border on the lip of each shelf.  Like the bookshelf, this shelf is so old and worn it has given the kids and I splinters.  So not only does the border tie in with my color scheme, it will hopefully also prevent some nurse visits!

So this shelf is still a work in progress, unfortunately.  I'll check Pinterest, but if anyone can advise me on the ruler, stapler, hole punch and tape dispenser situation I'd be appreciative.  I'm sure they are not going to stay balanced on top of the paper trays as shown below once the kids arrive! 

Update:  Thank you to Kim from Quintessential Lessons for a great solution to my ruler dilemma! Although a Pringles can is too tall to fit on my shelf, I could lay it flat if rolling wasn't such a problem.  However I had on hand a rectangular prism shaped can (Bentley tea tin) that now fits in well thanks to some Duck Tape!

Still looking for ideas on how to stack the tape dispensers, hole punchers and staplers.  Does anyone have a solution?

Originally posted on All Things Upper Elementary

Use Summertime Efficiently for Next Year's Class

I hope you're having a fun, relaxing summer vacation! Although my vacation has just started, I know some of you are getting ready for next year.  Besides, there are some years I get started on the next year the week after my former kiddos leave!  Often I don't mind giving up some vacation time to devote to school; it's such a nice contrast to be able to pace myself instead of feeling rushed the week before.

After everything was packed up, I started looking over my photos to plan my shopping trips for a few projects.  You can read about my "Summer Projects" that are all about updating several areas of my classroom to improve the look and organization of our daily work.  

I've also started printing, laminating, and one of those tasks that is one of the most time consuming (but somehow gratifying!) each summer, which is personalizing the space for this group of kids.  All the name tags, folders, bulletin board name plates and labels require names.  And I know, fourth graders can write their names on a lot of items like notebooks and folders.  However I happen to enjoy writing them myself.  It's a small way to model my expectations for neat printing, give them a taste of things to come with carefully written cursive letters, and it helps me remember who's in my class more easily, even if I can't match names with faces until the first day. 

So for now, all the printing, laminating, cutting and handwriting names will continue each summer.  I've created a to do list for myself so I can stay on track.  Just because I enjoy a leisurely pace doesn't mean I want to waste time with more than one trip to the laminating machine!  My Back to School to do List is free and editable if you're interested in getting a system in writing that you don't have to have to think about much from one year to the next (other than some updating).  

A final tip I have for you if you're like me, and you like using some of your summer vacation to prepare for a smoother school year:  Make extra EVERYTHING.  In the above picture I have at least 5 blank name tags, 5 blank leaves for my Welcome Back bulletin board, and so on.  There are at least 3 good reasons for this:

1. The laminator inevitably eats something. 
2. The class lists inevitably change.  I know, some teachers feel that names should not go on things until those lists are finalized.  However I feel it's much less stressful to write 1 or 2 names 10 times a few days before school starts than have to write the entire class's names on everything a couple days before. 
3. New students inevitably join our class later in the year, often with very little advance notice.  I keep an envelope titled "New Student Materials" in which I toss all my extras that I make at the same time as everyone else.  This, along with my New Student Orientation List has significantly cut down on the stress of getting that phone call from the office, "You have a new student coming in tomorrow."  Now I can devote my energy into thinking about how to integrate him/her socially and academically instead of having to reprint a leaf for a bulletin board.  My New Student Orientation List is free for a limited time, and of course it's editable.

Do you have any tricks and tips for using summertime efficiently?

This post originally appeared  on All Things Upper Elementary.

Help Students Keep their Desks Neat

Does helping your fourth grader learn organizational skills ever feel like a losing battle?  For years I have felt that way.  I have color coded folders, notebooks, Catch Up folders and a list of "items you may keep in your desk."  I have a dedicated whiteboard that details what paper belongs in which colored folder at any given time. 

And yet when I tell students, "Put this paper in your yellow writing folder," there is always a handful that decide to use the transition time to chit chat and pop the paper in their desk instead of making the effort to take out their yellow writing folder. Which the next day results in, "I can't find my paper; can I get another one (not to mention the implied, "Can I also have another half hour to catch up")?  What's a teacher to do?

In the past I've been able to help those kids who need extra time to clear out a desk they did not organize with the rest of the class; I just stayed in the room with them during recess time.  However with changing duty schedules, I no longer have that luxury.  Therefore I had to develop a system to scaffold this organizational process.  My solution to this problem was to create a mini instructional manual:  "How to Clean Your Desk."

The instruction manual includes step by step directions for how to clean out a desk that needs some work (dump all your stuff all over the floor is not one of those steps) as well as a photograph of what a neat desk looks like.  I double sided this resource when I printed them off so that the result looks like a card (I also edged it all in Washi tape to make it look more attractive and less like a punishment).

I printed 4 of these instruction manuals, (they come 2 per page) and before I go home each afternoon I check a single group of desks.  If a student has any loose papers, I leave one on their desk.  Then when they come in the next morning, they need to clean their desk out.  It might be worth missing Morning Work some days, other days they will need to miss Morning Meeting (which includes a game, so of course they are motivated to get organized more quickly).  The result is every group gets checked once per week, so no one ends up with a "black hole" by the time midterm rolls around.

If you are interested in this resource I'm making it available for free for a limited time!  You can download my How to Clean Your Desk Instruction Manual here.  It's a great little companion to my Organizational Tools Bundle. 

The instruction manual has been a hit in my room this year.  How do you help keep your students on track? 

This was originally posted on All Things Upper Elementary.

Morning Meeting Greeting: What's the News?

At my school we do Morning Meeting. 

Although most teachers were already pros at it by the time our current principal came along, it was new to me!  I felt like a fish out of water because it was such a stark contrast to Lorainne Monroe's "Do Now," teacher-directed, "leave your baggage at the door and do what the teacher says without a word" philosophy of my previous school.  My teaching style tends to fall somewhere in the middle of this wide spectrum!

A Quick Morning Meeting Greeting

By the end of the second year, I felt invested in Morning Meeting.  My principal had modeled how to run a meeting sitting in a circle in our rug area, having a fun greeting, share time, an activity, and making announcements.  I researched lots of activities to do for the "game" portion and greetings, and this year I've done a pretty good job of mixing things up.  Since every group of kids has a different dynamic, my fourth graders this year have different favorite "go to" activities this year from last year, and by far our favorite greeting has been, "What's the News?"

I have a very chatty class this year.  Even my most attentive listeners love the opportunity to talk, talk and talk some more.  So hearing their news is always interesting.  It always sparks great conversation.  And it always means that Morning Meeting runs the risk of lasting a half hour.

I know, I have the option of limiting the number of students who share.  I'm just always afraid of missing really important news.  I'd hate to listen to a kid talk about, "yesterday I got to go to the mall" while that other kid who isn't chosen that day gets no opportunity to voice, "my baby cousin was born," or "my dad was in a car accident."  Besides, everyone needs to be greeted.  And I know, I could have them partner up to greet each other at the same time...but it doesn't work.  They all stop to listen to each other and then feel bad when they run out of time listening to each other.  So once I started this tradition of sharing our news, it was hard to get out of it!

Then I thought about another strength of my class.  They enjoy technology (and as you can guess by the fact that I have several blogs, so do I).  Our classroom blog is for them as opposed to their parents (you can see the benefits of Edmodo vs. Weebly in this post).  I realized not only is technology a huge hook for them this year, but what I really needed was to borrow from a well known website that is geared towards quick updates.  Something that would allow students to all be heard, but only for a moment.  

Hence the birth of our Twitter Board!

I'd seen another teacher create a Twitter bulletin board outside the classroom for the beginning of the year with sentence strips, so I thought about how I could make the board more visible in my classroom.  I inherited a pocket chart when I started teaching at my current school, and it's always been under utilized.  So I laminated some sentence strips to put in the pockets.  Each strip has a student's name on it, that way they can each write only one "Tweet" per day, as soon as they come in in the morning. 

It is a work in progress teaching them how to put their news under the last person's news, and how to start fresh on a new day, covering yesterday's news but not anyone's news for today (there are fewer pockets than kids, so we have to accept there will be "overlap," but so far there hasn't been a day when more than 10 kids have news to tweet).   

Overall it's been a big hit!  For one thing, when I told the kids that, "Although I love hearing all your news each day, I feel like we're sitting in the circle for too long each morning," they emphatically agreed!  Since introducing this system, I usually get at least 6 kids who want to Tweet, so all I need to do for our "share time" is to run through the Tweets myself. 

I hope you can use this with your class.  I love how easy it is to set up because everyone has a pocket chart, right?  If you don't you can get a pocket chart here (affiliate link).  

 It's a great complement to my Morning Meeting Shares sign up system (click to read the next post in my Morning Meeting series)!  The kids are as glad as I am that Morning Meeting moves along at a quicker pace without squashing anyone's news.   

This article was reposted from All Things Upper Elementary.

Freebies for Back to School

By now you have all probably heard about the 28% off at Teachers Pay Teachers starting Monday.  And yes, my whole store will be on sale. 

 

 

 However, I don't know about you, but my eyes start to glaze over when I see the announcement repeated right down my entire blog feed.  So I wanted to give you all something different.  Today I wanted to direct you all to some of my free products.  

There are a few must-haves if you are teaching elementary, and a few when you are specifically teaching fourth.  So here are some of my key freebies:

1.  The back to school to do list.  For those of you who, like me, still have a few weeks before going back to school, if you don't have your own to do list, GET THIS.  It saves so much time when you plan ahead instead of driving to Staples 4 times in one week.  Or firing up the laminator at school on a daily basis.  It will help you prioritize, consolidate trips, and feel so good as you check each thing off.

2.  Tissue box hygiene reminders.  The start of the year is the time to instill routines.  You'll thank me later in the year when flu season starts.



3.  Homework reminders.  These reminders save you time from
writing notes home.

Now for the fourth grade content:

ELA:
Mentor Sentences for Complete Sentences.   Many grammar tasks ask kids to find what needs to be fixed in a sentence.  Mentor sentences require them to analyze quality, model writing, then explain what makes it so.

Social Studies:
Kinesthetic Map Activity.  This is a fun whole group activity that gets kids practicing continents, countries and directions.  It's not every day you let your fourth graders crawl around on the floor to learn, but I think you'll like this one as much as they do.

Math: 
Using one half as a benchmark coloring page.  This coloring page reveals a "mystery picture" as kids determine if each fraction is greater to, less than, or equal to one half.  The writing component allows you to differentiate as well as gives students practice justifying their answer. 


I hope you enjoy the freebies and save lots of money at TPT starting Monday.  Do remember to enter the promo code BTS14 when you shop on Monday and Tuesday in order to get the full discount.  One new product that I'm launching in time for the sale is my Drawing Perpendicular and Parallel Lines with Tools Project.

If you remember my post months ago on using drawing triangles and straight edges you have already seen this project in action. The kids had a blast with the markers and sheet protectors trying to be the first one to figure out what the mystery picture was.  And I finally had a little time this week to polish it up so that you will be able to introduce it to your class with confidence, just in time to save you 28%.  Enjoy!