This year I have been working hand in hand with pinterest to become more organized. I always considered myself to be a very organized person....that was until I discovered some of the people on pinterest who put me to shame. On that note I've reworked some organizational things, created a better classroom library, and am going to share some other features of my classroom.
That being said I got a year subscription to Reading A to Z (great great great website). Anything you print during the year you can keep so naturally I printed leveled readers from preprimer on to 3rd grade (About 20 books per grade level, comes with worksheets and activities).
After printing them in black and white I realized how bland they looked, and that is where my assistants came in. I set the huge stack of books on a table and told them whenever they are out of things to do (for example movie days, or during specials if I don't have copies for them to run) they could color. And color they did!
After that they laminated the books and stapled them together. Next I added a piece of duct tape to A) tell them apart and B) cover the staples. Each basket holds 2 levels of books so I wrapped half the basket in one color and half in another. Now I know where all the books are and during silent reading I can direct students to the correct leveled book and know that they can read it! There you have it folks, poor man's leveled readers!
This is not the best picture but I think you'll get the idea. I have students with severe autism and I have moved my cabinets to create a small box room that fits just the student and a teacher so the child can work and do structured play tasks in a distraction free area. I have placed a "script" of what to say when working with the student so we are all on the same page.
It tells the other staff member in the room specific phrases so the child will not become confused, things like "Look at your schedule, this is next" and "Now you are all done".
Next to it, the yellow papers, are actually picture and word instruction on how to play. And if you can believe it they are for the ADULTS in the room! During structured play time I noticed that some of the staff member in my room were awkward, either never having had kids or having kids who were all grown up. My wonderful SLP provided us with these little play scripts. One is for cars and it says things like "wreck them", "race them", "honk the horn". Another is for blocks, and another for puppets. It is a good reminder for us when we are playing with the student.
These are my math manipulative bags. Typically we'd been keeping bins of manipulatives here and there around the room, some on the "math shelf" and others near the kid's cubbies for easy access. It occurred to me while scurrying around pinterest that this was ineffective and unorganized so we made manipulative bags.
I attached name tags to the bag with a paperclip so that they can be removed for next year. Each bag has a clock, a calculator, counters, and other necessary items in it for math. The kids get the bags themselves when it is time to break down into small groups for math. It has saved us a lot of time and headaches!
