Monday Made It

Participating again in Fourth Grade Frolic's Monday Made It!

My Monday Made It's are all kind of half completed projects, but I figured I would show them anyways because I haven't finished anything yet. I worked all day in my classroom today, and will probably do the same for the rest of the week. So I am getting things done, but its all so overwhelming that it doesn't feel like I have made a scratch in the work that needs to be done. Sigh...

The first thing you will notice on all of these pictures, is that they are not super pretty. I am no artist, and I am going for speed and functionality over spending hours making every little thing look amazing. I doubt my students will notice, even though my pictures wont look nearly as amazing as so many of the pinterest pictures that teachers are posting.

The first thing I did when I got into the classroom this morning was to create a space on my whiteboard for my class/group points and a special place for the homework. I used blue artist tape, which I got from Michaels, because it leaves 0 residue on the board if you have to take it off.

The next thing I did was create a card pull system. This is used school-wide. I don't mind it at all, but I don't think I would have a choice even if I did. But I like that it is school wide since the students come in already understanding it. I need to update the "How is your day?". It was used by the past teacher and is yellowed and old. I am probably going to try to come up with something that matches our Mystery/Investigation theme, like "You got caught!" or something like that.

This isn't completely done because I still need to buy see-through decorative stones from the Dollar Tree, and then finish the magnets. But this is going to be both my sign-in and bathroom regulation system. At the end of the day, I will move all of the magnets to "Absent". Then, when students come in in the morning, they will move their magnet to "Here". This will give me an easy way to do attendance, as all of the magnets that haven't been moved are the actual Absent students.

In my classroom, I have the rule that only one boy and one girl can be at the bathroom at the same time. This is to prevent chit chat in the bathrooms, especially from those sneaky youngsters who go to the bathroom specifically to talk with their best friend about something. As students leave the room, they will put their magnet in the bathroom spot. Other students will be able to see that someone is out, and that they have to wait.

I have like nothing magnetic in my room so I bought a 5 dollar pizza trey. I do wish I would have gone with a square shape because I could surround the whole thing with ribbon like I wanted to. I got the ribbon for 1 dollar at Michaels and I really like it. My classroom colors are dark blue and lime green this year.

Nothing new or special here. I finished making Pick Sticks, with student's numbers as well as a red dot on the other side. That way, when a student has been picked, I can turn the stick upside down and I will know not to pick that stick until others have a turn.

And this isn't a Made It, but I am almost done with my classroom library. A pretty nice haul for a brand new teacher, yes? I got super lucky by having tons of generous people donate books to me. I am super grateful.

The one thing I am sad about is that inevitably this entire section is going to be super unorganized again, with books put back in every which way. I am going to try to put different colored stickers on different books so that they go back to their section, but I can totally see this getting messy quick.

Right now, I have all of my Non-fiction books displayed on the top right, and then I have my Multicultural books on the bottom, with a few just regular Picture Books in the very back of that section. Then I put all of the Series Chapter Books together (Box Car Children, Magic Tree House, Nancy Drew etc.). The rest of the chapter books are just thrown all together.

Alright, well that is all for today. I am working in my classroom every day this week, so hopefully I will post more updates later.