Informational Texts Around the Room
I really liked how my coordinating teacher organized her informational texts on the wall and around the room. Every time the students were doing a unit the main points were written on a large piece of paper and hung around the room. When you looked around the room you could tell all the main points they had hit that year. It was not just the main points of reading and math. She also had main points for science and social studies. My favorite was her "fill a bucket" activity in the classroom. The students could write nice things about other students and put it in their "bucket". This worked well to tie in good character traits as well as reading and writing standards. Something else I liked was the place for students to stick their tickets out their door. They could go back throughout the week and move their ticket around to show what they were learning and mastering. The teacher did an interesting thing with her word wall. She had envelops on the wall with letters on them. Inside the envelope was an index card with vocabulary words starting with that letter. I had never seen a word wall done that way. It did save room, however it was not easily accessible to the students for a quick glance.
The only thing I did not like was how cluttered the room felt. If I had been a student I would have a hard time staying focused with everything going on around the room. On the other end as a student I would have liked being able to have something to refer to when I was stuck. I will definitely use some of the ideas my coordinating teacher used in her classroom in my own classroom in the coming years.
The only thing I did not like was how cluttered the room felt. If I had been a student I would have a hard time staying focused with everything going on around the room. On the other end as a student I would have liked being able to have something to refer to when I was stuck. I will definitely use some of the ideas my coordinating teacher used in her classroom in my own classroom in the coming years.