I'm planning to teach both FF and KN next week, rather than teaching them over 2 different weeks, as most of the kids in that Phonics group know them anyway. So I needed this resource right away. It's nice to have MB finished as well, and ready for the following week.

I think I only need to do the 'magic e' flashcards, then all of Stage 2 will be finished and available for others to use. I'll let you know when that happens, but hopefully soon. Get the KN & MB cards by clicking on the picture or by clicking here.

My daughter has been (very kindly) laminating and cutting out all of my flashcards for me, then organising them into 'Stage 2' and 'Stage 3' phoneme folders. She puts all of the flashcards for a given phoneme into a polypocket, which she then labels with that phoneme. All of the phonemes are in the North Lanarkshire order, so it's very easy to find each week's resources.

As the weeks go by, and I plan/create different activities for each phoneme, a template or resources for that activity will go into the polypocket - ready for the next time I teach P3.

I think this is what is a bit sad about moving stages...I already have a similar folder organised and ready to go for Primary 1....ah, well. Such is life, right? And when/if I ever move back to Primary 1, I'll be ready to go (except by then, I may well be dissatisfied with the way my P1 resources look...in which case this process may well start all over again).Nor

Off to enjoy a Friday night movie in the living room, I think. Such excitement!

Only my youngest went into school with me today, but we still managed to get just about everything organised and stored in the proper place. Above is the classroom as it currently is (yeah!). I've had to take a picture, though, as weeks 4 & 5 of the summer holiday are 'deep clean' weeks - so when I arrive back at the end of week 6 to start back to school, all of the furniture will be shoved into the centre of the room. This picture should help me to put everything back where it belongs. It will also remind me that I need to buy one more red utensil drainer/pencil holder for my last table.

In the back corner, I've organised our library. I came home with quite a few books, and I need to take some books from home (Magic Tree House, Flat Stanley, Junie B. Jones) into school. A few labels still need to be made and attached, but it's in fairly 'P3 ready' shape, I think. I'll have to see if I can scrounge a few cushions from somewhere as well.

These will be our reading trays. I normally name reading groups for a fruit, then colour code the fruit to the tray (e.g., red strawberries) to make it easy for kids to remember where to put their reading books and find their writing/reading jotters. Each child will have their own grey tray (below the reading trays). The leftover trays will store various supplies.

We also have a 'Maths Area', which kids will be able to access for supplies/math supports/manipulatives that they might need. So far, there are number cards, playing cards, dominoes, 3 different kinds of dice, buggy rekenreks, number lines, 100/120 squares, counting/connecting cubes and counters. There are also some shape building/tiling games that my P1s loved last year, and that I'm sure will be a favourite of next year's P3s as well. I'm planning to put some magnetic base 10 materials on the small whiteboard, and the cupboard underneath the board holds more maths games. One of the only things on my wall so far are the maths rotation boards (I'm assuming I'll have 3 maths groups, like last year - I guess we'll start with that, and adjust if we need to).

I think I'll use my Ikea Trofast unit (below) for 'Fast Finisher' tasks. I bought this 'All Done! Now What?' set from Miss Kindergarten Love on TPT, and it has lots of different tasks for kids to complete. The Trofast unit should be just the thing to organise everything - and it will be right there, after they hand in their 'Finished Work'.

At the moment, the unit is still filled with various maths manipulatives and literacy games from this past year. Yes, I mixed maths and literacy resources! I imagine that would drive some teachers up the wall. I have to say - I'm not naturally organised, but I'm learning that I need to be to teach. This organisation thing is a work in progress for me, but it's slowly getting there (which is a good thing, as I'm now onto my 4th year of teaching!).

OK - so this is what the classroom looked like when we arrived this morning (as I said yesterday - it always gets worse before it gets better!). You don't quite realise how much stuff you have until you are in the process of moving rooms and reorganising it all.

this proved to be the least popular job on offer, and all three kids moved on to other things. I have a feeling I'm going to need to bring the remaining sets home myself and sort through them while watching something on TV. I briefly considered bringing them home tonight, but couldn't quite work up the necessary enthusiasm!

While the other 3 kids flitted between sorting number sets and various other odd jobs, my oldest patiently worked her way through a TON of cutting out. Here she is, cutting out 'Reading Comprehension Strategy' cards - I now have enough to make reminder sets for every child in my class next year. While she was doing this, a couple of my other kids photocopied and cut out our spelling word homework lists for next year - so all of these pre-prepared literacy resources are sitting in the top of my literacy cupboard, ready to go come August (see the picture to the right). What a great feeling (thanks, kids!).

For anyone who is interested in the reading strategies resource my daughter prepared for me, I am using Reading Comprehension Strategies by A Teachable Teacher. She has turned each strategy into a cute animal (for example, we have 'Picturing Peacock', who reminds us that when we visualise our story, that helps us to remember it). The resource I bought also includes classroom sized posters, graphic organisers for each of the strategies, and photocopiables to use in an interactive literacy notebook. I'm looking forward to trying this out next year with my class - I'll let you know how I get on!

We were in school from just before 10 to a bit after 4, with a break for lunch at Subway/Ashvale in Portlethen. Cupboards and resources are much more organised, and the classroom is looking a bit better. Still more to do (and we haven't even started on the library), but I think I'll give the kids a day off tomorrow. We're planning to watch Jurassic Park tonight in preparation for going to see Jurassic World tomorrow afternoon. Here is a picture of the classroom as we left it this afternoon:

and this is what my classroom looked like when we (my 3 helpers/daughters and I) arrived this morning. Because what else do teachers do on their first official day off - but go back to school to start getting ready for the next year?!

To be fair, there were only 2 teachers in today. And I'm getting this done now because we are away right at the end of our summer break, so I can't afford to put it off. But I know many of our staff team will be in and around the school over the next couple of weeks, getting everything sorted out.

Our school is open plan. This was the dividing line between my classroom and the next one over. We expended quite a bit of energy getting wardrobes moved, so that the classes will be a bit more separate (the second classroom was used as a resource room last year, so it was left more open). We had to leave quickly (we remembered that 2 girls had trampolining this afternoon!), so I haven't taken in any 'after' pictures yet - but I'll add those tomorrow.

While some of us shifted furniture and tried to find homes for various resources, another daughter was busy at the laminator - and once everything was laminated, she kindly cut out all the new labels and put them into sets for me. How do you do this job when you don't have family members willing to help?!

We're back to the school early tomorrow morning (if I can get kids moving before 9, that is!). We actually left the room worse than we found it - but that's normal, I think. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. :-) I'll post more pictures tomorrow of our 'work in progress', as well as final pictures once the classroom has been sorted.

Oh dear - not the neatest or most organised of class libraries, is it? It looks better now - but only because I've started to pack books away to move them to my new classroom next week.

Classroom libraries are huge in the States - but not so prominent here in the UK, I've found. But what an incredible resource for kids in our class - a classroom library full of books, at their reading and interest levels, which they can choose for themselves.

I'm slowly learning the importance of being selective in class libraries - too many books (see above picture) can be overwhelming. And it can be hard for kids to pick books at the appropriate level for them. So - one of my summer goals is to choose a range of books appropriate for my incoming P3s in August, and have them organised and displayed clearly so that children can easily see what's there and choose what they want to read.

Here's the AR bookfinder website that levels books by LEXILE and ATOS book levels. I know many in Scotland use coloured bookbands, so here is a link to a document that matches lexile levels with our bookbands (my husband really didn't 'get' why I was so excited when I found this!).

My library related tasks for this summer:
1) Buy matching book baskets/boxes
2) Choose books suitable for all levels of readers in my class
3) Use the bookfinder website & book band converter to book band the books in my class library (might see if I can bribe a couple of children to help with this one!).
3) Organise the chosen books, so that some are grouped by author (Magic Treehouse books, Junie B. Jones, Horrid Henry, etc) while others are grouped by book band level.
4) (If there is time when all of that is done - ha!) label books grouped by author according to their bookband level as well - just to make choices a bit easier for kids.

I'll let you know how I get on!

Do you have a classroom library? Is it filled with school books, or with your own books? How do you organise them? And most importantly - how and when are kids able to choose their own books from the class library?