Monday Motivation {Daily Schedules}

Hey friends! I am back today sharing about my daily schedule! In truth, I haven't had a schedule that I have been truly happy with in some time. We don't really have much control over when we do certain things (recess, activity, lunch) and this year, we were required to give up an additional 30 minutes to do RTI four days a week. Our Friday schedules are also different do to PLC time. I will not be including that information here, but here is what the layout of our day looks like.

When I was setting up my room a couple of years ago, I found these ADORABLE daily schedule cards from Amy Groesbeck! You can grab yourself a set HERE!

This schedule ended up changing as the year went on. Here is the schedule that I ended up sticking with for the year.

When students come in, they have a this message on the board.

We are a Title I school and offer free breakfast every day. We didn't always use morning work, but when we did, we used this, from Kiki's Classroom. You can purchase the yearlong set HERE!

Sometimes, students would just get on the computers and do Reflex Math or work on Cursive Workbooks. Eating breakfast in the classroom made it difficult to complete the morning math fully. We would try to finish it later on in the day.

 After morning routine, we jump right into Reading Workshop. I had the resource students this year and we did inclusion, so the resource teacher pushed in each day. In our district, we use the Fountas and Pinnell balanced literacy model and we also use Literacy By Design. We also have the freedom to supplement our mini lessons with whatever resources we choose. I only use the LBD leveled readers during my Guided Reading time. Each week, our mini lesson focused on a specific standard. During our Guided Reading group time, students do Daily 5. You can read more about that HERE. As students are doing Daily 5, they have the week to respond to the skill we are focusing on in their reading notebooks.

After reading, we go straight into writing. Because of our tight schedule this year, I felt like writing was always where we had the least amount of time. Guided Reading would always run over. I really am hoping our schedule allows for more writing time this year. 

I used Ashleigh Swinford's writing units this year. They follow the writing workshop model and they are wonderful! You can purchase those in her shop HERE! The one thing that I feel like I really didn't do a great job with was teaching grammar. Ashleigh's units do have a small grammar focus, but they are not lessons. This coming year, my team will be using Rooted in Reading and I am excited that they will have a grammar focus each week.

After writing, we had a 45 minute activity block. These are our specials, related arts, whatever you call them at your school!

We are required to have PE twice a week in order to abide by state law, so library isn't an official activity block. We have to carve out 20 minutes once a week to go. I would prefer that it be a full activity time, but hey....I'm not the one running things!

When we return from activity, we have one of our favorite times of the day - Read Aloud!

These are just a few of the novels we read this past school year. We also read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and The Swamp Fox. I would love some more 3rd grade novel suggestions for next year!

After read aloud, we have math. 

About a month into the school year, I discovered Hope King and Amy Lemon's Magic of Math for third grade and it totally transformed our math time! Students have never been more engaged in math in my classroom. I will say that it required lots of copies and preparation, but now I have a ton of it ready for reuse for next year. 

If you are interested in purchasing the third grade Magic of Math, just click on the image below!

You will certainly not regret it! These movable fraction number lines took me some time to assemble, but now I have them for years to come!

After math, we had recess, lunch, and a quick restroom break. 

When we returned, we had about a 45 minute content block. We had to alternate between Science and Social Studies because we didn't have time in our schedule to do both in one day. For the sake of grading, we usually alternated after completing a concept, instead of a whole unit. 

We tried our best to make this time as hands on as possible. We did have a couple of Science Kits to use and we pretty much planned our own curriculum for Social Studies as the text books don't make for much excitement. 

The last 30 minutes of the day was reserved for our intervention time. While I was meeting with these four students, the rest of the students would be on computers or devices working on Reflex Math or Imagine Learning. 

This coming year, I plan on using these progress monitoring cards from Mrs. D's corner! You can snag her freebie HERE! 

After RTI, we pack up and dismiss for the day! 

I hope you have enjoyed this insight into my daily schedule! 

Monday Motivation {Word Walls}

I am linking up with my friend Jen Ross over at Teacher By the Beach again this week to talk about Word Walls.

Word Walls can be so many different things and can be very useful. I hear teachers say all the time that kids don't even look at them, so what's the point? I might have actually said that myself a time or two! The thing is, you have to teach students how to USE the word wall and what it's purpose is and it can be a VERY powerful and useful for tool for students.

What I don't recommend doing if you implement a traditional word wall like this...is placing it somewhere up high where you can't easily get to it each week to add your words. I promise your words won't get added if you do this...I sure didn't add mine like I was supposed to when the word wall was out of reach.

I'm ashamed to say that this was one of my first word walls and it's pretty pitiful looking. I have NO idea what possessed me to put the letters on gingerbread men other than the fact that my name is Ginger and I thought it was somehow cute...

It was suggested to me to have strips of paper and add velcro dots so that the words could be easily added each week and reused from year to year. This plan works well if you have your words already planned out before the year begins like our district did for each grade level.

As the years passed, my word walls became more functional and more appealing.

This particular year, I had room for two word walls and I loved it! One was for the traditional word wall words and the other was for content words.

The first word wall, I created with laminated letters and 2 inch wide ribbon. As the week's passed, I would add our weekly no excuse word wall words to that word wall. It was also at a reasonable spot on the wall that I didn't have to climb like a monkey to get to it and add my words!

My other word wall is my ALL TIME favorite! It is a writable word wall for content words. I wish that I had taken a picture of it later in the year when it had words that had been added to it, but it was marvelous! Each content word was written in a different color which made it easier for students to distinguish between and use. Math words ended up taking up the most space and were what students used the most. It definitely served its purpose!

I haven't ended up having a room that enabled me to do the writable word wall again, but I'm hoping to figure out a way to make that happen this year. It was so SO easy!!

I have also done content related word walls.

Excuse the poor quality of the following two pictures.

I would place the words on the board next to the anchor chart or poster. The board's words changed with each unit.

I don't have a picture of this, but I have also done a personal word wall folder for each student. When we would add a word to the wall or when students had a word they wanted to add, they could do so to their own individual folders. This was very effective and it was like they had their own mini dictionaries.

I would love to hear how you use word walls in your classrooms! You should definitely go link up with Jen if you have some fabulous ideas of your own to share!