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5 Ways to Resist the Urge to Cutify Your Classroom

Taking Kristi Mraz‘s chart-making course at the July Writing Institute was so helpful to me.  Kristi really got me thinking about having a take away item (made with a post-it note) that you can hand to kids if they need a reminder to do something.  In addition, she encouraged the use of illustrations on charts.  [...]

One of the many charts I made, with the help of some wonderful Kindergarten teachers, while I was taking Kristi Mraz’s chart-making class at the July Writing Institute was a scaffold to get Kindergarten students ready to write an all-about book.  Betsy Engel, who will be teaching Kindergarten in Manhattan this-coming school year, shared a [...]

Each week I receive, The Big Fresh, an e-newsletter from Choice Literacy.  This week’s feature is entitled “There’s Room for Me Here.” As I began reading through the article, it resonated with the Responsive Classroom Training I received three summers ago.  Essentially, the bottom line is to make your classroom feel welcoming for your students, [...]

This week the Reading Charts are in beige and the Writing Charts are in blues and greens. Originally uploaded by teachergal I must be watching too much HGTV lately because I’ve started to think about color when I’m creating my charts. In the past, when I’ve sat down on a weekend to make my charts for [...]

New Sign by the Door Originally uploaded by teachergal I was on Etsy about two weeks ago and came across a customizable sign from K is for Calligraphy that would prevent me from sounding like a broken record to my students day-in and day-out. This sign, which was welcomed by my students and I earlier today, [...]