I went to school yesterday to finish covering my bookcases and to pick up a few files and books I wanted to work on this summer. Just walking in with everything put away and nothing on the walls made me feel a little sad. As ready as I am for summer break each year, putting everything away just makes my room look so empty.

These pictures were taken for an assignment for a Visual Impairment class I was taking this spring. The kids had already cleaned up for the day before going home. If I would have taken the pictures while they were there, well....I'm sure you all know what that looks like! :) Plus, I'm a firm believer in curtains that hide EVERYTHING!

(Sorry that there are some gaps in the pictures, but there were students' photos and/or full names that would violate privacy rights if I posted them and I didn't have time to mess with PhotoShop. )

Here's a link to my classroom last year. I wish I had photos from the beginning of the year when my room was decked out in western decor for our PBIS theme. I had a reading corral and other areas that were cute. I don't think I took any pictures. I ended up getting rid of the corral because it took up too much room. 





 My desk is only clean at the beginning and end of each day. As soon as the kids arrive, it gets filled with everything (and it's not always their things!) :)

As our Kindergarten classrooms begin implementing features of The Daily 5, yesterday my co-workers and I brainstormed a list of things our students could do while we are working with our Guided Reading groups.  For myself, the hardest part of getting started with Guided Reading is the whole, “What do I do with the other kids while I’m working with a small group?” problem. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
  
For my students, I felt visuals were necessary so each child would know his options a little better when it came time to choose what to do independently. Here are a few things from our list. We have already added more since we made our list at lunch yesterday. I will try to update as I can.  I accidentally left my paper at school and we are snowed in today and will likely be for the rest of the week.

I have only taken pictures for about half of the things we’ve come up with because not everything has been created or we didn’t have kids in the room at the time to take pictures with them. At one point, I was in the hallway pulling other teacher’s kiddos so I could get more pictures taken.

Check out http://www.sanjuan.edu/webpages/gguthrie/balanced_literacy.cfm?subpage=127464 for lots of great ideas, pictures, printables, etc. 

Read to Self

Book Boxes

Whisper Phone

Charts

Word Family Flip Books

Reading Binders (Charts include: alphabet, color words, numbers, and poem of the week.)

Big Books



Read to Someone

Read the Room (Can also be done independently for Read to Self)



Word Family Sliders (Can also be done independently for Read to Self)

Read to a Friend

Read to a Stuffed Animal/Reading Buddy


Listen to Reading

Books on CD


We also included Tag Readers and Computer Games that read to students. I would love to get portable DVD players for our HeidiSongs DVD’s. I think I’ll have to write a DonorsChoose project for that one.

Work on Writing

Build-A-Story

Write with a Word Family Slider

Write the Room – This is one of my kids absolute favorites! They are so good and I am always amazed at how my otherwise reluctant writers can fill pages with words in no time.
(There are some great Write the Room pages at http://kinder-pond.blogspot.com/2011/01/write-room.html.)

Rainbow Writing


Word Work

Letter/Word Tiles

Squeeze a Segment (Students use the tweezers to place one rock per segment in a suction cup circle.) We are using manipulatives (like the bear below) instead of words right now.

My Word Book (Could also be used for Write the Room)

Tweet-Tweet Letter Treats (This is from the book Shoe Box Learning Centers: Alphabet.)
 
Choose a Letter (Students choose 3 letter tiles and write words beginning with the letters they’ve chosen. For our struggling readers/writers, we have alphabet soup cans and other charts for them to look at to find words beginning with the letters they’ve chosen.)

Sign a Name – These came from a resource book, but you can find something similar here.

Stamp the Alphabet

Tap Light Segmenting

Word Puzzles


Wikki Stix

Trace a Letter – You can find the tracer pages here.

Envelope Games