Another Year in the Books

Wow! Another year in the books! It was wonderful not to have to pack up a classroom, now that I'm in the library! Finished up the 19,000+ book inventory, re-labeled over 125 books that were coming up incorrectly barcoded, inventoried and reorganized the teacher resources closet (Actual space to add more materials!),

and reorganized the reference shelves to, hopefully, make them more usable next year.

I did already see several projects that will need my attention in the fall, such as relabeling our 39 Clues books as a "series" to make them easier to find. Will also need to re-label some reference book spines, and to try to help categorize the teacher resources mentor texts into usable topics for mini-lessons. While we did just adopt Lucy Calkins writing materials, and I'm sure we'll be looking at ordering her mentor text suggestions, we can also still utilize the many books we have previously purchased. I also found some great math and science texts in there too! I love a good book project! :)

In addition to some much needed summer vacationing, including a visit to New York's Public Library, and to Florida's Panama City Beach, I am also going to take part in a Google Educator professional development course this summer. Looking forward to sharing what I learn!

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Fond Memories & On to Summer!

As always, I'm very far behind on posting, but I've finally combed through all of the photos and put them into Layout to share with you. Created a "Reading Helps Your Mind Bloom" book display, to leave up as state testing started. I pulled lots of gardening, bees, and butterfly books. Plus, lots of potential parents came through at the end of the year for tours, so it was good to have this out to keep it from being too sterile as all the library books started coming back. I did a "Hop Into a Great Book" display here to put an emphasis on some seldom-circulated books as well as to highlight nonfiction, though I also put out some fiction books too! Kept on teaching kindergarten and first graders about different authors. I did create some very fun centers for Mo Willems. As one paraprofessional said to me, "You're brave to do Play-Doh on carpet." However, we didn't really have any issues when I gave the kids clear expec...

Smile

Look at that shelf. Such disarray. That's kind of how I felt around mid-August. Pulled in too many directions. On overload. In need of a bookend to hold me up and set me straight. (or, in need of more time in my day) One week, I tried staying no later than 4 PM, and leaving undone what I couldn't accomplish, but that was stressful, too! I currently spend around 30 minutes everyday, either during classes, during planning, or after, afternoon car duty, to keep all of the books shelved. I'm doing a better job of preventing the shelves from looking like the one pictured above. (We've had 3 different moms come a collective six times to volunteer to help with shelving. Yay for Mrs. Stratton, who has come back multiple times!) I implemented a new change this year, to allow 4th and 5th graders to re-shelve their own fiction or everybody/picture books. That has helped! I also started a 5th grade program called "Castle Apprent...

Quarter 1 Common Core ELA & Math

Forsyth County, GA posted a link to the pacing guide they have created for next school year. I printed it out and took it home to look it over and start planning for next August. I know, I know. I'm working on the first day of summer vacation, but I need to wrap my brain around the new standards and how they will mesh together with science and social studies. Here is what I created for quarter 1 English/Language Arts. (Hopefully, the following quarters won't be so time consuming!) Everything in black type was provided by the county or the Common Core Standards website. Everything in blue type is something of my own that I added. Here is what I created for quarter 1 math common core content.

Blessed to Teach and Read

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