Literacy Station: Theme Poems

Everyone has early finishers in their classroom. One of the stations I have available for early finishers is for the students to copy and illustrate a poem on story paper. Each month I have at least one poem to go along with the season or theme. Here are two examples.

I write the poems on easel chart paper and embellish them with die cuts or illustrations. Sometimes I also back the poems with bulletin board paper before laminating them. Last year was my first year back in first grade so I had to make a lot of new things, which was extremely time consuming. It's nice this year just to pull out my seasonal things and have them ready to go.

What are some of your favorite literacy stations?

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Organizing Manipulative Bins

Every now and then there are projects that you want to get done in your classroom but you know how time consuming they will be. What a great feeling it is do get those projects off your list and see some of your work being used.

Last week I decided to conquer another project - labeling all of our manipulative bins. It wasn't too difficult and I'm pleased with the results.



Each day as I would pick up bits and pieces of toys I would get irritated searching for the correct bin. If this irritated me, I can only imagine how the kids felt.

For this organization project I simply took each bin one at a time and took a picture of the content inside the bin. For most of them I was able to put a few pieces on the table and take a picture. For smaller items (such as the bears) I left them inside the container when taking the picture. I printed the pictures on the color printer at work, cut them out, laminated them, and taped the pictures onto the bins. Like I said, it wasn't anything difficult, it was just time consuming.

I'm sooooo glad it's done. :D



What kind of classroom organization projects have you conquered?

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Making Your Own Games

I was decluttering today and came across this homonyms matching game I made when I was teaching. Here's what I did:

• took a worksheet with homonyms on them
• blew up the pictures on the copier
• colored and cut out the pictures
• to make them sturdier I glued the pictures to construction paper
• laminated them

This was so easy. You could do this with numbers, sight words, animals, etc. It's easy to make your own games. Don't forget to store these in a clear plastic baggie and to label the baggie.

I hope this tip helps inspired you. Have fun!

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