Tag: education

  • The calendar may be telling me that we “only” have 36 school days left, but this week we celebrated a new year — at least a new year as far as our classroom library is concerned.  The book baskets have been labeled and, when needed there are level reminders on the baskets. On Monday, we…

  • This week is April School Vacation Week here in Massachusetts — we celebrate Paul Revere’s ride, the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Marathon, and a Red Sox Home Day Game all on one day. We also have a school vacation. Why is it that whenever I am on school vacation, I spend about 20%…

  • Two disasters – or near disasters – this week: First, I’ve been updating the Excel database file that I copied onto my school computer (a MAC).  That seems like a reasonable thing to do when adding books that got missed on the first pass through a book box.  I also have been bolding the titles…

  • With about 400 books that were previously unleveled now identified by genre and reading level, I was feeling pretty good about the progress in the classroom library.  Machine-like, I’ve been able to go through 2 or 3 boxes of books on the white book shelves each morning.  Last night, however, as I was checking on…

  • Recording titles and determining genre is a piece of cake next to leveling books, at least that’s what I think.  Last week I generated about 10 pages of titles — all of which need to be leveled.  As my good friend Mickie pointed out — it is a massive amount of work. My current strategy…

  • So many interesting ideas for categorizing books! I have, however, come to a decision about how to categorize the literature in 207’s classroom library.  An important component of Third Grade Literacy is exposure to different genres.  For me, I need to know that after giving a book talk or exposing children to a particular genre,…

  • I have no clue as to how things got so chaotic. Well, that’s not entirely true…. I think my organizational systems are so complex that the average 9 year-old might just have a tad bit of difficulty deciphering just what that organization is. Here is the “ugly”: I have 2 main book areas for the…