Change is in the air

Over the past month, my class has had some changes.  First, being our new intern and having to be responsible to two people rather than one {they can't get away with anything :)}.  Second, my principal came back from a workshop that took her into the classroom of the author of The Literate Kindergarten, Susan Kempton. Susan's class has no chairs which made a lot of sense to me.  The students can get comfortable in various seated positions, their legs won't just hang, it helps my students with weak cores and it helps with the wiggles.  So I took the plung and got rid of my chairs at the student tables!  It has been so great for our class....AND they are so much calmer!! {Don't worry between teacher work tables and computers there are enough chairs if everyone wants one.} Plus I'm not having to do the endless reminding of, "Push in your chair please!  Oops who forgot?"

The third change comes from my intern.  She wanted to try out Beth Newingham's Math Workshop in which the students are grouped by ability and rotate from teacher {small group}, to math pages and to an acitivity based off the unit of learning.  Today was our first time testing it out (unfortunately our intern is ill...all those germs) and it went really well.  If it can fit into your schedule I reccommend it.  Beth also suggests changing the group names to fit the unit, so since we are in geometry our names are reflective.

 Here is the whole set up.  The math board with group names (the kids signed their names), their rotation schedule, their assignments and over to the right is unit vocabulary.

I got this idea from the daily 5.  Students jobs while working and the teacher's job.  The bins above our storage for each center and match the color table.

Math Workshop Geometry

 And here are a couple other things that have changed in the room!

Theses spelling chunk cards are from Mrs. Jump's Class.  The students are using the back of two filing cabinets to do their word work.  They either spell or sort words under the spelling chunks.{Looks better than the actual backs to the filing cabinets!}

After I made new math word wall cards I got started on my math word wall. 

Get your cards here: Math Vocabulary   Math Vocabulary Cards 2

I'm off to dinner...yay!