Schedules and routines

We have two weeks left of intensive French before we switch over to the English half of the year. I'm excited for the change and I think most of my students are too, though I was surprized and a little pleased when a few of my students today said that they wanted to stay in French.

In anticipation of the change-over, I started looking at my schedule for teaching the Compacted Curriculum. I had to decide when I was going to teach what and how to squeeze all those subjects into what seemed like too few minutes. There were two possibilities that I came up with and after talking it over with Mrs. W, I'm happy with what I've chosen to do, even though it sounds a little odd at first.

In order to explain my new schedule, I have to tell you that I love routine. I like starting the day the same way every day and I like knowing what is coming next and I know that my students do too. I try to be aware of which students are able to handle changes easily and which have a hard time with even the smallest change in our routine. When I move my seating plan around, I try to keep some students in similar spot while others get moved around the room.

I have a dream schedule in a lot of ways this year. Right now I teach Intensive French to my class all morning, uninterrupted by anything other than recess. After lunch each day (other than Wednesday because the students don't have school Wednesday afternoons) my class has Math with another teacher while I go to teach pre-intensive French to one of the two grade 4 classes until 2pm. Other than Tuesdays, they then go to gym and/or music and I have my hour of prep time. Tuesdays we go to the library and then have art for the last half hour.

It's a little hard because all of my preps are at the end of the day and I have no prep on Tuesday or Wednesday. But all of my preps are an hour and my time with my students is uninterrupted by taking them out in the middle of a block somewhere. And it's very routine. We do the same thing or almost the same thing every day. I wanted to continue to be able to do that after the change over.

The grade 3 and 4 classes have their literacy block after recess. We may do some flexible grouping across our grades so I wanted to have my literacy at the same time, so it was easy enough to put literacy every day from recess until lunch. I was left with the time from first bell until recess and I somehow had to fit in 150 minutes of Science, Social Studies and French and 75 minutes of Health/PDCP. My first draft had blocks of 45 minutes or an hour of each subject in frustratingly random spots. I tried to make it somewhat uniform but it just wouldn't work. It annoyed me to have French two days in a row with different subjects after each time.

In the end, what I've decided to do is to schedule 30 minutes of Social Studies each morning followed by 75 minutes of either Science, French or Health. I'm a little concerned about the short amount of time for Social Studies. I'm worried that it's such a short time that we'll just get into something and then we'll be moving on, but at the same time, my plan, like the last time I taught this, is to give out a project assignment on Monday and have them present on Friday so they'll be able to come in first thing every morning and work on their projects. I'm happy with this schedule and I think it will work well for almost everyone, the exception being those students who are chronically late and will invariably miss a lot of Social Studies time, however, I'm hoping that the projects will get them interested enough that it will encourage them to be to school on time more often.

Tables and Desks

Please excuse my absence from my blog. Life has been busy lately. I have another post coming explaining why in part but for now I have another post about today.

We had a meeting today about our new school. Our school and another in the area are going to be closed next year and our new school is currently being built. We will be combining the two school staffs and students and to ease this transition, we have meetings occasionally with both staffs to talk about what we would like to see at our new school and what we would like our culture to be like and to get to know each other.

I’m fortunate enough to have worked at both schools, though the other one I only worked there for about two months and then supply taught a bit after, but I know most of the teachers there.

One of the things we were asked to discuss today was what we would like to have in our classrooms. We came up with a list of things like having a tall stool, a small table near the SMART board for our laptops, having a guided reading table and a reading area with something on the floor. These were all things we easily agreed on in our grade level groups.

Then we started talking about desks versus tables for the students. I had never even thought about this idea before. I just assumed we would be getting standard desks and that would be that because that’s what every classroom has in the upper grades that I’ve seen. But the other Intensive French teacher said that she would like tables. She explained that she didn’t have her students put much in their desks anyway and they always end up being a mess. The students tend to play with things in their desks and they end up being more of a distraction than necessary.

I agreed with all of her points and felt that I too would prefer tables over desks. I’ve always had my students store most of their stuff in places other than their desks and I find that their desks end up just being cluttered and full of things that they don’t need. So why have desks? Wouldn’t it be easier to have the students store things elsewhere? And also, this could help them prepare for middle school where they will not have desks of their own. They will need to carry their stuff from room to room and won’t be able to keep supplies in their desks. For that matter, I question the necessity of having desks with storage space in middle and high school. What’s the point? All it does in encourage them to put things in there like notes for students in other classes and other distractions.

Together we thought of a system where we would have tables with different responsibilities for bringing over the table’s basket of supplies. Especially in Intensive French where we do so much oral and group work together, there isn’t a lot of need of supplies. We barely have any duotangs or scribblers and no text books. So what is the use of having a desk to store things? But the other grade 5 teacher, who teaches French Immersion was not convinced. She wants desks with storage space in them in her classroom. At first we thought this would be fine, that we could customize our spaces. 
But it turns out that they want our wings to be be uniform. And when I thought about it a little more I realized that although I’m setting up this classroom for me and for what I would like to have to teach, I also have to think of the teachers who will have my classroom after me. After all, it’s not likely that I will stay in the same classroom for the rest of my career. And even if I did, the new school is going to outlast my career. So I have to think about what the teachers after me would want to have in their classroom as well. And that’s a difficult thing to do. We’ve been told that we can’t change our minds once our furniture is ordered. We don’t have enough money for that. So if we decide now that we want tables and then we find out that it was a horrible mistake then we just have to live with it. Both of us are new teachers. We’ve never worked with tables before in older grades. We just have this idea that it would work better but we don’t know in practice. 
So I’m asking you, my more experienced PLN, what do you think would work better? If you could have any kind of furniture in your room, in your ideal classroom, what would it be, knowing that you have to get the whole wing to agree and that future teachers will be living with your choices? And other than student work spaces, what would your ideal classroom contain? Would you prefer a round table for conferencing or a ‘c’ shaped table? Would you prefer to have a water fountain in the room or in the hallway? If you could design your classroom to look however you wanted, where would you put the board? Your desk? Would you even have those things in there at all?

French video resource

It's been a while since I last posted. I've been very busy, like all teachers, getting into classroom routines, marking work, getting to know my students better and all those little day to day tasks that pile up. I've been thinking of a few topics I would like to write about but I need to find a costume for our school's Halloween Howls tomorrow night and I need to get to bed so this is a quick post today.

I am very fortunate to work in a school district where YouTube is available for us to use and even encouraged though they prefer us to take the video, save it and show it without worrying about ads or other videos being shown that are inappropriate. My solution to that is that I set my laptop/SMART Board to extend so I can queue up the video on my laptop where the students can't see it, then slide it over to the SMART Board where they can. That or I go to a channel where I trust the content.

My favourite YouTube channel is La chaine de Mme Duckworth, created by a Core French teacher in Toronto. She has about 1500 videos on there, some are silent videos, some are songs, some are tv shows. Not all are appropriate for all ages, but with any video, it's best practice to watch it first before you show it.

Some day I would like to start my own YouTube channel for songs and videos I use in my classroom. Do you have a favourite resource for videos that you use?

Happy Halloween!

Almost nearly ready

I'm nearly ready.

I'm almost nearly ready.

To be fair, I'm never going to be completely ready. But I can get as close as possible. I spent another full day at school yesterday. I finished a few little projects and did a lot of tidying. I hope that if I spend just another hour or two in there this weekend, plus I need to buy a few little things, then I'll be finished in terms of my classroom. I also have some other things that I can do at home.

One of my big projects for Friday was my name-tags for the desks. I laminated my name-tags and stuck magnets on the back. This way, if I put the desks in groups I can move the name-tags around easily and there's no messiness on the desks. I did the same thing with my responsibilities.

But unfortunately, the adhesive on the magnets didn't work well. I came in my classroom in the morning to see most of the tags on the floor and the magnets still up on the wall. One of my colleagues suggested using a glue gun. I glue gunned them all on and then set up my seating chart.

 

That worked pretty well, but there were still some that let go so I ended up putting packing tape across the back of them. But I'm happy with the way they look now. It's hard to see from the pictures, but the tags are mostly blue with some stars and a guitar. I use a lot of music in my classroom so I thought they were fitting.

My schedule's all set up now and my responsibilities list is up though I won't be using all of them on the first day. One thing I forgot is that I haven't done their names to go next to their job. Rather than go through all the bother with the magnets and packing tape and glue guns etc. I'm hoping to go and get magnets that I can write on and just write their names or get them to write their names and decorate them if I can find what I'm thinking of. I don't look forward to shopping this weekend but it has to be done.

 My other big project that I did yesterday was putting up words around my room. Last year we were given these nice big poster of classroom object words but I didn't get around to using them. So this year I've put them up around the room, but not just to identify objects. They're mounted on velcro. My plan is to leave them up for a few weeks, call attention to them, have students use them in games like I Spy, but then take them down and have the students try to put them back up in the correct spot.

This is the display outside my classroom. Same idea as what I did last year but with more students it's a bigger arc. I just found out I have a new student though so I'm going to have to try to fit her in somewhere.

I like making rainbows, even when I'm just organizing my duotangs. I was looking at all kinds of beautiful classroom pictures where teachers have specific themes and I was a little jealous that I didn't have a theme. Then I decided my unofficial theme is rainbows.

So when I set up my scribblers and duotangs and folders for the Intensive French block, this is how I set them up. I was also feeling very tired and a little silly when I did this.






Just a few more things to do and my classroom with be all ready. Three more days and then I'll have my students.

Welcome back students - bienvenue mes élèves

First week back

We're two days in to the school year. I'm feeling a little nervous, a little hurried, a little over-whelmed and a little grateful.

It's so nice to be back with my colleagues. I've missed them over the summer and I'm happy to be able to see them again. Unfortunately, my next door neighbour moved one door down, leaving an empty class between us so I'm all alone on my part of the wing, a little isolated from everyone else, but it's a short hallway so it's not hard to go visit. There are only four teachers in our wing now.

We've spent a few hours the last two days in meetings and workshops on various topics. Yesterday was about common language and common practice for working in teams. Today it was reading records, beliefs and practices when it comes to discipline and some basic "how does our school work" discussion. Very useful and informative stuff. It's hard to sit that long though. Another reminder that I need to get my students up and moving because they must find it hard to sit so long as well.

In our non-meeting time, I've continued my classroom preparation. It's looking better. Yesterday I heard I had two new students. I was very concerned about fitting those two extra desks into my already crowded room. At the end of the day I took this picture:

I'll admit, I didn't go home in the best of moods. I'm not sure why those two extra desks made me feel so much more nervous but for some reason they did. 24 sounded like a lot; 26 sounded impossible. But today I was feeling much better about it. I know that with a large class, routine is crucial. I know that I need to give lots of responsibilities to my students to help the class run smoothly and I know that we can all write our class vision statement, values, rules, and make them meaningful so that 26, while a little crowded, is not chaotic and learning will still happen.

Today I found out I have one or two fewer students. But I feel like even if my numbers go back up, I'll be okay. 

What made me feel even better today was we worked out our schedule for the 3-5 wing. Last year the schedule was a nightmare. We had to juggle me teaching my homeroom, and three other classes of French. We had to make it work around the gym and music schedule, we bargained, bartered and begged to switch other times around to somehow come up with a schedule where we were all getting approximately what we needed. It took us 7 hours of meetings and in the end, the result was so complex that even by the end of the year I was not always sure whose class was where. 

One of the other teachers, when I brought up doing our schedules, was not at all happy and I don't blame him. I swore to him that it would be easier this year. It had to be. Nothing could be more complicated than last year's. And it wasn't. About an hour of easy talks and simple fixes, I have the most lovely schedule I could ask for. Whereas last year's, my students' schedule and my teacher schedule looked nothing alike, this year's the difference is very minor, only that when they are in math with another teacher, I am teaching pre-intensive French to one of two classes. And when they have music or gym, I have a prep. I get to take them to library. My Intensive French block is unbroken and beautiful all morning.

It could still change, but for now, it is golden and perfect.

My classroom time I spent today on my French library. Almost all of the English books are out of my classroom now. I'm storing them next door until February. Last year I had a hard time keeping my French book boxes organized. I sorted them by category and labeled the boxes but the students didn't always put the books back in the right boxes. You all know the drill. Then on Fridays when we cleaned the classroom I would assign a few students to organize the library. But they didn't always know which books went in which box and in the end, I would do most of the organizing.

So this year, each book box has a number, and all the books in the box have the same number on the front cover. So for example, this is box number 14 - Robert Munsch books. I also have an 'F' in the corner for fiction and all the Robert Munsch books have a 14 on their cover.

 This book box has hockey books, both fiction and non-fiction, hence the F & NF in the corner.

This is the end result - at least so far. I finished 25 of the boxes today and I'll hopefully finish the rest tomorrow or the next day. 

That's how my first two days went. One week from today I will have had my first day back with students! So much to be done before then but I know I'll get what I need to have done finished. How are your days back going? Are you focusing on one specific area you want to improve for this year? How do you get yourself organized and ready?

Priorities

I spent quite a bit of time in my classroom this afternoon after buying my school supplies this morning. (Note: buying duotangs for a whole class is mind boggling!) But I did decide to go with duotangs over binders for this year. I'm expecting 24 students so with about 10 subjects each that works out to 250 duotangs! It was insanity. I went to buy some last night for 0.10 cents each. That was great but they didn't have many colours, mostly just this odd navy blue/grey colour, and when I got to the check out (with about 150 of them) the poor girl had to count and scan them all!

I met up with a few other teachers from my school this morning. We bought our supplies (more duotang craziness), went out for lunch together and then headed back to school.

My classroom is... I'm not sure what to do about it. I worked for about two and a half hours this afternoon. First, I dumped all the supplies I bought. There are a few more bags than that off to the side as well.

Then I set up the desks. I have a small classroom, very small to fit 24 students comfortably. I decided on rows for the first little while. I'm not sure how many other groupings I'll be able to fit in there. I also had to give up my beautiful big table at the back. There wasn't enough room for it. I'm sad to see it go but it was that or have the kids way more crowded. So this is what my classroom looks like now.

My library is still a mess. After I got my desks sorted out, I talked to our new principal and asked if I could store my English books in the empty classroom next door. She agreed and so I spent a long while boxing up books and carting them next door. I still haven't sorted them. They came from the other grade 5 classroom. Some of them are sorted already but there are a lot of books that are just random. There are still two bookshelves worth of English books in the classroom. Some I'll store in my classroom and some I'll store next door. Plus there are all the ones I have stored at home from my class the year before. February will be a very busy month.

When I got home and washed my hands, the soap suds were black. Classroom preparation is dirty work. I also started a new to-do list. I don't want to be going in to school on the weekends and next week is full of meetings so I need to get as much as possible tomorrow. It's a long list. It's a daunting list. It's a list I'm afraid I won't be able to get done.

I'm trying to prioritize and tell myself that I'll get to the important things and the rest will fall into place. But everything seems important and everything seems to take much longer than I think it should.

I'm excited about school starting up. I'm excited about trying new things and meeting my new students and guiding them and the satisfaction that comes when you know that you've made a difference. I'm excited about working with my wonderful colleagues and getting to know my new principal and new parents. I'm excited about sorting through the new supplies I bought and handing out new beautiful pencils and paper.

But I'm also scared and nervous. What if I'm not ready? What if everything isn't perfect on that first day?

When I need some inspiration, I head on over to twitter and my PLN (professional learning network). I have connected with many educators on twitter and they always inspire me when I need it. Someone in my PLN is starting school tomorrow. He wrote this post To be a teacher about his first day of school. His post touched me and the video he posted brought me to tears. To be a teacher is a very heavy burden and also a great joy. This post put the important things into perspective. If my classroom isn't perfectly organized but I still show my students that I care then I'm still doing my job correctly.

Where it All Goes Down Wednesday

This is my third post for the Teacher Week at Blog hoppin'.


Today's post is about showing off our classrooms. Mine isn't finished. At all. It's frightening how much I have left to do actually. I went in today again for another couple of hours and got three bulletin boards covered with the fabric I bought yesterday. I was excited to have more fabric covered walls. Our school is being closed either next year or the year after and then we're getting a lovely new school after that. But in the meantime, they aren't painting or upgrading our current building at all so I'm trying to make do with what I have. So this is what I came in to last week.

The janitor was dealing with my floors so I couldn't do much but measure for my fabric and come back another day. Today I went in again as I said and my floors are done so it looked more like this.

Better, but as you can see, I still have a lot of furniture to move around. I didn't get around to that today. Instead I focused on putting up fabric. This was the first one I tackled. The wall is cork board that's been painted over a few times and is so full of holes it's hard to have anything stay up there. This is where I keep my calendar and calendar related words which I'll put up tomorrow. Next to it I have my one chalk board in my room. Last year I covered it with a red plastic sheet, the kind you use as table clothes. It worked well. It was thin enough that it was easy to use as a magnetic board for my schedule and responsibilities board. But the plastic got picked at and marked up easily so I took it down at the end of the year. I don't like the look of the chalk board, so I covered it with some more fabric I found - 75% off sale at Fabricville = win!

I think this is a very nice colour. I'm planning on covering behind the world map and bookcase in the same green as behind the calendar.

This is one of my bulletin boards outside my classroom. This fabric is so lovely. The colour doesn't show up well here. In real life it's darker but has a nice shine. It was a little stretchy too so it was very easy to use.

Here are some other shots of my classroom. That's my teacher corner though my desk isn't back over there yet. I also have a filing cabinet that goes over there. I love my SMART board. I also have numbers around my clock to help the students tell time using an analog clock. Over on the left you can see my birthday chart.

This is the other front corner of my classroom. So much stuff that I have to sort through and store. I'm also going to cover that wall, possibly in blue, I haven't decided yet, because that wall is like the one under the calendar. It looks pretty terrible.

So that's my room so far. It's not finished at all, but it's mine and I love it :)

School Supplies - binders or duotangs?

This year, our whole school has decided to buy our school supplies and ask parents for money instead of supplies. This has a number of advantages. I'm looking forward to knowing that all my students will have good quality supplies, there won't be any jealousy over who has the better stuff because it will all be the same, and I will be sure that all my students will have the supplies they need right from day one.

There are some disadvantages as well of course. For example, right now I am expecting 24 students in my class but I know this can change. I want to make sure I have enough for all of my students without exceeding my budget. For some supplies like pencils and paper, that's not very hard. But for larger items that I would like to last all year it can be a bit difficult.

I've been working on my shopping list after taking stock of the supplies I already have, and I'm debating whether I would like my students to use binders or duotangs. Now I understand that duotangs is a word that seems exclusive to Canada, so for those outside the country, they are folders with three metal fasteners to hold work. They look like this.

I like using them. They can make organization by subject fairly easy. But at the same time they can be a pain in the behind. Students are sometimes very hard on them. They put in papers upside-down, backwards or don't attach them in properly at all. They take up a lot of space and sometimes take up a lot of time. One advantage of them over binders is that it is easier to take home a class set of duotangs over binders and it's easier for students to take home one duotang if there is homework in one subject.

That all being said, I'm leaning towards trying out binders this year with tabs for each subject, at least once I switch over to the English half of the year. For  the first 5 months while I teach French, they'll only need one duotang and one scribbler and one folder. A binder would be unnecessarily large for the amount I would have them use it. But once we switch over I think it would be useful. Part of my reasoning is that my grade 5's will be moving on to middle school next year and I think it would be good for them to get used to keeping a binder organized. I also think that it would be easier to go out and buy 25 binders instead of going out and buying 250 or more duotangs.

Which system do you prefer? Have you tried both? Any other systems that you think would work better?

Morning Routine - Class Responsibilities

Today I've been working on what I would like my morning routine to look like. Both of my homeroom classes last year were chatty, especially the first group, and I liked giving them the time between the first and second bell to do some socializing before we got down to work. While I liked this, I also think that I would like my students to start getting focused before O Canada so that after we can get right into our work after watching the announcements. So I've come up with some ideas of what I would like our morning routine to look and sound like.

I would like to start the day with some French music playing in the background. When I bring the students down the hall from outside, I'll have them change their shoes before they come into the classroom (I'm a stickler for this. I don't like outside shoes in the classroom because it makes the floor messy). They then put their outdoor things and backpacks on their hooks in the back closet. Next, they choose their responsibility for the day by moving their name tag to the job they want for the day. This will help me quickly do attendance as well because I will see which names are not up. Then they will get their desk ready, do their job if it's one that needs doing before class, and then sit and do the anchor work on the board. I'm thinking it will mainly be writing in their journals or a word problem. I did this occasionally last year but would like to do it more consistently this year.

Behind the red sheet is an old blackboard. Everything on there
is on magnets.

The major change in the responsibilities is in having them pick for themselves as they come into the classroom. Last year we did responsibilities once a week. I would draw names randomly and ask the student which one they wanted, they would answer in a full sentence and I would place their name on the board. I liked using it as a chance to have them practice speaking but I think doing this I will also be able to have them say sentences. I can still ask who is doing a particular job or if someone has forgotten to choose one I can ask them which one they would like.

I would like to change some of my jobs as well. Many are the same as last year but I am also adding a few more. Some will not be available every day.

• mini-prof - runs the morning routine
• tableau - responsible for cleaning off the board at the end of the day
• pizza - takes pizza orders and passes out pizza
• dîner chaud - takes hot lunch orders and passe out hot lunch
• du lait - takes milk orders and passes out milk
• l'horaire - puts up the schedule for the day
• bibliothèquaire - ensures the class library is in order and brings library books down to the school library
• blogger - writes what we did that day on our school website
• premier du linge - first in line
• dernier du linge - last in line
• annonces - on days when our class does video announcements, these two students will do them
• messanger - brings notes to the office or other teachers
• souliers - makes sure our boot rack outside our classroom is tidy
• placard - makes sure our back cupboard is tidy
• chaises - makes sure all chairs are down before announcements and up before they leave
• aspirateur - gets to vacuum the carpet in our reading corner (I can see some fights happening over this job. They all want to do it.)
• crayons - makes sure there are plenty of sharpened pencils ready for the class
• A.V. - audio-visual, in charge of lights, taking pictures or videos, using the SMART Board for songs
• billets - hands out tickets during the morning routine
• gardien/ne des points - keeps track of class points and points in games
• recyclage - brings recycling down to the photocopying room
• extra - helpers for anyone who wants help with their responsibility, this job is chosen last. 

It seems like a lot of jobs but I will have around 25 students and I want them all to have a job each day. I've decided that they can only choose a job once each week. That way I won't have one person being the mini-prof each day and more students will be able to choose a variety of jobs. Some jobs won't be available every day, for example, we don't have milk on Wednesday so that job won't be available that day. Each job will also have a picture next to it as a reminder of what it means. I"m hoping that having a first come, first served way of picking jobs will also encourage my students to be on-time for school, something I've had trouble with in the past.

What classroom jobs do you have? How do you have your students pick jobs? Do you have them apply for the jobs or do they get to choose? How do you ensure that everyone gets a turn at the ones they would like to try?

Three Ways to Read a Book - In Intensive French

I've been thinking about my first week of school plans today. One of the first lessons I like to do with my students on their first day with me is to teach them the three ways to read a book. This lesson comes from the The Daily 5 system. I adore the Daily 5 and am so excited to be able to use it more in February with my class. I have another post in my head that I'm going to write soon about ways to incorporate the Daily 5 into Intensive French, but it needs more thinking and planning time before I can write it.

The first few days of Intensive French are conducted in English. We will discuss as a class how the next five months are going to go, we talk about how they feel about Intensive French and we go over some strategies for dealing with the frustration they will feel when trying to function in a new language. One big frustration they feel is that they are not able to read English books in my class, only French ones during silent reading. In order to deal with this frustration, I talk about the three ways that they can read a book.

I ask the students to think back to when they were first learning to read. I have them talk about what they remember. Memories are often a little spotty on the subject of learning to read. Many think they just tried and they could do it. Some remember that it was frustrating and they had to read one word at a time. Others remember picture books very fondly. I tell them that learning to read in French is just like learning to read their first language (English for almost all of my students) except that it's easier because they already know so much about reading.

My class library is better organized than this now with book
baskets, but I don't have a more recent picture

We start brainstorming what they know about reading. They know that they read from the left side to the right of the page, top to bottom. They know that words have meaning. They know what punctuation means. They even know the sounds of each letter and I tell them that the sounds in French are sometimes the same or similar and sometimes a little different but we will work on that together.

Then I move on to the three ways we can read. I show them three books, all French. One is a book we read together in grade 4 pre-intensive French. The second is a comic strip book and the third is a simple book with very few familiar words. I ask them if they know the three ways to read a book. Through prompting and modelling I can get them to come up with the ideas themselves that they can read a book by:
1. reading the pictures (the comic book)
2. re-telling yourself a familiar story (the book from last year)
3. reading the words (the simple book)

I model with each of these books, showing them my thought process as I look at a few pages. I have them help me by saying what they think is going on in the book based on the pictures and words or from what they know from reading the book last year.

This lesson helps amazingly when I start up silent reading time, which I do right away on the first day. I feel it is very important to give my students some time to explore the French books on their own, just as students in Kindergarten are given time to explore books in their first language to help them learn to read. Many students find a sense of relief after I explain this to them. Before I think they feel like I'm going to plop some books in front of them and expect them to be able to read them in the traditional sense. That would be an unrealistic expectation of them at this point. After all, I'm there to teach them how to read, not expecting that they will be able to do it right away on their own without help.

How do you help your students settle into your classroom? What are some of your favourite first day activities and lessons?

Setting up my classroom

I went in to school this week, intending to get a start on setting up my classroom. I have an added challenge this year because I have, probably, six more students than last year so I have to factor the added desks into my classroom layout. I am also teaching one grade 5 class for the whole year, French first half, English the second, so I've inherited a great deal of resources to teach the English half. This is what I found when I came into my classroom.

The janitor isn't finished with my room yet. He's still doing the floors so I'm going to wait to go back in again until next week. What I did do is measure my bulletin boards that don't have fabric yet so that I can buy fabric to cover them. I measured them all, wrote the measurements down on a piece of paper, and left the paper in my classroom. Oh well, I'll get it next week.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all my English books. I'd like to have them neatly put away, somewhere not too accessible during the first half of the year so that my students aren't trying to sneak them out during silent reading time when they are meant to be reading French books. Most IF teachers teach one class all year. Last year I did something called the flip-flop where I only taught French all year to two grade 5 classes. This had many disadvantages but one main advantage was that I only had French resources in my room.

One storage option is my back closet. There are beams up there that can hold heavy boxes of books. I also have two new-to-me bookshelves and I have a few cupboards that didn't get used last year. I could, I think, get all the books stored in my room. The other option is we now have an empty classroom next to me so I could store the English stuff over there until the end of January.

I'm curious about what other Intensive French teachers do to store their stuff. Any suggestions? What do you think would work best? How do you organize your room?