New Room....New School...New Start!

Packing a classroom is like packing a house!  (Atleast in my case.)  We are moving into a new beautiful elementary school this summer, very exciting!  It took me two weeks after school ended to pack up my old room.  In the end I packed 144 boxes! On top of that I also got rid of tons of things.  Don't worry we didn't throw things away.  Our teacher association (mainly Rebecca) organized a district wide (k-12) teacher swap!  As you can see from the pictures below we had TONS of items to share and swap.  We invited the public, local university students, and home school families to come and take what they wanted.  This was a huge success!  I highly recommend doing this in your district!

This was after the first day of teachers bringing their items.  On the day of the swap meet we doubled the amount in this picture! All items were free for the taking! 

This was the classroom I needed to pack up! 

144 boxes later!

After 10 years of teaching in this school, it was a sad day to officially move out.  With all the sadness came excitement.  We are now in a brand new state-of-the-art elementary building.  It is beautiful and HUGE!

I moved into a smaller classroom than I had before, so I am having to get extremely creative with unpacking and storing all my materials. 

Moving day!  My furniture and boxes literally filled my room to the doorway.  I had a huge project ahead of me...where to begin?

I have spent several hours over the past two weeks unpacking....

I still have a ways to go, but it is coming along.  

Stay tuned for the final reveal.....coming soon! 

On top of all the unpacking we have added more products to our teacher store.  Please head over there and check out what's new, free, and is perfect for you! 

Progress Monitoring Fun!

Assessing, assessing, assessing!  As a special education teacher I feel like I am ALWAYS assessing my students.  I love to see the gains they are making, but I do not like taking time out of our busy schedule to assess my students.  All the students in my classroom have IEP's and I am mandated to progress monitor them either weekly or bi-weekly.  It takes me an entire day and a half to progress monitor my students on their IEP goals.  This is not a fun time for my students.

While I am testing my students individually, my other students are reading from their book boxes or using their iPads.  To beef up the fun, we put up reading forts around the classroom.  These are good ole' fashion forts made from sheets.  Surely, you all made forts in your living room and bedrooms when you were kids.  My students absolutely love making these forts and have perfect bheavior when it is time to build them and spend our day testing. 

Don't worry, we don't spend every minute of the day testing.  We have several breaks and there is always a fun art project or science experiment planned. :)

While my students are reading and quiet I am working 1-1 with my students and assessing their newly gained skills.  In our TPT store I have uploaded my quarterly sight word assessment and my quarterly alphabet assessment.

Building these forts is a fun and easy way to get my students motivated for a day of assessments.  How do you get keep your students occupied on testing days?

Free...hot off the press!

We recently moved into a new school building.  I have spent the past week, starting the unpacking process.  As I am unpacking my 144 boxes, I am updating my labels.  Today I created these labels for my math manipulatives.  I decided to share them, so please skip over to the TPT store to download. I hope you enjoy!