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Update a visual data wall weekly to show student progress

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So it's been a crazy first week of school! I had great intentions of posting my classroom photos last week but...you know, stuff happened! It seems like at the beginning of the year a teacher's job is never done (who am I kidding, all year long that's true!). As much as a love my new batch of little ones I find myself longing for the reading and writing workshops of last year where everyone knew what to do and where to go. I always forget just how long it takes to be running like a well-oiled machine! I'm kind of wishing we could just skip ahead to October but I'm forcing myself to love these few days when random declarations of "Kindergarten is fun!" or "I Love School!" are common! These are precious times...

On to the main topic of this post- my new room. As I mentioned in a previous post I was gone for most of the summer and then when I came back I took care of my ten-month nephew for two weeks. So I had about a week to get my classroom together before preplanning started. This wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't decided to change around EVERYTHING! Kind of silly on my part because I really loved my old classroom set up but I just got the rearranging bug and I had to follow through. Plus I had five more students on my roster than previous years so a little rearranging was necessary! I will say I tried to be super strategic about all my choices so that things that didn't work well in previous years were addressed and hopefully fixed. So here's the final product, what do you think?

This our math focus wall. The white signs are the problem solving strategies from KindergartenWorks (her guided reading pack is awesome!). The green pocket chart is for our essential questions and our math vocab cards. The clipboard holds our class data pages (I use the pack from lakeshore). The colored circles are burner covers from the Dollar store which makes them magnetic (I'm using them for grouping my kids into guided math groups- easy to change weekly based on our pre-tests!). The small numbered boards to the left are for our math stations (these are white boards from the dollar store). I attached velcro to the right of each number where I'll put smaller colored circles to indicate which group is going to each center. I'll write math station specifics (i.e. computers, addition yahtzee, numeral practice) on the whiteboard part. Oh, there's a hundreds chart too!

Trying out the FACE acronym this year instead of CAFE. I'm going to surround our menu with the faces of my little kindergarten readers. I'll try to remember to post a picture of the completed project!

The front of my classroom, math station materials under the FACE board and math station board. My SMART board is down there too!

The rest of the front of my room and whole group space with our Reading Tree, Spin and Play Phonics Games, and our Language Arts focus board (its the blue board on the right side of this picture).

Part of our classroom library, green books=fiction, yellow= favorite authors. I moved my word wall to this wall this year. I used pocket charts from Target's Dollar Spot. It makes putting up words SO easy (definitely a plus!). The blue bins on top of the cubbies are our book bins.

Here's a view from the door. To fit all the kiddos I have this year I had to switch my smaller rectangle tables to the really long ones- they fit 8 kids! I also still have two circle tables that seat four. I like how our whole group area is really sectioned off. It makes distractions coming from the hallway a lot less noticeable.

This is our fence area that serves as word work storage, listening center space, and backpack hooks. It's a cozy little space that the kiddos love! We only take the cushions out when we're using this space, otherwise we store them on the shelf above the hooks.

Another look at our word work bins. The blue bins are our cubbies. We keep our math "toolkits" and calendar books in here.

Further back view from the front of the door. I LOVE my new guided reading table. Totally got inspiration from Deanna Jump (Love her classroom). The black stools are great because you can lift off the tops and store LOTS of stuff inside. I have lots of teacher stuff hidden behind this space.

Our Fancy Words board and computer station. Lots of other good stuff hidden under these computer tables. Seriously if you do anything skirt your tables! It triples your storage space!

A little corner near the computer station, a good place to read and our clip chart. Love this thing!!

Hope you enjoyed my classroom tour! I'm loving this space so far. We've made a few changes since the kiddos have come back but most things are working out great! Looking forward to really making this house a "home" with my new little kindergarten family!

Happy Decorating!
Jessie Roberts

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So it's been a crazy first week of school! I had great intentions of posting my classroom photos last week but...you know, stuff happened! It seems like at the beginning of the year a teacher's job is never done (who am I kidding, all year long that's true!).

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Have students complete an exit ticket at the end of class 2-3x per week/daily, and use that data to regroup students the following day or week

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Recently, I have fallen in LOVE...with Exit Tickets. They are a quick and easy assessment to grasp if your students understood a concept or if they need a little reteach. It takes less than 5 minutes and I use them to drive my instruction and meet my students diverse needs.

There are so many ways to use them in your classroom. Sometimes, I give them to the entire class but more often then not, I use them at centers, during Guided Reading, and during my intervention block.

We have been working on short u sounds as a class. I did give the entire class this CVC Exit Ticket. It took 5 minutes, with coloring. All but two students got the short u sound, but I noticed 4 kids still aren't hearing those ending sounds. I can work on that with them in small group.

In one of my Guided Reading Groups, we are working on beginning sounds. Everyday, we do word work involving beginning sounds. This activity is from my Beginning Sounds Mega Pack. I like to have documentation where my students are performing.

What kid doesn't LOVE using dabbers? At the end of the week, I gave this group a beginning sounds Exit Ticket. I placed it in their folder and have great documentation for Parent Teacher Conferences.

One of our literacy centers this week was working on rhyming words with this fabulous Haley O'Connor. You can get it here.

Now, I do not use exit tickets EVERYDAY at every center, but I like using them once a week to see if students are grasping the concept.My Rhyming Exit Tickets went PERFECT with this center.

I have included easy to use class data sheets with each set of Exit Tickets. This way I can see who has mastered a concept and who needs more time.

That brings me to my intervention groups. Some of my kids are still working on letter identification. This picture is from my RTI Alphabet Books. These books are available in both Print and D'Nealian Fonts.

The Letter Recognition Exit tickets are perfect for keeping data on my students who need extra support. I am also excited to use these next fall with my new kinders.

All of my Exit Tickets have 2-3 different styles to teach the skills. You can view ALL of my Exit Tickets HERE. I highly recommend the Literacy Exit Tickets GROWING Bundle. Right now, it is only missing one set, digraphs. once I add that, the price will go up. I hope you all can see how useful Exit tickets can be. They are quick but give you USEFUL data to help drive your literacy instruction.

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Recently, I have fallen in LOVE...with Exit Tickets. They are a quick and easy assessment to grasp if your students understood a concept or if they need a little reteach. It takes less than 5 minutes and I use them to drive my instruction and meet my students diverse needs.

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Have students complete an exit ticket at the end of class 2-3x per week/daily, and use that data to regroup students the following day or week

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Teach Like a Champion Technique 20 - Exit Tickets

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Have students complete an exit ticket at the end of class 2-3x per week/daily, and use that data to regroup students the following day or week

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Update a visual data wall weekly to show student progress

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Here is a sample of our ever changing Data Wall. The kids add a sticker every time they get a 100% on their spelling tests. As you can see from the sticker chart, we went from less that 50% of the kids achieving a 100% to almost 100% once we started keeping track of the data! The other charts consist of Excel graphs made up of various pieces of classroom data. The post-it notes on the graphs are the students "thinking" in regards to the data. This wall became a great motivational tool for my fifth graders!

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Here is a sample of our ever changing Data Wall. The kids add a sticker every time they get a 100% on their spelling tests. As you can see from the sticker chart, we went from less that 50% of the kids achieving a 100% to almost 100% once we started keeping track of the data!

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Update a visual data wall weekly to show student progress.

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Schools have access to large amounts of data - schoolwide, content, grade level. In this leadership development module we cover how to use this data to improve instruction.

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Update a visual data wall weekly to show student progress.

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Use Lexile and benchmark data to group and regroup students and change my instruction every two weeks

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Saratoga Springs: Best practices in ELA instruction

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Use lexile and benchmark data to group and regroup students and change my instruction every two weeks.

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Review student conferencing notes to (re)group students around specific skills

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Review student conferencing notes to (re)group students around specific skills

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Review student conferencing notes to (re)group students around specific skills

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A Writing Conference: Teaching a Student to Write for Audience (3-5)