Monday Made It {Getting Classroom Ready!}

Monday Made It with the wonderful Tara at 4th Grade Frolics is up for the month of September!!  I started working on this post this afternoon but my Buffalo Bills kept me on the edge of my seat and I was completely distracted.  Of course they wound up losing after I was already all worked up:(  At least it wasn't a shut out and the Bills gave those Patriots and Tom Brady a run for their money!!  It would have been nice to see Brady cry though! :) You wouldn't think that is mean if you were a Bills fan and watched them lose the last 24 of 26 games to the Pats.  Our day will be coming soon. I can feel it!

Anyway, school started for me last week and I have been busy getting things ready for open house and the first day with students last Thursday.  I made these cute CAFE letters and headers to go with my owl theme.  You can download them here for free from my TPT store.  

I later saw this post by the amazing Emily at I Love My Classroom and I was intrigued that she used the acronym "FACE" instead of CAFE.  I asked her about that and she said that 4th graders don't really know what a Cafe is (uh, yep!) and she explains her board as "This is what the 'face' of a reader looks like".  I love that!  I forgot to take a close up picture of my board changed but you can see the "FACE" acronym in this picture.  Emily also gave me a link to some free CAFE strategy cards for your board that you can download from the Down Under Teacher.  You can read more about my owl tree and the papers above my board shown in this picture here.  

I also made these smaller labels for my Daily 5 book boxes to coordinate with my owl themed book bin labels in my classroom library.  Since we are departmentalizing this year, I needed to find space for 50 book bins!  I decided to number them 1A to 17A, 1B to 17B, and then 1C to 17C.  The letters are for the three separate sections of ELA that am teaching but I can use the same numbers for all three sections.  When I use my popsicle sticks to draw names or any other "number" organization strategies, I can use the same numbers for each class.  I like that I don't have to keep 50 popsicle sticks with names on them and I can reuse the same 17 numbers for all three classes.  

 I added the smaller labels (almost 3") as an addition to my editable book bin labels for sale at my TPT store.  There are five themes available (owls, chevron, polka dot, zebra, and superhero).  This is the owl preview version.    

Here is a closeup picture of the book boxes (sorry it is so blurry).  I taped the labels over them using clear shipping tape (one of my favorite school supplies!).  The brown book boxes were given to me by my teammate.  The best part is that they were free! :)

 I didn't make these Citing Evidence posters but my lovely friend, Joanne, at Head Over Heels for Teaching did!  I printed and laminated some of them for use on a bulletin board.  Citing text evidence is essential for the 4th grade Common Core and this will be a great visual.  I am planning on having student examples posted for each on sentence strips around the posters and change them out often.  

 I also printed and laminated these colorful genre posters by Sabra at Teaching with a Touch of Twang to display below my board.  They are a facebook fan freebie but I don't know for how long!!  I love how the posters have examples of books for that genre.  We are working on exploring genres as we get to know the classroom library and have already referred to them in the first two days of school. 

I remembered to take pictures of each student the first day of school with this freebie sign I laminated and printed from the fabulous Run Miss Nelson's Got the Camera.

 Finally, I laminated these super cute owl bookmarks by Michael Friermood (another freebie!) for each student.  I haven't passed them out yet.  I gave each student a plain strip of colored paper for a bookmark and plan on giving them a fancy bookmark after they reach some reading goal (not sure yet!).

I am off to check out all the creative Monday Made Its (mine are not very crafty!).  Those artsy bloggers just amaze me! :)  See you Tuesday for Tried It Tuesday and don't forget to check out the amazing 1000 followers giveaway at Ideas by Jivey!