New ideas!

Love, love, love collaborating with other teachers!!! I am so grateful for the opportunity to develop the district's 3rd Grade Curriculum Map (what we teach along with resources to support teachers) and work with a group of women I don't normally see on a regular basis. We are not only making positive progress in our work, but we've been able to share ideas and inspire one another. I am so excited to make a few changes for next year (many by choice and not dictated by our curriculum map, for those of you who teach in WF)! Watch for progress on developing lap books, word sorts, book/author/genre studies, and tools for teaching non-fiction, and watch for a classroom overhaul! I'm moving to a new room and am so appreciating the push to declutter, reorganize, redecorate, and create the optimal environment for learning, and thanks to Pinterest and endless teacher blog resources I have a wealth of ideas at my fingertips. So I guess this summer I'm not really taking a "break" so to speak, but I am thrilled to work on projects that can't normally be undertaken due to the demands of day-to-day teaching. Photos of the progress in my new room to come in a few weeks!

New Look!!!

Beginning Clarey & Co. was possibly the most exciting project I embarked upon last year. Not only did it create a great way to communicate with parents and empower them to support student learning at home, but it also provided an opportunity for students to reflect on their learning, share about school, and pull together so many of the skills we are learning in order to publish on the blog. 

I am thrilled to share that my classroom blog will soon be renamed and redesigned!!! Due to my limited design experience, I've hired http://www.jumpingjaxdesigns.com/ to manage the change  (address is linked so that you can check out her work). I'm THRILLED to see the redesign (hopefully mid-July) and start using my blog to the fullest by the start of the 2012-13 school year. 

Now onto my next project...cleaning out, packing up, and relocating my classroom! SO MUCH WORK, but a new location and the opportunity to invest time into better room setup, organization of materials, and overall classroom environment will be well worth it come next year! :)