Getting ready for school

I am very excited about the coming school year and taking on the challenge of first AND second graders! This means more runny noses, skinned knees, tears, tattle-telling and tantrums (Oh Lord, help me), but I am looking forward to it nonetheless. No matter what, I will love my kids and be blessed by them =)

Getting ready for the new school year means planning a theme, shopping for supplies, researching new and creative ideas, creating a syllabus, planning the curriculum, and my most time-consuming adventure ~ leveling and cataloguing my classroom library! Yep, I am going through my books one by one (close to 300) and leveling them (to reading levels), organizing the levels by color coding them (stickers!), and cataloguing them in a database (thank you husband for teaching me how to use Excel). It sounds crazy, but this will make for such a wonderfully organized library! The students will be able to choose books that are at their individual reading level and know exactly where to put them back (all books will be in boxes that are labeled as well).

Kids cannot enjoy reading if they are attempting to read books above their reading level (think stuttering and frustration). They can't get through them and they realize that reading is hard and boring. So this way, the students will be able to enjoy the books they choose and be successful in reading through them. I also implement Reader's Notebooks in which the students record the books they read and respond to them in a number of creative ways. This helps the students to comprehend the reading and find personal connections to it.

So all very exciting! (Well, to a teacher at least) And of course, I am praying for my students which I will soon have names and faces for =) I know this year will be great and my students will be AWESOME readers!