Classroom Pics and Donalyn Miller!! What a Great Day!

Today was amazing! Not only was I able to get a ton of work done in my classroom, I was also fortunate to be able to meet and listen to the incredible "Book Whisperer", Donalyn Miller. It was a terrific day!!

Here are a few classroom pics:

My desk: The polka dot folders make me so happy.  I have a To File and To Print holder attached to the window. The drawers are for Monday-Friday papers. My cute little $4 lazy susan is holding paper clips, post its, binder clips and rubber bands.The organizer hanging on the right is holding sharpies and other teacher supplies.

 My classroom library (certainly not as big as Donalyn Millers but I am working on it!)The books are numbered to correspond with the number on the tub and it's separated by genre. I'm going to have a library helper in each class to help keep it organized. 

I am 1/2 British and love this mantra.Every teacher needs to be reminded of this constantly! More pictures will be posted as I keep working on the room.

OK, here are a few key points from Donalyn Miller today.  She was so gracious by the way. During turn and talk times, she would walk up the aisles and thank everyone for being there. So down to earth!

But here are the grim facts she presented:

"The number one reason kids drop out of school is because of poor literacy skills." Obviously if they can't read, they can't comprehend, not just in English class, but Social Studies, Science, Math and even Health class are going to be difficult to be successful in.

"If you are an avid reader at 16, then you are 3 times more likely to have a professional job than a non-reader." Stephen Krashen The Power of Reading

DM is all about increasing children's exposure to books. Her classroom library has THOUSANDS Of books in it. She hits up yard sales, Goodwill  and subscribes to this website Booksalefinder.com. It tells you where local libraries and other places are having CHEAP book sales. I signed up today and have already found a great sale going on in September literally 2 minutes away from my house!!!I also hit the local Goodwill and yard sales. If you are fortunate to work in a middle class area you can ask parents to donate books. If not, ask a local church to do a book drive for your classroom or school. My church is always doing outreach projects like that.

DM's students typically read over 30 books a year. She sets high expectations and reads the books that her students are reading. I have talked about how important this is for a Language Arts teacher. Children want to know that you are interested in what they are reading.

Another great suggestion  was to ask your other content area teachers to expect their students to always have their IR books with them. I am definitely going to suggest that to my team next year. If they are always held accountable for having this book then it will make keeping up with the book into something they do not want to lose or forget.  It's also a great "busy activity"  to do in the other classes when children have finished their classwork early. It's helping everyone! 

DM was truly inspiring and I was so grateful for the opportunity to meet her. Now I just need to go pop some tags at the Goodwill!