Now on Instagram!

I've joined in the Instagram love! You can now find me at Eberopolis on Instagram.



I started using it on Wednesday, so I'm still new, but I'm making it a goal to post something (usually) classroom-related every day. Be sure to follow me so I can find all of my teacher-friends who are already there!

Have a great weekend!

Are You Ready for NaNoWriMo?

I plan to encourage my students to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year. For those of you who aren't familiar, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. It's the month where tell your inner-editor to hush so you can just let the ideas flow on to the page. It's about getting something done without worrying how perfect it is, because you can always go back and revise in December.

Last year, as October drew to a close, I introduced NaNoWriMo to my class. I explained the premise, and gave them the option of taking on the challenge. We talked about word count goals and commitment to writing outside of the classroom. Then the fun started. Student after student signed up, each cheering each other on as they dedicated themselves to writing a book. In the end, I think all but two students decided to participate. We had weekly lunch meetings where students could eat and share their writing with friends, and although not all students met their goals, they definitely started to find their voices as authors.

The Young Writers Program for NaNoWriMo has some great teaching materials to get your students psyched for NaNoWriMo and to teach them about narrative writing in general. You can check out their website at http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/. In addition, there's still time to order a NaNoWriMo classroom kit which comes with a student goal setting poster, NaNoWriMo stickers to track progress toward a goal, and buttons for those students who participate or finish. The classroom kit is free (and awesome), but they request a $10 donation for the materials -- a small price to pay to get your students excited about writing.

In honor of NaNoWriMo, I'll be hosting a month-long link-up that will start on November 1 and run the duration of NaNoWriMo. Whether your class officially participates in NaNoWriMo or not, I hope you'll join me in sharing the great writing work that's happening in your class. Grab the button, spread the word, and meet me back here on November 1st for a writing extravaganza!

In the meantime, check out the Educators' section of the Young Writers Project. I'm sure you'll find plenty to get you (and your students) excited for a month full of creative writing!

Who's in?

The Best Text for Teaching How to Write and Revise Leads

My fourth graders hate revision. They're often offended by the mere suggestion that they hadn't nailed the perfect lead to their stories in their first draft.

I'm used to this. I see it every year in writer's workshop, especially at the beginning of the year when we're writing in a genre for the first time.

And every time I see this, I become more determined to break them of this thinking.

Today, we were working on the Common Core State Standard W.4.3a - Orient the reader by establishing a situation and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally.

My favorite story to use for this is standard -- especially with fourth graders -- is The Teacher's Funeral by Richard Peck.

This book, set in a small Indiana town with a one-room schoolhouse, has the best opening line of a children's book ever.

If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year for it. 

Richard Peck keeps it going from there, building an incredible introduction. You can read the entire first chapter here.

Today, I started our writing lesson by reading this chapter to them. I have the Kindle edition of the book, so when I read it, I can project it on our ActivBoard so the students can follow along as I read. They laughed throughout the intro and were immediately hooked, begging me to choose this as our next chapter book read-aloud. Score one for the objective of "hooking your readers!"

I then asked them how many of them thought that introduction was the one that was in the first draft of his book.

One or two hands went up.

Richard Peck shared in an article called "In the Beginning" (Horn Book Magazine, September 2006, pp. 505-508) that it normally takes him 24 drafts of his lead before he's happy with it. TWENTY-FOUR!

And here I'm asking my students to take a second pass at their writing.

I shared that little nugget with my students before we reread the first chapter. As we read if for a second time, we focused on the characteristics of his writing that made it such a great lead.

Here's what my students noticed, compiled into an anchor chart:

Once we finished the chart, I had them go back to a piece of writing they've been working on and try to write a different introduction. Some students tried changing the point of view, others jumped into the action or started with dialogue. Whatever the strategy, all of them managed to produce a new version of their introduction, and all were at least a little better than what they'd started with.

We'll get this revising thing down eventually...

What are some of your favorite books to use to teach students how to hook their readers? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

Authors Are People, Too!

Oh, bloggy friends, I have missed you! This year is kicking my behind! I had high hopes that I'd still be blogging with great regularity this year, but alas...between my 28 awesome fourth graders, the start of my PhD, and my incredible two-year-old daughter, time is an oh-so-precious commodity. By the time my little one makes it to bed at night, I. am. wiped. out. And then I usually have textbooks to read and papers to write. But not today.

Today, I wanted to share with you the very awesome author visit we had at my school.

Granted, it's old news by now. It happened during the Decatur Book Festival on Labor Day weekend, which, by the way, is one of the coolest things you can do in the Atlanta area if you're ever here for Labor Day. But my experience was cool enough that I still wanted to share...four weeks later...

Every year as part of the book festival, 1 or 2 children's authors come and talk at our school. This year, the fourth graders got to listen to Chris Grabenstein. If you're not familiar with him, you should seriously run, not walk, but run to get his new book, Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library.

This book is the story of Kyle Keeley, an avid game-player who wins a contest to spend the night in the new library built by master game-maker Luigi Lemoncello. As Kyle explores the library, however, he realizes that winning the contest was just the beginning, and a whole new game with high stakes, twists, and turns is starting. It reminds me a little of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Roald Dahl is just one of many authors referenced in the book. It's very clever, fast-paced, and entertaining. I started it as a read-aloud when we found out that Mr. Grabenstein was coming, and we seriously couldn't put it down. It was one of those books where I've had multiple students go out and buy it on their own because they couldn't handle waiting for us to read it in class. It's way up there on my recommendation list.

Mr. Grabenstein definitely inspired the students as writers. He shared a lot about his writing process, but his overall message was to just let it flow without editing yourself. To illustrate that, he modeled writing a story for the students. Prior to starting, he gathered 5-6 random words that students had written on sticky notes. He stuck those in his back pocket. Then, he projected a crazy picture.

He explained the difference between a protagonist and an antagonist, and he encouraged students to "Ask yourself, 'what if...?'" He said that there are always a few questions you need to think about when planning a story.

• Who is this guy?
• What does he want?
• Where is he?
• Who wants to stop him?
• Why?

He then took student suggestions to answer those questions and plan his story.

Next, he had students come up with a starting sentence: "My face hurts," and an ending sentence: "He ate radioactive iridium isotopes" so we would know when his story was starting and ending. And then he just started telling the story. It was hilarious! At various points throughout the story, he would pretend to be stuck and pull a word out of his back pocket, and no matter what it was, he just rolled with it. He has a background in improv comedy, so I suspect that helps. Still, it really hit home the message that you shouldn't censor yourself while you're drafting -- you can always go back and change things later if you need to. When you're drafting, you should just let it flow to wherever creative place you're led. 

 We were pretty inspired by his presentation, and we went back to the classroom to a) write, and b) read more of his book. The kids were so excited! We were totally unprepared, however, when he came into our classroom about an hour later. (So unprepared, in fact, that some of my students were still working on their vocabulary tests on Spelling City!) 

Usually when authors have come to our school, they've given their presentations, signed a few books, and then split. Mr. Grabenstein went above and beyond, happy to spend his day engaging with the kids and taking an interest in what they were doing. They barraged him with questions, and he answered openly and honestly, encouraging the kids the whole time. Needless to say, Mr. Grabenstein has secured quite a fan base in Eberopolis.

In the weeks since his visit, we've had countless conversations in writing about some of the little tidbits Mr. Grabenstein shared with us, but more than anything, I loved that my students got a chance to see that authors are real people, too. They have good ideas and bad, writer's block and inner editors just like the rest of us. But they power through those hurdles, and we get some fantastic books as a result.

Thank you for visiting us, Mr. Grabenstein. It was definitely a highlight in our year.

Back to School - Math Edition

It might be time to think about renaming my blog, because I'm really excited about teaching math this year! It all started when I read the book Number Talks over the summer.

I've always understood the importance of mental math and computation strategies, but I'd never really understood how to teach it. It felt like something kids either had or they didn't. This year, however, I decided that we'd start doing number talks from day #1, and I'm already blown away by how my students are developing as mathematical thinkers. They're able to solve complicated addition problems in their heads -- no paper allowed -- and they're articulating their strategies well. I've been introducing a new strategy every 2-3 days, and it's been awesome. We'll be moving on to subtraction strategies in a few days, and I have high expectations for that to.

To help students with the mental math strategies, I made a set of posters that describe each strategy with an example of how it works. There are 20 posters in all -- one for each strategy described in the book.

The complete set is available in my TpT store, and they'll be on sale for 28% off this weekend as part of the Teachers Pay Teachers back to school sale if you use the code BTS13.

As I've been working on order of operations and number sense with my fourth graders, I also introduced the four fours problem. The premise of the problem is this:

Using some arithmetic combination of four 4's, can you write an equation for each of the numbers from 1-100? Here are the rules:

• You may use any combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and/or division
• You may combine numbers, e.g., use 2 of the fours to make the number 44
• You may insert decimal points
• You may use a four as an exponent
• You may use square roots
• You may use factorials, e.g., 4! is equivalent to 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24
• You may use overbars to make a decimal repeat
• You may NOT use any digit other than a four
• You MUST use all four 4's in each solution

Before I go on, let me give two caveats. 1) I didn't expect all of my students to be able to handle all of these rules. Square roots, exponents, and factorials are WAY above my fourth graders heads generally, but I did have a handful that could handle it. And there are plenty of solutions to be found that don't require those operations. 2) This problem freaked out the parents more than it scared the kids, I think. I had a few panicked parents that I had to talk down while we were working on this, but in the end, it was well worth it. My students were so excited about math and problem solving as we worked through this problem. It was homework each night to try to find a few more solutions, and then we'd add to a chart during math class. Look at all that my students accomplished after just two days!

We've filled in a bunch more solutions since then, but of course I left my camera at school this weekend...

Finally, in honor of the big back to school sale on TpT, I've bundled four of my favorite math resources into a back to school math pack for this weekend only. 

Sold separately, this is $17 worth of products that I'm selling this weekend for $10, but after Monday, the bundle will no longer be available in my store. So if you've had any of these on your wish list...

Hope everyone had a great week! I'm still learning how to juggle grad school with teaching, but I'm hopeful that I'll still be posting at least once a week.

Off to start catching up on blog reading and filling my cart for the TpT sale! Have a great weekend!

Classroom Tour 2013

Whew! It has been a crazy week and a half. I have completed 7 school days of my year already! SEVEN! Now that things have settled into a more normal-ish back to school routine, I'm finally sitting down at my computer to share some of the gazillions of pictures I've been taking lately and share more about my first week-plus of the school year.

First, I reorganized my classroom library using the Ready 2 Number Customizable Library Labels from Ladybug's Teacher Files. I adore all of Kristen's work (as you'll see in later parts of the classroom tour!), and I was so excited to reorganize my classroom library this year.

I decided to use the Booksource Classroom Organizer tool to manage my classroom library this year, so this was really quite the overhaul -- scanning all of my books, sorting them, and labeling them. And like so many of my projects, what I thought would take me 1-2 days of work this summer ended up being closer to 5, so that really ate up a sizable chunk of my pre-planning. But it's so worth it. My books are now impeccably organized.

 And when I ran out of shelf space, I spilled some of my larger nonfiction books into drawers.

Those used to be drawers for students to store their many notebooks and folders. One of the benefits of going to a mostly paperless classroom is that I can reclaim those for other things.

Here's a view of the library as a whole, with my "Welcome to Eberopolis" pennant banner and iPad cart in the middle.

In addition to reorganizing my classroom library, I created a better small group space for my classroom this year, courtesy of Ikea.

 Last year, I used one of my 6 student tables for small groups, but with the number of students I have, I didn't feel right about packing them into 5 tables and leaving open a table that we'd only use some of the time. I also had a shortage of chairs, and I hated having to wait while students hauled over chairs from their tables to my small group space.

This year, I bought 2 small white tables from Ikea (each about $20) and 6 teal stools (about $5 each). I already had the blue swivel chair for me, but that was only $15 at Ikea. So in the end, this is a great small group space for less than $100. Well worth it to me.

I'm trying to do Daily 5 and CAFE this year, and I came across the very cute CAFE letters from Terri over at the Creative Apple.  (I think she's updated them since then, but I'm not quite ready to return to my printer and laminator just yet!) I also finally hung up my cursive letters from Ladybug's Teacher Files.

On the other side of the wall I have my class job chart, an explanation of my class economy, and my Standards for Mathematical Practice posters. I also made something new that I'm trying out this year for exit tickets, but I'll share more about that in a future post. 

Here's our class meeting/carpet space.

I have some new buckets for holding clipboards at the front of the room, and I brought in a new chair for read alouds. I like that the chair easily folds and stores away so that we can move it out of the way when we don't need it.

The view of my desk is perhaps the least inspiring section of the room, although I'm loving the new paper lantern lights that I've put in my room. They really affect the ambiance, especially when it's early in the morning and we're all settling in.

 And then in front of my desk are all of my students' book bins, numbered 1-27 (so far!). That's where students store the few notebooks, books, and papers they have in my classroom. They're also keeping their headphones in there for now.

Finally, I acquired a few Ikea desks from a friend who was leaving our school at the end of last year. They run about $20 each, and they're a total pain to put together, which is why he left them with me rather than disassemble them for his move. They're awesome because they fit under the lip of the table and act as an extension for the 3 tables of 5 students, and they also give a little extra space to some of my students who need it. They're getting well used this year.

So, that's my classroom tour for this year! It's the happiest the space has ever felt to me, and I really need that happy space -- especially given how many hours I spend there each week. It feels a bit smaller now that I'm packing 27 bodies in there, but bit by bit, it's getting very organized.

I hope that everyone is having a great transition back to school -- or is enjoying those last few weeks of summer before heading back! I start classes for my doctoral program on Monday, so I don't know how often I'll get to blog this year, but I promise not to drop off the face of the blogosphere anytime soon.

Can't wait to see everyone else's classrooms!

Preparing for a Paperless Year!

I am in full-blown pre-planning mode. We officially reported back to school on Thursday, and I'll have 27 fourth grade students in my classroom on August 1. It's crazy to think about how fast this summer has gone and how much work is still ahead.

This will be the first year that I will attempt to go paperless from day 1. Last year, we only had 1:1 iPads for the last 6 weeks of school, so it was after we had established many of our routines and procedures for the year. As I prepare for this shift, I'm linking up with the Tune into Technology linky to share my plans for management and organization.

Managing the Students

1. Number the technology
I assign students numbers 1-27 on the first day of school. We use these numbers for everything -- mailboxes, book bins, lining up, etc. We'll also use them for the iPads. Each student will be assigned the iPad corresponding with their number, so they'll always know which one to use and which slot to put it back in when we clean up.

2. Build Classroom Norms and Routines
We'll develop some essential agreements about the iPads before we even get them out. I'll let the students decide on the rules, with a little extra guidance as necessary. The items that we'll need to touch on will include:

• how to get the iPad out of the cart
• moving around the classroom with the iPad
• using the iPad appropriately (following directions, etc.)
• putting the iPad away

You can read my previous posts on this here and here.

3. Develop a common vocabulary for the buttons and gestures, and teach some basic actions.

We'll talk about the different buttons on the iPad and their functions. We'll also talk about how they can be used together to take screenshots and quickly navigate from one app to the next. For more information about how I do this, check out my TpT freebie (the very first thing I ever made for TpT!).

4. Give time to explore
The first writing assignment my students will have this year will be to write an informational piece (either descriptive or how-to) about an app of their choosing. By giving them this assignment, I'm giving them time to play around with the iPad and explore the available apps while also getting a baseline writing sample. This has the added benefit of cultivating "experts" about the different apps among the students.

We actually start school on a Thursday this year, and I intend to get all of this started during those first two days.

Organizing Myself

As I prepare for my paperless year, there are a few items I'm working on before the students even arrive. This will help me be ready to go on day #1.

1. Create a stack of Evernote notebooks for all of my students.

I'm planning to keep all of my conferring notes, work samples, and other relevant data in Evernote this year. To prepare for that, I've created an Evernote notebook for each student, and I have them clustered together in a "stack" so that all of my homeroom students are together.

Since I anticipate using this system for many years, I'm formatting the notebook names as "2013 - Last name, First name." That way, I won't get confused when I'm quickly looking for the notebooks for this year's students as opposed to last year's. I've also created one additional notebook called "2013-2014 Overview." Listing both years ensures that the notebook will be on top of my stack when they're sorted alphabetically, and I'll use this notebook to keep track of notes and documents that pertain to the whole class. 

You can read more about setting up Evernote notebooks in my paperless series.

2. Create a checklist template for my class.

This will also be done in Evernote.

I like to have a checklist of my class roster available whenever I'm collecting forms or tracking important information. I'll make a blank checklist now, and then I can copy and paste it into future notes as needed. This is a huge time-saver down the road for me.

3. Make sure that my Dropbox folders are set up for distributing student work.

Although there are plenty of learning management systems available, I strongly prefer Dropbox for distributing assignments to students just because it's so easy on my end. All I had to do was create a folder titled "Student Assignments."

Once the daily folders are set up within the Student Assignments folder, I can share all of the folders through a link on my class website, and students can easily access everything they'll need for daily assignments. To read a complete step-by-step tutorial for how to do this, check out my previous post.

Since I set this up at the end of last year, all I needed to do was empty out the assignments I gave to last year's class so that I can start fresh this year.

4. Create a class on Class Dojo.

Class Dojo is an excellent online classroom management app that I'll be utilizing more this year. I'll tell you more about how I'm integrating it with my classroom economy in a future post, but for now, all I need to do is input my student roster and print out home access codes for my students and their parents. Then it will be all set to go.

5. Create a new group on Edmodo and prepare a welcome message.

(Edmodo has totally changed its app icon, btw. Check it out!)

I'll be using Edmodo to collect student assignments, give quizzes, conduct class discussions, and take polls. I'll need to have a group code ready to give students for the first day so they can sign up, and I'll want them to have something to see and do immediately when they log in for the first time.

****
Once I finish these 5 steps, I think I'll be ready to start the year. I have to admit, I find prepping for a paperless classroom far easier than what I experienced in the past. I'm looking forward to going on this journey with my students this year, and I can't wait to share all of the learning we'll have in store for us. It's going to be a fantastic school year!

Can't wait to read about how others are organizing and managing technology in their classrooms. Be sure to check out the other posts in the Tune into Technology linky, and have a great week!

Word Nerds Book Study - Chapter 7

By the time you read this, I will be officially back to work.

Yes, you read that correctly. My preplanning started today, and I will have students in my classroom on August 1st.

I've been super-busy preparing my classroom and wrapping up summer projects (and lamenting the number of projects that I never even got started). I'm looking forward to sharing more about that in the next couple of weeks. Today, however, I'm excited to participate in the book study of Word Nerds. This book study is being hosted by Sabra at Teaching with a Touch of Twang, and I would definitely encourage you to check out the previous posts at her blog and link up. This is a fantastic book for improving vocabulary instruction.

Chapter 7 - Spreading Vocabulary Wings

This chapter is all about additional classroom activities that can enhance students' vocabulary understandings. The authors make a few key recommendations.

1. Extend Vocabulary Through Morphology

Encouraging students to analyze affixes and roots can build their confidence as they tackle more multisyllabic words. Start with the most common prefixes (un-, re-, dis-, etc.) and build from there. Once students have experienced a few weeks of studying Greek and Latin roots, they can participate in a "Crystal Ball Word" activity in which they look closely at a word's morphology to predict its meaning. For example, with the word "transportation," students can break it up into "trans-," "port," and "-ation" and think of all the words that use the same prefix, root, or suffix. They discuss word connections as they make lists of related words, and from this one word, the students in the book were able to think of 41 words that share a similar morpheme! These sorts of word attack strategies are valuable to students as they tackle new vocabulary on their own.

2. Connect Background Knowledge and Facilitate Comprehension

Drawing on the comprehension strategies of making connections, this section highlights how important it is for students to be able to have a variety of experiences with words when they're trying to make sense of a complex text. For example, as students are attempting to make inferences from the text, they should be explicitly coached to add vocabulary words to make connections based on clues from the text and the student's background knowledge. This gives students an opportunity to practice using the new vocabulary and adds additional layers of meaning to the words they're learning. This could be an especially useful practice if you're trying to connect literature with content vocabulary. The example in the book highlights how some relevant social studies vocabulary (immigrant, culture, destination, etc) could be applied and connected to the book Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say.

3. Extend Vocabulary Development with Children's Literature
Picture books, with their shorter texts, less complicated plots, and amazing artwork, can be tremendous resources for teaching reading strategies. The authors highlight why this is also true for vocabulary instruction, and they highlighted several vocabulary-rich children's books that could be used. Here are a few of my favorites:

Pirate Pete's Talk Like a Pirate by Kim Kennedy tells the tale of a pirate who is looking to build a crew. But while Pirate Pete talks in "aargh's" and plank-walking language, the rascals he's recruiting talk in very sophisticated sentences with eloquent vocabularies. This may be used as a metaphor for how we want to elevate our students' writing and speaking away from "pirate-talk" and into the more elevated words of the rascals. Students practice revising sentences from pirate sentences into rascal sentences, and after several days of study, students can have a "Pirate Party" where they compete to "Talk Like a Rascal."

13 Words by Lemony Snicket takes 13 seemingly unrelated words and interweaves them into an amusing story. This could be a template for a student writing assignment which would require students to select 13 unrelated content vocabulary words and tie them into a story in the style of Lemony Snicket. I'm looking forward to trying this activity with my own students.

Baloney (Henry P.) by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith tells the tale of a boy in space who is late for school and needs to come up with an excuse for his teacher. As he describes his adventures, he inserts a bunch of words that sound like nonsense words (szkola, zimulis, etc.), but they're actually words from different languages. This is a great book for introducing strategies for teaching context clues.

Max's Words by Kate Banks is a great story for building word consciousness among students. It tells the tale of a boy who begins collecting words cut out of magazines and newspapers. He eventually realizes he can rearrange the words into stories, and he becomes the envy of his siblings.

The Odious Ogre by Norton Juster tells the tale of an ogre who has an extensive vocabulary that he uses as he terrorizes the town. Given the number of multisyllabic words incorporated in the text, it could be easily incorporated into studies of Greek and Latin roots and morphemes.

Word Nerds has so many great suggestions for easy ways to incorporate vocabulary instruction. These books were just a few of the ones mentioned, so I would recommend reading this chapter for some additional ideas. And be sure to visit Teaching with a Touch of Twang for additional suggestions and insights in this fabulous book.

Back to pre-planning! Thanks for visiting!


Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and/or believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Atlanta Blogger Meet Up

Yesterday, I had the privilege of meeting some fantastic teacher-bloggers as part of the Atlanta Blogger Meet-Up.

If you ever get a chance to meet up with other teacher-bloggers, I'd highly recommend doing it! It was wonderful to meet so many sweet and enthusiastic teachers who share similar interests, and now I can finally match names and faces with the blogs that I read all the time.

We met at the Swan Coach House in Atlanta for brunch, and it was wonderful. Amanda from Collaboration Cuties made us each a placemat with everyone's name on it.

And Stacia (the other half of Collaboration Cuties) made us name tags.

Jivey from Ideas by Jivey made us a little goodie jar filled with treats of both the sugary and teachery kinds.

And Elizabeth (Fun in Room 4B) and Brandee (Creating Lifelong Learners) made us this adorable to do list that is dry erase. 

There were 9 of us in all, and I'm so glad that I went. I'm typically a really shy person, but it felt like I was getting together with old friends! I'm so grateful to be a part of the teacher blogger community, and I love learning from other teachers. This group in particular has so much to offer, and if you don't already follow each of these bloggers, you're definitely missing out.

From left to right:

Amanda - Teacher at the Wheel

Jivey - Ideas by Jivey

Brandee - Creating Lifelong Learners

Denay - The Gemini Teacher

Liz - Polka Dot Firsties

Stacia & Amanda - Collaboration Cuties

Me!

Elizabeth - Fun in Room 4B

If you missed out on the meet up, no worries -- I have confidence that this will become an annual tradition. And for those of you who are interested in classroom technology, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is holding its annual conference in Atlanta next summer on June 28 - July 1. Wouldn't it be great to have a teacher blogger meet up around that? 

After lunch, most of us ventured to Ikea where I once again spent too much money on my classroom despite not needing anything in particular. I'd show you all of my finds, but I'm going to wait until my complete classroom reveal. Given that I start preplanning THIS THURSDAY and have students on August 1, that really won't be too long to wait!

Have a great week!