I've been looking forward to starting up "bucket filling" in my classroom since December. I've seen lots of blog posts about it so I know I'm not the only one using this. My school didn't have the book so I had to wait and get it from another school, AND THEN we had snow and ice, AND THEN I had to wait until a day when FINALLY no one was absent. That day finally came on Monday. I had a small bulletin board that I was using for our focus wall/anchor wall (reading/la skills for the week are posted here), so I moved that over to a corner of my whiteboard and took over this space for our buckets. I plan on putting up pictures of our class to fill the empty space, but for their privacy I took this picture first. I used small library pockets and made a label with each student's name and clipart of a bucket. I couldn't find clipart that I liked for the sign so I drew that myself... I'd be lying if I said it took any less than 45 minutes for me to make that. I'm not much of an artist! I stapled an actual bucket to the board and it holds the notepaper and some pencils. I snagged that bucket (actually more like 5 of them) in the Target dollar spot last summer and I knew I'd find a use for it! We'll get notes out on Fridays only, and they can write notes for bucket filling when they finish morning routines, when they finish work early, after lunch when we're taking our bathroom/water breaks, or at the end of the day when they're all packed up. It's only been 2 days and those buckets are getting pretty full!
Our bucket filling notes
Our bulletin board
Our bucket filling notes
Here's something I've been working on for next week. It's an ee/ea long e game called "Read the Street". Students read the ee/ea words on the car cards and try to move their cars through each stop light. Watch out for yellow lights (lose a turn) and red lights (start over)! Every thing you need for the game is in the download and there are a few blank cars in case you want to add your own words. You might also want to draw arrows on your game boards to guide players through the lights. I'd love for some of you to use it and let me know what you think! Click on any of the preview pics below to download.
