Teaching with TLC: Schedules and Decorations

Our schedule was changed again but hopefully this will be the last time. There are four language arts teachers in my school. As a 5th grade group, we are going to implement CAFE and Daily 5 in some fashion. I can't imitate it exactly because I don't have the same amount of time and my students are a little older than the students that Daily 5 is geared towards. I thought I would share how I'm going to allocate my time. I teach two sections and each section receives approximately 90 minutes for reading. I put this schedule together today. The black font is my first class and the red font is the second class.

My Schedule

2o12-2o13

Bellwork	7:45-8:05
Whole Group Reading	8:05-8:35
Small Group 1/Weekly 10	8:35-9:00
Small Group 2/Weekly 10	9:00-9:25
Writing	9:25-10:25
Switch Classes	10:25-10:30
Bellwork	10:30-10:50
Specials/Plan	10:50-11:35
Whole Group Reading	11:35-12:05
Lunch/Recess	12:05-12:50
Small Group/ Weekly 10	12:50-1:15
	1:15-2:15
Small Group 2	2:15-2:45
Clean Up/Dismissal	2:45-2:50

I explain in an earlier post how I adapted the Daily 5 and created the Weekly 10. While I'm working with a small group, the other students will be working on their Weekly 10.

I'm almost finished setting up my classroom for the new year. All I have left to do is decorate one bulletin board and put my library books in baskets and label them by genre. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do for my bulletin board. I want it to focus on reading. I have a few ideas but not convinced what to do yet. Here are some pictures of my classroom. This is just for the start of the year. As we move into reading and writing strategies, I will display more content oriented items on my walls. For now, I just put up decorations so that the information I eventually put up will hopefully not just become wallpaper.