Farrington Thoughts

I started the thing that most teachers dread doing, setting up my classroom. Even though it may seem as a dreading project, I actually LOVE setting up my classroom. All the possibilities that come about as I set up the classroom. It is so fun. Anyways, I started setting up my classroom on Tuesday. My goal is to create a space that is welcoming, warm, fun, and efficient. The last word that I mention was efficient and that's an area that I hope to improve on this school year. I want to create a space that maximizes learning time and minimizes down time. I strongly believe that this can be done at the beginning of the school year. Here are some pictures from my classroom: View form the door. I am trying my reading table at the back this year. I think it will give me a better view of the room and give me space to create my reading nook area. My students loved having a cozy place to relax.  Another view from the door. I like how you can almost see the library. That'

What a day! Today, I attended the Daily Five conference here in Minneapolis. The designers of Daily Five and Cafe, the Sisters, are here for a two day conference. I am so lucky that I got the opportunity to attend because there was so much information and FREE stuff too! The biggest take away from the conference for me was the power of student CHOICE. This whole management system was designed so that our students have the opportunity to choose different activities to do, while we work with small groups of students. Student CHOICE is a huge motivating factor for our students with reading and writing. We have to teach them our expected behaviors, then once they prove that they can do those behaviors, give your students CHOICE. It will increase engagement and give us opportunities to differentiate; thus meeting the needs of our students! Next year, I plan to continue using Daily Five in my classroom. However, I plan to focus more on teaching expected behaviors and releasing my student

Since I am not able to get into my classroom, I just picked up this book called Crash Course. I was reading some teaching blogs and they talked about how they really enjoyed reading this book. It got them really motivated for the new school year. I don't know entirely what it is about yet, but I believe that it focuses on the importance of building relationships. I can't wait to read it too! Thought I would share it with you guys to get you excited about the upcoming school year! If you buy it, you should let me know how it goes! Hopefully it is as good as the reviews suggest!  Happy Reading!  Mr. Farrington 

Yesterday, I went into school thinking that I could get a head start on organizing. Well, I was wrong as my school is torn up (new flooring and painting in the hallway) and my classroom still needs to be shampooed. This was fine with me because I became overwhelmed immediately after walking in the room. On the positive side, I was able to track down a two-drawer filing cabinet. I hope to clean out my four-drawer filing cabinet next week sometime. Then, I will make the transition. Tables are against the wall. Our school's awesome custodian is taking care of our classroom pet fish during the summer! So nice! Word wall is falling apart. Talking about word wall falling apart, I heard that hot glue might be the answer to our taping problems! I tried it at the end of the year for some other posters, and it held the posters up pretty well. Now, you see why I could not get to my filing cabinet. It's stuck back there with all my other junk. Oh well, I can always do work fr

Summers are great for relaxing and family time, but it is also great for working on BIG projects for next school year. Right now, I am spending my time reflecting on last school year and figuring out what I want to change for next year. I spend a lot of time on Pinterest, visiting other teacher's blogs, reading twitter (YES, twitter has many ideas for education) and reading education books. I now have a list of big projects for this school year (I am sure that you do too!) I believe that this is important whether you have been teaching one year, 5 years, or 20 years. We can ALWAYS improve. Some of my big projects right now are: Classroom Library - Organizing my library so students can easily access books from my library. I have tried a few approaches, but still searching for an effective one. Recently, I read about a teacher who uses paint sticks to help students. Each student has a paint stick with the Secret Agent Number on it. Whenever they take a book, they place the paint