Focus Walls!

This post will focus on focus walls!! This year, I revamped my walls and decided to make use of my huge cinder block walls effectively by creating focus walls that would allow my students (and I) to remain organized with tools that are useful and effective for teaching, reteaching, reminding, etc. 

The possibilities are truly endless...

So let the focusing begin:

Here is our Reading Focus Wall

 Created with:

Large black paper plates, small black paper plates, safari print die-cut letters, red die-cut letters, sentence strips, pocket protector sheets, pocket charts, and of course a parrot, how could you forget a parrot?!

For each week, it displays:

-our focus (i.e. long e, vowel pairs ee & ea)

-our theme (changed every three weeks)

-our comprehension strategy and skill

-our high frequency words

-our vocabulary words for our anthology

-our spelling words

-a picture of our read aloud

-a picture of our anthology story

-sound spelling cards we are using

-a visual to show the 4 rotations of each small group

 *I simply change this out for each week and it is revisited and referenced throughout the week when teaching the skills of each week within the theme--by using the pocket protector sheets, I simply erase and write

Below:

-are posters to the Reading Genres

-my leveled readers (they were on a crate but space is very limited within the classroom)

-below (hanging) are our "Million Dollar Words" that we come up with in our complex text read alouds, the students can revisit these words by un/clipping them on the clothesline hanging below

Here is our ELA (English Language Arts) Focus Wall:

Created with:

Large black plates, pie tins, safari print die-cut letters, PIE posters (The Author's Purpose), a created poster with examples of the different things that can be written, Handwriting Posters, 

Below:

-is our paw prints writing system that I began this year and the students LOVE IT!

-our Pizza Papers (idea courtesy of the fantastic Teacher Tipster)

-various materials for writing on the shelf below: 4 bins: dictionaries/ABC books; our word rings (rings with various common and proper nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. to help with writing); different types of writing paper, and our "sleepy words" (synonyms for common used words)

 Here is our Math Focus Wall:

Created with:

Large black paper plates, small black paper plates, pocket charts, sentence strips, 3M hooks

It displays:

-the 8 Math Practices that our county uses

-a chart about problem solving that our county uses

-keywords for addition and subtraction and visuals for where the biggest number goes within addition and subtraction number sentences

-the different ways to make 10

-doubles

-120 chart (using highlighter tape to emphasize the 5's and 10's columns)

-hooks that have 2-D and 3-D shapes

-a visual to show the 4 rotations of each small group 

In all, our Focus Walls are great tools that we use daily! :)

Until next time!