Themes, FACE, and Word Wall (Freebie too)

I had to rearrange my Reading bulletin boards this week.  It was necessary, though of course that doesn't change the fact that there were so many other things I should have been doing at that moment in time.

This board used to be my FACE board - complete with all my strategies.  We are changing up our reading a bit this year and starting to stress finding more connections between the stories in the different units with themes.  My team sat down last spring and brainstormed the different themes that went with all the different stories in our Open Court.  These aren't the unit themes, but rather the underlying current of each story.  Some of the titles have more than one theme.  

Here's our list:

*Teamwork

*Citizenship

*Respect

*Compassion

*Being Clever

*Fairness

*Boasting

*Responsibility

*Courage/Bravery

*Kindness/Caring

*Perseverance

*Initiative

Now, we have already been talking to a famous clip art artist to design some cutesy stuff that will work perfectly - but I felt the need to have those headings up since we have already been reading a bunch (and are already making connections).  So I made up some of my own heading cards to use in the meantime, printed, and laminated at 11pm one night this week (yes, a school night), and got this going the next day.  The blue construction paper is just stapled up underneath.

In class we had a discussion of the different books we have already read (2 OCR stories and 3 mentor sentence books), and then on those little apple post its I wrote the title and how the book fit into that theme.  Note to self - the apple post its look like they are sticky, but they really aren't - so I had to resort to tape.  Oh well!  When we run out of room on a blue sheet, I will just stick another sheet on top - so we can keep on comparing throughout the year.

With all this moving around, I still needed to find a space for my FACE board - so that moved to the blank board under my window.  I did have to take off some of the more basic strategies for it to fit - but I love how this just worked so well in this area.  Those baskets on the ground contain whatever hands on math center of the day.

As for my Word Wall - well, it's coming along.  I am using different color index cards for Reading vs. Social Studies vs. Science.  My math words are staying on my math wall.  

Would the headers help you?  The frames are from Fun in Room 4B.  :)  The frames are over at Google Docs and I'm sharing.  Just an FYI - I tried really hard to get them centered, but some of those words didn't want to cooperate.  It was more important for me to have the size font for my kiddos to read easily. 

Well - that's it for now!  Tomorrow is a very big day - LEGO FEST!  My boys are excited (husband included), and I'm tickled for an entire day of them being happy and NOT FIGHTING!  Here's to a great 3 day weekend.  :)