In my last post, I mentioned my Focus Wall for my classroom. In this post, I am going to elaborate on what all that entails. At my school, the elementary teachers (K-5th) were to post or display the state standards for their lessons each day where students could view them. For the prekindergarten teachers however, we were to display our curriculum’s unit of study Focus Question of the Week, the Question of the Day, and the vocabulary for the day. This method promoted teachers to create and sustain a print rich environment. Every classroom also had a Word Wall starting with student names; then, as the school year went on, they added their vocabulary words to the Word Wall as a reference to previous learning.  

We used Creative Curriculum for our prekindergarten classes, so the lesson plans were already prewritten and laid out for us. We created the template for our daily schedule and added the unit of study; then, the lessons would auto fill into the template. We then viewed, edited, and printed a week of lesson plans out at a time. While we viewed the lesson plans, we could also adjust which Intentional Teaching Experiences (these are small group lessons, gym activities, or outdoor play experiences) that we used for the day or week depending on what state standards we need to collect for grading the students. We graded on skill mastery within six main categories which are aligned with the state standards for prekindergarten. These main categories included: math, literacy, language, cognitive, physical, and social emotional.  

During my second year of teaching, my team and I began using Canva to create slides for our lessons and keep us on track. I used these slides as a template for the entire day as part of my classroom’s routine not just for the main lesson. Halfway through the school year, we decided that we should use these slides to help us with our Focus Wall. So instead of writing out the Focus Questions every morning, we created slides for each week of investigations for the unit of study we were teaching. With these slides, we also took the vocabulary words from the lessons to add them to the Focus Wall and then to our Word Wall as we taught them.  

Then, at the beginning of my third-year teaching, I decided that I wanted a binder per Unit of Study so that my long-term substitute would have everything they needed for the units when I would be absent due to maternity leave. I ordered some binders, page sleeves, and some page sleeves with pockets to slide the vocabulary words into. We had already created the slides which included the Focus Questions and vocabulary words, so I printed them out, cut them down, laminated them, and cut them down to size. (I have said this before, but I prefer cutting, laminating, then cutting again because it seals the edges. You do not have to do this. It is more time consuming, and I did a lot of this work before teachers even had to report back to school for workdays.)  

Within these binders per unit of study, I began with the first week’s lesson plans, Focus Questions, and vocabulary words; then, I added activities that would go along with that week’s lessons. I continued each binder in the same layout. Lesson plans, Focus Questions, vocabulary, and activities. I had these binders on a shelf behind my teacher table, so they were easily accessible and could be referenced as needed. For me, I opened them at the end of every school day to pull out the next day’s activity or lesson for small groups. 

Lastly, on the shelf next to each binder, I liked to have the read alouds that were planned for each unit. While we were in a unit, I had a basket of the books for that unit out for students to look through as they wanted to, and it was easy access for me to grab the planned book for a read aloud time of the day. When each unit of study ended, I would update the Focus Wall accordingly and the books that were out. So, the new study’s books were accessible for students and read aloud times. Of course, the students had their favorite books from each study, so I would also leave a few out in our regular classroom library for their perusal.  

***In my next post, I will talk more about organizing books and libraries.