Yard Sales and A New Reading Program

I am having a yard sale this weekend with my friend who is getting ready to move to China for the year. Yeah...there's a lot going on in that sentence. Okay...so my teaching BFF Lindsay had decided to haul her cookies to the other side of the world to teach first graders in a private school. I know what you're thinking...WHHAAATTTTTTT?! Me too...but she's set on it, so now I'm just trying to be supportive.Let's take a moment of silence for me as we think about how very lonely I will be without my ultimate partner in crime this year...

**sniff**

 Anyhow, that leads to the yard sale. She needs to make some mulah to make it over to China so she's essentially been having a perpetual forever yard sale like every weekend just so sell stuff off. This weekend, I TOO will be joining her. Here is my current pile-o-stuff I'm trying to get rid of.

You're probably thinking WHAT does any of that have to do with the title of this post? Well, I'm getting there. I went up to school yesterday to pick up some construction paper and markers to make signs for all the junk. Technically, as I already mentioned, I'm not allowed in the building until the 10th (Monday)...but I am in a bromance with our bookkeeper and she let's me do what I want :) I tell them not to let me go up to my room unattended because I will get sucked in...but they don't listen. I should have been up there five minutes tops...........I was up there two hours. #whoopsies

I was thinking to myself on the way up that I need some boxes too, for lugging all that junk to my friend's house. I was busy making a mental note to myself to ask our Head Custodian for some boxes on my way out when I walked into my room. "Holy Toledo, Batman!" I said to myself. On the floor of my room there were 15, count 'em, 15 boxes which I assumed to be holding our new reading program, Benchmark Reading. Anyone else use this program? We got rid of the Scott Foresman basal readers several years ago and have been using Balanced Literacy ever since. I tend to use Daily 5 in my room but SSSHHHHH, don't tell anyone!

This is what it looked like when I finally got it all unpacked...

That, my friends, is a LOT of materials for one classroom's worth of reading. #amiright? So now, if you're a fairly rational teacher, you're probably wondering where in the world all that stuff is going to FIT?! 

SO.

WAS.

I.

I'm not the kind of teacher that has empty shelves hanging around in her closets or uncovered bookcases. Does that kind of teacher even exist????

Hence the two hour stay. I would have been happy just to take the boxes, but there was NO WAY I could leave all that stuff out in disarray for me to walk into bright and squirrely Monday morning. No thanks. I had to find a spot for it RIGHT THEN. Does anybody feel me on this? Surely, someone else out there has a compulsive need to make sure that everything has a home in their room??

This was my solution.

I reorganized, compacted, and cleared out a WHOLE SHELF in one of my large cabinets. Let me tell you, THAT was a lot of work. See paragraph above for the reason. I figure I'll keep four of them put away at all times, and only keep out the one with the books I am using currently. Ultimately, I have a feeling that I'm not really going to LOVE this program because it comes with a "script" to read, and that's not usually #howiroll, but I guess we'll see. Also, it has small group books already leveled for each unit, and I kind of enjoy talking with my kids and giving them options about what we read. Not to mention, 80% of the books in the kits are nonfiction. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of the VOCAB we need to be teaching kids isn't coming from nonfiction about 9/11, it's coming from LITERATURE. Only time will tell its effectiveness.

Anyone else tried a new reading program lately? How'd you like it?

T.G.I.F.A.I.C.G.I.M.C.M!!!!

(Which stands for Thank God It's Friday And I Can Get Into My Classroom Monday)
Brianna