Class Journals

Tackling my to do list has been the one thing on my mind this past week... we are down to the wire here with just one full week before I have to head back. I have not read the Daily 5 but have seen a lot about it. I wanted to read it this summer but... time got the best of me. What I did decide to do was revamp my idea/thinking of centers and small groups. I used to hate despise centers because I always fell behind having to change them with every changing skill. I ended up giving up and sometimes would have nothing out and other times would have a ton of stuff just all over the place. I finally realized that my centers do not have to be skill specific. And so, I went on my way to searching pinterest for ideas. One idea I really liked was the idea of class journals to be placed in my writing center. I thought that 1. the kids would love to write in a class journal and 2. it would be a lot of fun to read again at the end of the year. I decided on some topics that I wanted to do and how I would use them. My plan is to pull out a new journal each month, all while keeping the prior journals out. Just because it is December doesn't mean kids won't want to write a back to school story. And to make the journals cute (because cute things make me happy) I decided to make cute covers for the notebooks. It didn't take me too long to finish and now all I have to do is print, laminate, cut, and glue them onto notebooks (which are in my class and I can't go there until next week). I will store the ones not being used in a crate under the table so that they are accessible to me but not in the way (and not in a place where I "won't lose them"... inevitably losing them). Since I went through all the work of making the covers I went ahead and listed them in my TpT store. They are listed for only $1 . 50. Here is an image of the covers for anyone interested...

Has anyone here done class journals before? What do you think of them? What do your students think of them? I am pretty excited so I sure hope my students are excited too!

And a quick cell phone pic of mine put together!