Monday night and I just realized I never posted a reflection for last week! It was sort of normal, not very exciting week. I’m headed into a week of guided math in which I’ll be working with small groups to do sone learning about money (not very exciting) and everyone will be at other centres solidifying their math facts by playing math games.
It’ll be fine.
But last week I did notice how often our calendar is being accessed by kids. I saw a blog post this summer (I’ll try to find the link!) and decided I would display the whole calendar on our wall this year. I put up the 10 school months and then started the year, intending to find time to make it fancy.
One week in somebody added his birthday. Then we had to add everyone’s birthday. We added assemblies a field trips. During the first week of October somebody asked how many days until Halloween, so we added all of our major holidays, which lead to a lot of other holidays being added. There is a steady stream of people at the calendar counting how many days until this or that. The calendar has lead to many one-to-one conversations about time, counting forward and back, and important days for our classmates. (News flash: not everyone celebrates Christmas! This was news for many of my students.)
I’ve also been creating PicCollages of class photos to create a visual timeline. I need to get October printed! (Ugh!) it’s fun to look back at those memories too.
I haven’t done a class calendar in years. I thought it took too much time and space. But this very casual calendar, with no forced routine for its use, has been such a great addition to our class!
mrscorbettsclass.wordpress.com 
I love this, Lisa! We really wanted something similar to draw kids’ attention this year, but children completely ignored the calendar. We even tried adding some birthdays together, but nothing. Your post gives me hope. Maybe something to try again later in the school year. The photographs could also connect with some shared writing around experiences this year, and then kids could read them as they revisit them. I love math and literacy connections!
Aviva
Maybe January is a good time to start. It would get them thinking about how the years change from one to the next. I need to move our pictures so that people shorter than me can see them better. I put new ones up yesterday and I’m not sure anyone noticed because they were up too high. But if I lower them on that bulletin board they are going to get wrecked by people leaning on them. Maybe it’s time to employ the stick-tack and put them on the wall *gasp*. (Newly painted in the summer, but it should be fine.) I love activities like this that translate well in a variety of grade levels!