Composition Books

Here is what my first grade team and I are doing with our composition books this year. Times are tough and we realize this for all of the families of our students. We asked for each student to send in two composition books. With the first book we each take it home to our wonderful husbands and/or dads and ask them to cut them in half. Word of advice from my dad, use a small saw blade otherwise it can chew them up. So instead of one big composition book, we now have two small ones that we are using as the students' word work journal and math journal.

 In the past we have used regular sized composition journals but  {big surprise} the students were just wasting the pages. So now we use these mini journals and it works great!


The other composition book we use as their writing journal. It looks like this:

{I have different labels for the boys}

Now here is what is special about these journals. I don't know about you but I always have students who just LOVE to share what they write, but can never find their story. Or they open up to any blank page and begin writing {which is a total pain for me because I don't want to spend forever trying to find what they have written (cause I love to leave them little notes) }. The solution? A permanent bookmark! Here is how you do it:

Open up to the back cover and hot glue a piece of ribbon near the spine.



Now your ribbon can mark the page of any story your little sweeties are working on. No more frusturation for you or for them. Yay!! Pretty sure I will be using a ribbon bookmark for all of my journals this year.

Check out this cute ribbon I found at Michaels today! I know, its perfect!

I'd love to know how you are using composition books in your classroom. Check back soon for first day/week ideas!

I'll end this post with a picture of the tazmanian devil whenever he enters my classroom. Too cute to get upset with!

Love to all!