Back to School Night

Well, I survived week two of my teaching career, and I am still loving it! Surprisingly, so far I am not really stressed at all. Sure, I sometimes get there very early or stay late, but for the most part I am still super energized and relaxed! I am sure that won't stay forever, but for now I am really enjoying it.

On Thursday was Back-to-School Night! I was a little nervous having to talk with parents for an entire hour, mostly because I felt like they would ask me questions I didn't yet know the answer to. But, with the response "I don't know, but I am going to find out!" prepared in my brain, I tackled Back to School Night with gusto. And what do you know, the parents weren't so bad afterall ;-) There was only one question I wasn't prepared for and I was able to come up with a reasonable solution on the spot. For the most part, I think parents left feeling pretty happy.

Here are some pictures.

I decided to continue the Mission theme I did on "Welcome Day" on Back To School Night because it worked so well. On the right are a stack of pages ranging from field trip information to volunteering opportunities etc.

I of course wanted to make sure that the bulletin boards were filled with projects we have been working on. Here are the compass roses we made as a part of our beginning of the year maps/geography unit.

I also put up all of our newspapers.

Finally, here are the completed "Highlight of my Summer" paragraphs we did. This was the first "Writing Process" work we did where students first brainstormed, wrote a rough draft, revised, edited and then finally wrote a final draft. I had students write these in their best cursive and they also drew a picture.

My favorite part was having the parents answer a Did You Know with some of the content my students have been learning in Social Studies. I thought it was a nice way to show what we have been learning. I was very pleased to se that some of my parents did not know the fact :-)

Anyways, that was basically it. I made a PowerPoint and spent about 30-40 minutes talking about my classroom and sharing my expectations for the year. Then I opened up the floor for questions and allowed some time for parents to explore the classroom. And that was that!

First Week of School!

Well, the first week of school just flew by. I'll be honest, I can already tell that I will not be updating my blog very often. Things are just too busy. I think my goal will be to update once a week since I have more time over the weekends, but I can already tell you now that that is probably not going to happen either.

Anywho....

The first week of school went SO well! I LOVE my kids! So far they are really well behaved and the "problem children" I was warned about are not a problem at all. Teaching procedures is going really well. The students love the group-points system, and I have a really easy time getting their attention and transitioning from one subject to the next.

I am especially proud of my Morning Routine. If you are (or are going to be) a teacher and haven't read "First Days of School" by Harry Wong, you need to get on that because it is absolutely amazing. I implemented his morning routine to the letter and it is absolutely awesome.
Every morning, my students come in, check in, take out their homework and start working on the assignment layed out on their desk in absolute silence. For the first twenty minutes of school, not a single word is spoken in my classroom. Literally! My students do practice work quietly at their desks and this gives me time to do attendance, check homework, and prep other things we are going to cover that day.
The first day of school, we practiced the routine.
The second day of school, I gave a few reminders to some and rewards to others for completing the routine successfully.
The third day of school, I watched in awe as the entire class followed the procedure to the letter. Seriously, I am so proud!

Not everything is going perfect of course. I am still a first year teacher after all! My main problem so far is organization. There are certain procedures that my co-teacher introduces that I haven't, for the simple reason that I don't even know what I want! The other class spent 15 minutes learning how to title, name and date every single assignment they turn in, and where to turn it in. I did not teach that, and currently have everyone turning everything in in just one inbox. I just haven't quite decided how I want everything yet! 
But I am not too worried, as I feel that this can come with time. I have all of the most important classroom management procedures in place, so even if my classroom will be a bit cluttered, it will be a "in-control","quiet and focused", "cluttered" classroom. I am ok with that (for now) :-)

Anyways, on to some pictures! I will go in order of some of the days.

#1 Welcome Day!
Monday was Welcome Day! Students came in with their parents from 9-11am just to meet the teacher, see the classroom, and get acquainted with the school. I think it is an awesome idea and every school should have it. Welcome Day took the edge off of the first day of school for both my students and myself as we had already been acquainted with one another.

This is what students found on their desks when they came in. All of their workbooks as well as their first "Mission" to be completed that day in the classroom.

One of their missions was to answer the "Did you know?" question on the bulletin board. I was initially worried that students might be too scared to admit that they didn't know something, but that was clearly not the case! On Friday, I had students write a refection on the first week of school including 3 things they had learned that week. Many chose to put this fact as one of their learned things. I am planning to use the "Did you know?" feature for actual curriculum and facts, so I am really excited that it seems to be working.

#2 First Day of School!

Our first day of school was a half day, so it was pretty much just packed with procedures.

One of my students made my day and gave me a bucket full of candy! I mean literally, an entire bucket! I love pinterest and use it for ideas all of the time, but this is the first time I have been on the receiving end of a pinterest idea. It was a great start to my day :-)

My students absolutely love the group points! They get very competitive in trying to earn points for their group, which results in a very quiet attentive class and very quick transitions. Love it!

After I introduced the class rules and main procedures, we did a sticky note activity to get students excited about the year. I loved reading the insights students had to give on the first day. Some of those "What I am excited about" stickies even said "That my teacher is really nice", which was of course lovely to hear for this pretty nervous first time teacher :-)

Finally, we ended the day with an "About Me" art project. This is something I found on a "Bulletin Board" site and then pinned on Pinterest, which then got repinned hundreds of time. Obviously it wasn't my idea, but I like to think that I had some influence on it being done by lots of teachers ;-)

Students were supposed to draw things about themselves onto the puzzle pieces. Some students chose to draw what their hobbies were, others drew foods they likes, and still others just decorated their puzzle piece with things they enjoyed such as rainbows or flowers.

I haven't added it yet, but I plan to add the quote "We are all unique but every piece is needed to complete the puzzle" to the puzzle which is currently on my door.

If you are interested in doing this with your class, it is SUPER EASY! Just super-impose a blank puzzle (images found on google) onto either a projector or overhead, and then trace the individual puzzle pieces on a piece of paper (I used card stock). It took some prep, but this is also something that a parent volunteer would do an awesome job at.

Here is my puzzle piece. Of course it wouldn't have been complete without a reference to ultimate frisbee :-)

#3 The Rest of the Week.

The rest of the week was spent in several different ways:

1) We practiced our procedures.

2) The students took a few pre-assessments so that I would know where they were at skill-wise coming into the year.

3) We did several "Beginning of the Year" activities

4) I scaffolded my students through writing a "Highlight of my Summer" essay, which was probably the meatiest (in terms of hitting standards and objectives) assignment of the week.

5) I taught several "Community" lessons, which focused on creating a positive classroom community by teaching teamwork, social skills, and how to address bullying.

One of my classroom community lessons focused on bullying/respecting others feelings. I had students cut out and decorate hearts without telling them what it was for. Then students had to pass their heart to the right (we were sitting in a circle), where that student crumpled it while saying "I don't like you". We then talked about how that made each student feel, watching their hard work get crumpled. Next, students tried to unfold their hearts while apologizing to it, and we talked about how even though they tried, they were not able to completely get that heart back to normal. We discusses the effects our words have on people, and how saying "I'm sorry" doesn't completely repair the damage. Finally, students went to their desks and wrote this poem onto their hearts. The hearts are now on a bulletin board in order to remind students to treat each other kindly.

Students also wrote a newspaper about themselves, including their favorites, their hero, and a story about themselves. On Friday, we sat in a circle and every student presented their newspaper to the class.

Sorry for the black smudges, but that is what I did in order to get rid of the pictures that the students brought in to add.

For Social Studies, we started curriculum while also making it fun, by making compass roses on posterboard. We first discussed the cardinal directions and how a compass works, and then students got to work creating their own. I think they turned out really nice.

Well, that is basically it!

Overall it was a fantastic first week! I feel energized and excited for the rest of the year. Real curriculum starts next week!

Classroom Tour!

It is finished! It is finally finished!!!

I can't even tell you how proud I am of my room. I randomly catch myself just beaming with pride at it. My own classroom. Wow! It took me many many hours of hard work, and I absolutely love how it turned out. I can't wait to have some more of those bulletin boards filled with student work. I will preface my pictures by saying that I think the room looks way better in person than it can be portrayed by my old little point and shoot. So view these pictures and then imagine things even better ;-)

As a reminder, here is the Before...

And After!

Back of the classroom before... 

And After!

 I am especially excited about replacing that ugly and ripped tan sheet with the pretty leafy green one.

You guys have already seen pictures of my library, as it was the first thing I finished in my room. However, it now features a green rug from IKEA as well as some comfy pillows that I got at the thrift shop for two bucks each.

When you walk into the door, this the homework/check-in section when you turn to the left. Students will put their homework into their file container, which will make it really easy for me to see who has it and who doesn't and to numerically order them for grading and inputting. If students don't have their homework, they have to fill out and turn in a "No Homework" Slip as well, in which they state their reason for not having their homework. I will keep all of these in a binder and it will be both a great way for me to see who is consistently forgetting homework but also a great way to show their parents.

This is a closer look at the table. The pizza pan on the left is how students sign in without me having to do roll each day. They simply move their magnet from Absent to Here. Then, I just have to look at who never moved their magnet to see who isn't there that day. I made the magnets out of 1 dollar clear stone decorations, modge podge and old/used bulletin borders.

This is my favorite portion of my classroom so far. The Boggle board is for early finishers, and the letters are easily movable. I can even very easily replace them with numbers or vocabulary for a simply made review bingo.

I love my interactive "Did you know?" bulletin board, which I found on pinterest. Students have a numbered clothespin, and they can either answer the question by moving it to "I didn't know that" or "I knew that!". At the beginning of the year, I am just asking a question to go with our Mystery theme, but later on in the year I can use this board to preview and check background knowledge on a unit I am about to start. It is going to be a fun way for students to learn new facts without me expressly having to teach that fact.

The picture turned out a little dark, but here are the prizes that students can buy in my class based on a ticket reward system that I have. I refuse to spend a lot (or any) money on prizes so they are all privileges I can give them for free. Even the treasure box is filled with cool knickknacks that were given to me rather than purchased.

Here are all of the jobs, of course with Mystery themed titles. From top to bottom the jobs are Paper Collector, Paper Passer, Supplies, Answer the Phone, Ipad Helpers (we have an Ipad lab), Pencil Sharpener, and Floor Monitors.

And finally, here are a few different views of the classroom than what has already been shown.

The classroom from the back of the classroom.

I work at a Christian private school, so this is my bible verse in the classroom. It is pretty much the only thing that distinguishes it from a public school classroom at the moment.

Word Wall, which will be filled with the academic vocabulary we learn this year.

The room as can be seen from the right front corner (where the jobs are listed)

Mystery-themed nametags on all of the desks!

Back left corner. This offers a view of my small group table. That table used to be where the projector stood but it was too big for be in the middle of the classroom, so I squished the projector and document camera onto a desk and am now using the table for better purposes.

Alright well that is it! Tell me what you think!

Its coming along

Well, my classroom is coming along slowly, but its coming. I thought I would share some pictures of some of the projects I am working on.

 My main stressor are my bulletin boards. There are so many of them in my room and take soooooo long to put up by myself. Just putting up one bulletin board takes me over an hour.

This year, I am going with bright lime green and royal blue in my classroom, and am bordering both with a purple bordette. So far, only the bright green has come in and I am still waiting on the bordette and blue fadeless paper. I am really liking the green. It is bright and happy, and I think it is going to make my classroom a friendly cozy place. It does definitely need to be the brightest color in the room though. Since I am still waiting on the blue, I left the old white bulletins up, and I don't like the combo. Together, they are too stark, so the green needs the dark blue to balance it out.

When I am not doing bulletin boards (which is honestly at least half of the time), I am working on other small projects as well as organizing my classroom.

This is what I created as a fun activity for early finishers, which is an idea I saw on pinterest. The eggs are sitting empty so far, because I am only going to introduce this a few weeks into school. Then I am going to fill it with fun practice activities that relate to the content we are currently learning. I am also planning on having some fun "Reward" type activities in there such as the opportunity to play a math or spelling game on my Ipad.

Our class theme is Investigation/Mystery (think FBI, Sherlock Holmes etc.). So instead of putting class jobs on the wall like most people do, I made badges, laminated them and am attaching them to students desks with velcro.

Here they are freshly laminated. I am having specific jobs for each table group. A is Paper Passer; B is Paper Collector; C is Supplies. Then I also have a few whole class jobs, which are designated by the "Special Mission". These include Floor Monitor, Answering the Phone, Pencil Sharpener etc. Of course, in keeping with the theme, I have given all of these jobs cool agent names such as "Communications Director" and "Inspector".

Here is one attached to a desk with Velcro.

Now, I am a bit worried that students are going to pick at them when they are bored and destroy them because they are attached to the desk. But I decided to at least try the idea, and we shall see. I am hoping that if I really hype it about protecting the badge, maybe my students will be a little bit more careful. If they do get destroyed, I will just go to an only wall job display, no harm no foul.

There are so many half-finished projects in my room that it is incredibly messy. The one thing I have completely finished and that I am completely happy with is my library. Once I organized everything, I bought these stickers at the Dollar Tree, and labeled all of my books based on category

All of my nonfiction books are labeled with a green sticker.

All of my multicultural books are labeled with a pink sticker. Then I marked all of my series chapter books (Box Car Children, Magic Treehouse etc.) with yellow stickers and have a special shelf just for them. I am hoping this will help so that the series books don't get lost in the mix of all the other chapter books.

The rest of the chapter books are all mixed up together anyways, so they didn't get any stickers.

Well, that is it for now. I am hoping to get all of my bulletin boards done by Tuesday, and hopefully I will post a whole classroom reveal by the end of next week.

Staff Training starts on the 12th and the kids come on the 20th! Aaaah, school start is really creeping up fast!!!

Monday Made It

Participating again in Fourth Grade Frolic's Monday Made It!

My Monday Made It's are all kind of half completed projects, but I figured I would show them anyways because I haven't finished anything yet. I worked all day in my classroom today, and will probably do the same for the rest of the week. So I am getting things done, but its all so overwhelming that it doesn't feel like I have made a scratch in the work that needs to be done. Sigh...

The first thing you will notice on all of these pictures, is that they are not super pretty. I am no artist, and I am going for speed and functionality over spending hours making every little thing look amazing. I doubt my students will notice, even though my pictures wont look nearly as amazing as so many of the pinterest pictures that teachers are posting.

The first thing I did when I got into the classroom this morning was to create a space on my whiteboard for my class/group points and a special place for the homework. I used blue artist tape, which I got from Michaels, because it leaves 0 residue on the board if you have to take it off.

The next thing I did was create a card pull system. This is used school-wide. I don't mind it at all, but I don't think I would have a choice even if I did. But I like that it is school wide since the students come in already understanding it. I need to update the "How is your day?". It was used by the past teacher and is yellowed and old. I am probably going to try to come up with something that matches our Mystery/Investigation theme, like "You got caught!" or something like that.

This isn't completely done because I still need to buy see-through decorative stones from the Dollar Tree, and then finish the magnets. But this is going to be both my sign-in and bathroom regulation system. At the end of the day, I will move all of the magnets to "Absent". Then, when students come in in the morning, they will move their magnet to "Here". This will give me an easy way to do attendance, as all of the magnets that haven't been moved are the actual Absent students.

In my classroom, I have the rule that only one boy and one girl can be at the bathroom at the same time. This is to prevent chit chat in the bathrooms, especially from those sneaky youngsters who go to the bathroom specifically to talk with their best friend about something. As students leave the room, they will put their magnet in the bathroom spot. Other students will be able to see that someone is out, and that they have to wait.

I have like nothing magnetic in my room so I bought a 5 dollar pizza trey. I do wish I would have gone with a square shape because I could surround the whole thing with ribbon like I wanted to. I got the ribbon for 1 dollar at Michaels and I really like it. My classroom colors are dark blue and lime green this year.

Nothing new or special here. I finished making Pick Sticks, with student's numbers as well as a red dot on the other side. That way, when a student has been picked, I can turn the stick upside down and I will know not to pick that stick until others have a turn.

And this isn't a Made It, but I am almost done with my classroom library. A pretty nice haul for a brand new teacher, yes? I got super lucky by having tons of generous people donate books to me. I am super grateful.

The one thing I am sad about is that inevitably this entire section is going to be super unorganized again, with books put back in every which way. I am going to try to put different colored stickers on different books so that they go back to their section, but I can totally see this getting messy quick.

Right now, I have all of my Non-fiction books displayed on the top right, and then I have my Multicultural books on the bottom, with a few just regular Picture Books in the very back of that section. Then I put all of the Series Chapter Books together (Box Car Children, Magic Tree House, Nancy Drew etc.). The rest of the chapter books are just thrown all together.

Alright, well that is all for today. I am working in my classroom every day this week, so hopefully I will post more updates later.

Classroom: Before

I spent my first day in my new classroom today! I didn't get that much done. Mainly, I inventorized everything to figure out what I have and what I still need to get, and then I set up the desks, and thats pretty much it.

Here are some verdicts:

1. The room is actually pretty dang big when you only have 20 desks to take up room. Once I set up the desks, I still had a good quarter of the room with completely empty space. I am going to be able to set up a teacher's table for small groups, and a nice little library area. I am very pleased with this

2. I have more storage space than I thought. When I first saw the room, my first thought was "Oh no, there is like no storage space" because I was comparing it to my resident teacher's classroom from when I student taught. In comparison, there is like NO storage space. Here's the deal though. I have no things. So the "little" storage space I have is going to be standing pretty empty for a looooong time :-P

3. The amount of bulletin board I have to decorate is freaking me out! I measured dimensions, and I have 70 feet of bulletin board to fill up. HOLY SMOKES!!!! I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. On the other hand, once I finally get that done, its going to be really nice.

4. Nothing is magnetic in my room! One teensy tiny filing cabinet and that is it. Not even the whiteboard is magnetic. I honestly couldn't believe it. I stuck a magnet on it, and stared dumbfounded as it dropped to the floor. Lol, never in my life have I seen a whiteboard that isn't magnetic.

Anyways, here are some "Before" pictures!

This is the view, slightly to the left, from the door. I like the white bulletin boards (it brightens up the room since the walls are dark brown) but the orange has got to go! I do not like the color orange, so its just not working for me.

Our school theme is Mystery/Investigation, i.e. Sherlock Holmes/FBI/etc. so really I should be going with black or something. But I don't care. I am going with bright lime green, and I don't care that it doesn't really work with the theme! I love bright lime green :-)

 Back of the classroom. The cloth covers up a mini refrigerator and microwave, and a piece of plywood that was used to connect the two drawers. I am going to try to find a cuter cloth to cover it up, because the burlap isn't working for me.

My desk is massive! Which is kind of a bad thing, because it just gives me more space to pile huge amount of paper and things, without having to clean them up. I know this from my massive desk at home, which I basically can't even work on cause its so messy. Uh oh!

Also, I love the yellow bulletin board behind my desk. Which is funny, because I usually don't like the color yellow. It is definitely staying.

 See that tangle of cables on that table. Yeah...that took me 45 minutes to untangle. It was bad. This table was designed to hold the projector, but you have to place it in the middle of the room and it takes up a ton of space. So I squished everything onto a desk instead, and will be using the table as a group table.

          I love that the desks are pretty small. It makes the room seem so much bigger once I set everything up in table groups. However, I do not love that all of the desks are different heights. I am not OCD, but that was really bugging me. Oh well, nothing that can be done. I currently have 16 desks in the class, so I need 3 to 4 more.

          Also visible in this picture is the huge amount of chapter books that were left for me. I also got donated a ton of books by a teacher moving on to be a vice principal, so my class library is going to be quite sizable for a first year teacher! Yay!

Ok well, those were the "Before" pictures! Hopefully, I will have a blog post in the next month with the "After" pictures. I am not a good organizer OR a good decorator, so I am a bit overwhelmed, but hopefully it is going to look nice.

Basically, this is my reaction to school right now:

Create curriculum? No problem!

Teach lessons? Totally got it!

Behavior Management? Gonna nail it!

Organize and Decorate the Classroom? AAAAAHHHH I CANT DO THIS! I CAN NEVER BE A TEACHER!

Lol.