First few days back to school!

I started school on Monday and it has been a hectic start! We have some many new things that we're implanting this year. New reading and math curriculum, new lesson plan format from the county, new professional growth plan, new principal, and lots of new staff!

I've had an awesome start in my classroom though! My students are babies who need to be whipped into shape. I feel like I say this every year at the beginning! They are just so little and not independent at all! My feet hurt so bad from all the jumping up and walking around the room! I'm getting the kids comfortable with the routine, rules, and first grade work.

I've used Kagan structures this week for class building and team building. So far I've used Find Someone Who, Round Robin, and Timed Pair Share.  In Find Someone Who kids walk around when the music starts and when the music stops they pair up with the person who is closest to them. Then the students introduce each other. Then the person with the shorter hair (I just did because it was easy for the kids to determine) asks the other person if they can fill something out on their paper. I used Abby Mullins Find a Friend sheet from her Fun with Firsties back to school packet. It was perfect for first graders and easy for them to read. Then they switch and the other person fills out their paper. Then it starts all over again. The kids LOVED getting to know their classmates this way. They enjoyed moving around, meeting new people, and finding out new things about them.

Timed Pair Share is exactly how it sounds. In pairs, students share with a partner for about 30/45 seconds while the other listens and then they switch. This has been great for pair work and math talk!

I also used Round Robin for team building. the students shared what they did over the summer with their table. They just take turns talking about what they did to generate ideas for a writing activity. Everyone has a chance to talk and they keep talking about ideas until the time is up. We've done this with some other fun questions I just have a sleepy brain and can't remember right now!

Here is their writing from those wonderful summer activities: 

I'll have to take more pictures of my kids actually doing all this! I've been bad about taking pictures! I did take 1st day pictures of my cuties and I'll make a magnet for the parents of it for open house.

I'm loving the chalkboard stuff right now! I got this sign off Pinterest! 

I took some pictures of my kids doing read to self! How adorable! They read for 7 minutes! They were great at finding spots, staying in one spot, getting out and putting away their book boxes. We broke the stamina because one little guy was goofing off and "fake" reading which led to a whole new lesson.

I'm trying to stay organized but papers just keep piling up this week!

Thank goodness for cute binders and bins! 

I'll leave you with some school humor.

Hang in there teachers we're half way through the week! 

Monday Made It {Crate Chair}

My Monday Made It is short today. I made another crate chair for my room. I would have made 2 more but my staple gun ran out of staples. Now I need to go to Ace Hardware to get more. But here is my one lovely crate chair I made! 

I got some wonderful chevron fabric, green ribbon, and foam cushion from Hobby Lobby, the crate from Target, the wood was from Home Depot and cut by a friend.

I put the cushion on the wood and pulled the fabric very tight. Then I stapled it down making sure the fabric was pulled as tight as possible. I also stapled down the ribbon in a loop to make a handle.

There is the crate in my room! My crate chairs will go around my kidney table for guided reading and math! Now I just need to lower my table down for the kids! This is great because the kids won't kick my shins (their feet can't touch the ground so my shin end up hurting) and  they will have more room because the chairs didn't fit.

Now I'm back to working in my classroom more! Gotta get this room ready for Meet the Teacher!

First Day { back in my room!}

I went back to school today! It was my first time over the summer!

I decided after a yummy sushi lunch with my bestie to venture back over to my school today. I had my trunk full of things from Target and was ready to find my room looking like I had left it back in early June.

Like this: 

Unfortunately, I walked into my room like this:

COMPLETE DIASTER 

I know they had to clean the floors and the tile but really....com on it is a lot of work moving furniture all over the place! I basically just moved stuff back where it was before and tried to move my desk into a formation that I liked. I'm not sold on the placement of the desks which is why I haven't put down the chairs. It's overwhelming going back in so I did what I could and chatted with my classroom neighbor and school secretary. 

This is what my room looked like at the end of the day! I'm pretty happy with the progress and will be going back in next week to put things together, organize, and get things ready before pre planning.

I just got this AWESOME new pencil sharpener I got from my warehouse order. Do you get a warehouse order from your district? We get a certain amount of money to spend on school items in our district warehouse. We place the order before school ends and then get it over the summer. I ordered this pencil sharpener, paper, folders, and binder clips. Like those rad new pencils?! Dollar spot at Target of course.

I pushed this cabinet over back to its place today. I also set up my writing area. My bulletin board hasn't changed. Can you see my new blue lamp?! I love it!

This is the back area you couldn't see from the other view. I need to clear off my kidney table and still put things up but it is coming along. 

I also got to keep this bulletin board up which is great! This is another one of my favorite boards that hangs right next to my guided reading table. 

I just bought these tins at in the dollar section at Target. I'm going to use them for my students table supplies: pencils, scissors, glue sticks will go in the tins. Then I'll have crayons in the other part of the basket. 

Well that's all I have for my first day back but I'll keep you updated as I continue to organize my room and get ready for the new school year! 

Update on my classroom

Hey! I wanted to updated y'all on how my class is coming along. I feel good about my room right now and feel like I've accomplished a lot! I'm taking the day off tomorrow from all things school and getting a massage, pedicure, and manicure. I need a day to myself before all the craziness of back to school really kicks in!

Next week starts are pre-planning and we'll have many meetings, professional development, planning, and meet the teacher on Thursday. I hope to sneak in a lot of organizing too as I'm still working on my student's take home binders and want to organize some files before my kiddos come!

Back to my classroom....I'm just going to show you some parts of the room you haven't seen yet.

Listening area

In the right basket I have all my books/tapes/CDs and in the left basket I have my listening notebook which keeps response sheets, crayons, pencils, and headphones. I just finished making my beautiful crate seats. I stapled a ribbon handle on the side for easy lifting. I haven't decided what should go in them yet but I love them with this small table.

My CAFE bulletin board. Can't wait to add sticky notes from students and strategy cards up there!

My calendar area and schedule listed for the students.

My book banner! I got this idea last year from 4th Grade Frolics. This is in the library area-the library is to the left. The red bins to the left are my non-fiction leveled readers and the blue bins are my book boxes for my students. The one green bin is for my poetry notebooks. The other books are for the students and need to make their way into their desks. This will be a perfect job next week for PTA kids helpers who come by our rooms to lend a helping hand in getting ready for the school year.

Daily 5

Right now this is where my Daily 5 literacy stations chart will be. I want to have kids move their clothespins to where they want to go. Not sure if I like this spot but it is right in our meeting spot, easel, mini-lesson area so I feel like it belongs in this area just not sure I like how it looks. The other part of the bulletin board will be used for anchor charts.

My "desk" area which I have shown you but I just added this piece of fabric to block the organized files mess below the desk. I'll organize this underneath mess next week! 

Without a actually desk I need to stay super organized and put my files in this bins. I just need to go ahead and organize these things and move that teacher bag! I do love how the fabric covers this up though because even when it's neat I don't want people to have to see this! 

Just some odds and ends of my room. My pencil system which I'm sure you've seen ready to write and need to sharpen pencil bins so students can easily get pencils. Notice all the pencils are in need to sharpen lol this will be switched before the 1st day! I saw these adorable bathroom passes 3rd Grade Thoughts and had to make some of my own. Even though my kids use the bathroom in our room and we can hear everything this will be a germ free way to make sure they have clean hands when opening and closing the door.

Next week I'll be posting about Meet the Teacher, pre-planning, and my finalized room before the kids come! Hope you all are getting excited, prepared, and organized for the new school year!

Up-cycling {CFC Project Week #6}

So up-cycling is really just recycling again but I like the word. It sounds like a new thing. I tried to explain this to fiancé and he laughed "It's just recycling...you recycled and repurposed something." Yes yes, but it made me feel good! This summer I started to collect washed out tomato cans (we eat spaghetti every Sunday-it's a family tradition!) so I got a lot of cans. Now originally I had no clue why I was saving these but knew I wanted to use them for my classroom. Well I got inspired after looking at some blogs and Pinterest. I stuck cute labels on them and used them to hold various classroom items. 

So here is my contribution to recycling for classroom use:

I just posted this one picture that had a few different size cans for paintbrushes, straws, popsicle sticks, and hot glue sticks. I didn't think you would want to see a whole bunch of cans lined up so I thought this picture would capture the use. 

I hope to find some other cool ideas in this link up!

Where it all goes down Wednesday!

I have posted many classroom pictures in the past but here are a few all together without any of my other ramblings! Hope you enjoy! I love looking at other classrooms to get ideas!

View when you walk you. 

Guided reading, library, and Face of a reader

Library 

Homworkopoly board 

Rules, reader's choice, and literacy center pocket chart

Beanie baby reading strategies

My welcome sign...it got cuter! 

My super cute notebook holder for work on writing! 

Thanks to Porters Polka Dots! I won this in a fab giveaway! 

Team meeting, my first student, and more of my classroom!

I had my first team meeting to talk about dismissal, duties, meet the teacher, planning, and our play. They were all very nice and welcoming. I happy to be a part of a sharing team. I am so excited to be doing a 1st grade play this November. In the past the first grade team has done a Thanksgiving play and a Patriotic play around Veteran's Day. I think my vote will be for Thanksgiving this year...there is just something SO adorable about little kiddos dressed in pilgrim and Indian outfits! I loved my pilgrim outfit when I was 5 so much I not only wore it do our class feast but I wore it our real Thanksgiving feast!

After the meeting was official over, I stayed and chatting with my team leader. This is when I got introduced to my first new student-which happens to be her son! I couldn't believe it! (Usually teachers get to pick there child's teacher so either a. She wanted to be un-partial  in picking his teacher since I'm new or b. She really liked me during the interview( there was a panel of 8 people) and thinks I'll be a good teacher for him.) Either way I'm flattered to have a staff members child in my class and hope that she is fully satisfied with his learning this year. He was very polite and friendly as well as happy to meet me-his new teacher! I am extremely happy to have met one of my little firsties! Now I just need to hunt down our office staff to find my class list.

Now for my classroom:
It might now look like a lot of improvement but I actually got a lot of organizing done and placed everything where I think I want it to go. Suggestions on room arrangement, etc. are welcomed! :)

This is what my room looks like when you first walk in. The adorable carpet that was in previous pictures got taken out :( it was a Kindergarten teachers rug that somehow got moved into my room. I still need to put up my Reading Takes Us Places letters but I did get two boards done today! The one that is leaning on the cubbies is my finish Homeworkoply board and the one to the right is my math centers and vocabulary board.

This is what you see if you look to the right of my doorway. So excited my library is finished and CAFE board is up! I do need to put "The Face of a Reader" up though-blogging kind of makes me think of all the things I still need to do...See the blue standing pocket chart? I just snagged it from the work room today it was in a pile of free stuff. I controlled myself and only took this because I still was throwing away piles of stuff today. Oh teachers! 

This is really not that great of a shot but it does show our goodbye rhymes, how we get home paper, schedule chart, and today's password. (which will be sight words) I'm excited to do this starting this year. It reminds me of the Harry Potter books where you have to know the password to get into each dorm. (Dorky, nerdy, I know..don't care) 

This is the view from the other side of the room. As you can see I added my pirate banner-top right and my word wall! A special shot out goes to Frogs in First for providing me with this adorable pirate word wall.  There are velcro strips so I can add the sight words as we go along and then take them off when the class knows them. 

My classroom library is organized by genre, level A-Z, and AR. See Ladybug Teacher Files to get started on leveling your classroom library. Starting from the right are my leveled reader books and book boxes, then my non-fiction books and books that need to organized (top shelf), then to the left are my fiction books and reading buddies on top. The basket on the bottom under the Just Read sign is going to be used to put back books and it will be our class librarians job to put them back each afternoon correctly. Oh and I love my pirate rug! :) X marks the spot to good reading! (ooh that could be an idea to put in the library...) 

This is my writing table..kind of a mess right now but on the back wall is going to be content vocabulary and on the back of the bookcase there are writing strategies. On the table there is an organizer for paper and clipboards. No worries it will get jazzed up and ready for the kids! 

Yes I know it's an awkward picture. I don't know what the Iphone was thinking. This is my math wall unfinished but at least up and my math games are in the rainbow drawers. 

Ta da! Finally this board is complete! I cannot even tell you how long I sat and tried to configure this board because the pieces do not fit around a regular bulletin board. It is done though! :) 

This is my desk area and my Pirate of the Week board. I still need to put up my favorite things to show off to my kids. 

This is my birthday month board where I will put up all the kids pictures under their birthday month. Thanks Erica Bohrer for the idea! Also featured is the tooth chart and behavior chart. 

Finally if you are still with me after all my ramblings you are awesome! These are some very colorful crates/buckets I don't know what to do with and a white board that doesn't a home. Suggestions are welcomed. 

Thanks for taking the classroom tour and reading my ramblings! Back to school is in full gear!