Wow. This past week has been nuts. I've spent at least 12 hours a day working on my classroom. It's still not perfect, but neither am I. I thought I would share a little of my pride and joy, but first...a look into our Sunday afternoon.
We left a piece of popcorn chicken in the tray on our coffee table after lunch, then ran a few errands. When we got back, the chicken had magically disappeared. Itchy was interrogated with inconclusive results. He has no alibi, so we don't really need the confession for a guilty verdict.
Okay, onto the classroom.
Behavior system. Everyone starts on green. Super awesome behavior moves them to blue. Not so awesome behavior moves them to yellow and beyond.
Who doesn't love a little Rick Morris sign language system? And a little pocket charts that I have no idea what to do with but it sticks to my white board so I thought that was cool.
Our classroom jobs. I've added a few more since this picture was taken, but the basic idea is that almost everyone has a job every day. Chris thinks these frogs are awkward.
Word Work center. Practicing spelling, phonics, and such. I'll try to jazz this up later.
Adorable Dr. Seuss bags for each child! They keep a few books in those bags and take them around the classroom everyday to practice reading to themselves.
Racecar words to help us use more sophisticated words than "like" and "good" when we write stories.
Journals for morning work. We will correct a few grammatically incorrect sentences then free-write every morning. I'm determined to produce children that know the difference between their/there/they're.
My rug that the Northfield kindergarten team lent to me. One of these days, we'll find the foam letter L to stick in that square.
My reading umbrella. Don't look at it... it's a little sparse. I drew some imaginary pillows in there. I just bought a ton of pillow today and plan on throwing them in there tomorrow, but for now, just pretend.
My little classroom library, sorted into categories. I need more books...
Here's how the library works. Every book has a star sticker on it. When you return a book, you must find the bin that has the same color star sticker and put it in the bin. Then record which book you read in your book record. I mean... I don't ask much.
I can't afford the cute little lesson plan books. Plus all their cute little designs on the pages doesn't leave enough room for writing actual lesson plans, so I decorated my lesson plan book with the huge bag of paint pens I found! This will have exponentially more polka dots by the end of the year.
Apparently we will be sharing the one sharp pencil tomorrow.
I am ashamed of the disarray of my desk right now.
This is how we rotate through centers. Each child is on a velcro paw print. The paw prints are velcro'ed to the plates, which are magnetized to the board. We can rotate whole groups of children easily by just moving the plate, but we can also switch kids into a different group by moving the paw print to a different plate. Genius? I think so.
My word wall under the white board. Do you see the surprise?
Okay, how about now? I couldn't resist. Go Vols.
Itchy and Chris came to help on Saturday. Yes, SATURDAY. Chris had a great time, as always. ;) Itchy cried the whole time.
That's it. My stomping grounds for the next year (and hopefully more). Tomorrow is the first day of school. I'm excited, anxious, and a little nervous about getting my kids where they're supposed to be. Being the new kid on the block is no fun, but I love my new 2nd grade team! They have been so helpful and made me feel so much more relaxed about starting in a new place. My prayer tonight is that I sleep at least 6 hours (a BIG accomplishment if you know me), and that tomorrow goes smoothly. I've been told my goal tomorrow is to make sure all the kids go home the correct way. That sounds easy enough, but it's usually the easy things that cause the most trouble....
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