A Look At My Classroom and Easy Decorations

Last year, I had a very rectangle room with no windows to outsides. I only had windows way high that lead into the gym where my students (especially at the beginning of the year) would oooh and awe at the high balls. Despite that, I loved my room! I loved the light blue color, I loved the options for a dark, dim, bright, or very bright room. I loved having computers and printers. I loved the right place bulletin board, white board, and Smartboard. I even loved the skinny, yet simple hallway! You can see some of the pictures of my classroom last year right here.

Welcome Door

 Side wall with Focus Wall, Computers in Back

Side Wall at another arrangement with White Board

Lockers in Hallway

The door decorations were simple. I can't remember where the clipart came from (I am sure a simple google search), but you can use print sets of the crayons in different colors from google docs here: Big Crayons Decorations. I'll use those crayons and the locker decorations again. I did a similar google for crayons to find the small crayons and printed them out on different colored paper, cut some yellow rectangles and green triangles. The link to the crayons for the locker decorations are here: Small Crayon Decorations. It was simple. A few of mine went missing (the fault of a few students playing around) and some of my second graders volunteered to make new ones. So- both the door and locker tags were easy and turned out cute! 

THE NEW CLASSROOM?

I am sure a lot of you have moved classrooms. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Mine? I think for most, it's about the best classroom in the school. I think I just get attached! Now, I have a bigger room, I have windows, a door to outside, a bathroom, sink, carpet on one side and tile on the other. A Right now, the room needs to be painted (the paper was peeled in some places) and I need to figure out decorations. I lack quit a bit! There is a lot to do that I can't do until the room has been painted, but here it is:

I wanted a library and I made one! 

The door to the right leads to OT/SPED, I do get to use the computers in there if the room isn't in use.

Cabinets, a lot had things in it already, but I organized them the best I can now.

The storage on top looks messy, but sometimes just need to out of the way!

This door leads to the first grade room.

From the front. I'm standing right in front of the smartboard. 

My back alley way, door to the bathroom.

Anyway! It's pretty decent. I think its just hard not knowing what it will look like until after they have painted. They're only doing the front bit, not the sinks and back, so hopefully it will all look okay together!

On a separate note: there's a cool clipart giveway at Learning in Spain. Check it out, cause we all love clipart!

Crafting and Researching for Kindergarten

As I will be teaching Kindergarten this next year, I have been aggressively making myself ready: mentally and physically. I am fortunate that the classroom that I am taking over is quite large and has plenty of resources already in it. The school or a previous teacher loaded up with puzzles, games, whiteboards, and flash cards. This is a complete switch for me from last year where I had virtually no materials (from the school) for half-a-year for my third graders in Language Arts. I very much utilized literature circles, reading a-z, library books, and online resources.

Anyway, I'll be using a mixture of curriculum and teacher-developed (and found) resources. I have Reading Street, Saxon Math, Math Expressions, Scott Foresman Science and Social Studies, a phonics program, and a writing program. In comparison to last year, this is quite overwhelming. On the bright side, I have my tentative year plan already made and won't stick to the curriculum religiously. I go by what way I best can connect topics, seasonal opportunities, integrating units, and, of course, state and common core standards. 

What I have been doing a lot recently is researching teaching techniques and classroom management ideas, making center and whole group activities, and crafting things for the classroom. I love the idea of whole brain teaching! I'm also planning on implementing the Daily Five and Writing Workshop.

Does anyone use whole brain teaching? How do you teach the rules? Do you use all of it or bits and pieces?

I had seen a number of cute chairs around pinterest and blogs and opted to create my own. I had an old chair that was worse for wear. I decided that it would be my project. 

I searched for paint tucked away in the basement and managed to find this teal and pink. I mixed the two to create the purple. 

My only task now is to find the fabric to go with it. I have a "The Frog and the Princess" fleece fabric that matches the color perfectly, but wouldn't be large enough to not show the faces. I also have a simple teal fabric and bought a green with teal spot fabric. Still, I am conflicted. Any ideas?

Another activity I got done was this number puzzle. You can choose whether or not to have the addition as part of the puzzle. It's not self correcting (maybe I'll do another that way), but allows students to match different representations of numbers 1-10. You can download it at teacherspayteachers for free if you click the picture below.

Kindergarten, Oh My!

I have recently been assigned to teach Kindergarten next year. I'm a big mix of nervous and excited. I'm hoping this will encourage me to create even more engaging activities and remain positive. I'm excited to bring music into the classroom and center activities. Both of these things were lacking dramatically in my class last year.

Since the assignment, I have been searching relentlessly through other Kindergarten, early childhood, and homeschool blogs, pinterests, tpt, etc. It's amazing how many resources are out there for these young learners. I'd say there are much more for younger students than for older students. How neat!

I've created a few things DYI and with my Cricut. I plan to make a "Rotten Apple" game for sight words with my circut and then laminate. I've gotten other sight word ideas from around the web and made these paint chip sight word cards based on one that I loved!

If you want the list of Reading Street vocabulary words that I used you can get it here on googledocs.

My intention is to make one thing a day for Kindergarten until the first day of school. With that in mind, hopefully I won't be nearly as stressed when I get the kiddos the first day. If they're digital (and worth it) I'll post them on here to share!

For today, I made some number cards through 30. I'm familiarizing myself with these new standards to ensure my students know what the need to know and more by the end of the year. At this point, here is just till 30. I hope my students can locate, name, and represent up to 100. But, this could be a stretch. We'll see when I get them!

You can click this to bring you to teacherspayteachers and download for free!

Summer School and the Olympics

School has been out for almost two weeks now. It is a bitter sweet feeling at the end of the year. I am in much need of a long break, but I really will miss many of my kids. Boy, I already don't know what I will fill my time with this summer! 

Hopefully my former students will be having a busy summer. I gave them a big summer homework packet and a book to read. It wasn't necessarily required, but they were very much encouraged to complete it. I talked with almost all parents about it and I am sure they will encourage their children to finish it too. 

Each student got the packet. They were catered by math levels: second grade, third grade, and forth grade leveled. The first grader who comes up for my math class also got one! Second grade girls got Junie B. books; boys got Captain Underpants. Third grade girls got Katie Kazoo or Amber Brown; boys got Goosebumps. I got all twenty-two books at the Half-Price Bookstore for 45 cents each! All were nice quality and hadn't felt like they had even been opened!

I will be teaching two-weeks of summer school. Its a short bit, but they are full days. Conveniently (or unfortunately), this will be during part of the Summer Olympics. I had every hope and intention to go over to London for the games. I spent summer of 2010 in a Catholic junior school in Southwark, London. It was fantastic and could have stayed with the woman I stayed with when I was there before. But alas, second best thing: I get to theme my summer school session around it!

We are an AP school. That's Accelerated Pathways. It adds about 300 hours of school a year for the kids who opt to do it. Two or three days a month are reserved for it and two weeks in the summer. During that time, AP days are guided by a focus. Mine will be the Olympics. So, almost all activities will relate in some aspect to the Olympics. Right now, I am creating and finding activities to use. We'll probably be doing one or two field trips as well. I haven't decided where to go that would best connect yet. One maybe to the YMCA or Lifetime, a state park, or a large, free playground for the day that would be great fun for the kids.

For writing, I will be going through Writing Process with them. We will be working on a "Gold Medal Story." They will get to write about how they would win a gold medal in the Summer Olympics. I am sure that at least a quarter of the class (if not more) will write about soccer (football). If you want a copy of what I am planning to use, you can get a copy for free here:

My Olympic Gold Medal Story

I'll post some other activities I have planned later on. I have a craft that we will do when displaying our final drafts too.

Hope you're having a great summer!

Standards and Curriculum Maps

I am a new teacher who went to school with teacher accountability and No Child Left Behind at the forefront of lessons. I had to write every lesson plan to target a state standard. My cooperating teacher when student teaching was a veteran teacher and didn't glimpse at them at all. Does my school force? No. We did do some training at the beginning of the year to help align teaching, but my school doesn't slap writs for straying.

The other day, I was chatting with another (more experienced) teacher and she asked, "Did you teach about rocks and minerals, yet?" Without any thought, I immediately, in an appalled way, replied, "No, it's not in the state standards, why would I teach it?" I think there was a moment of silence before she burst out laughing. I quickly tried to backtrack my words, making them sound less snappish. But, besides teaching the Solar System much longer than I needed, I haven't straying from this belief all year.

I set up curriculum maps in September to guide me through the year. I carefully plotted out Language Arts, Math, and Science/Social Studies to best fit my own teaching style. Besides using the Reading Street curriculum for reading books and Saxon worksheets for math work, I was free to do as I pleased. I am most thankful for this. In Science and Social Studies, we have been jumping around the textbooks and are FINALLY starting the textbook from page one with our last unit on plants and animals. 

My year, in essence, with Science and Social Studies looked like this:

September: Space and Solar System in Science and Communities in Social Studies

October: Inventions and Change Over Time to cover standards in both

November: Native Americans, Pilgrims, and Comparing Civilizations 

December: Force and Motion, Sound and Light

January: America- Maps, Customs, Important People, Symbols, Changes Over Time, Revolutionary War, Independence, Branches of Government, and Responsibilities of Citizens 

March: Matter, Weather, Temperature, and Seasons

April: Economics- Goods and Services, Resources, Currency, and Opportunity Cost

May: Plants and Animals

And then viola, all second and third grade standards were covered (or are being covered now). How could I have time to add rocks and minerals when I want to teach in depth lessons. I want my students to still be able to tell me what the main groups of Native Americans were in Minnesota. I want them to be able to burst into a rap about the Solar System and tell me what type of simple machine is leading up to a doorway. Even dates have stuck in their minds and they told the Arabic teaching that the Declaration of Independence was signed on what date (month and day given by a second grader and the year given by a third grader). 

Are they tested on this information? No. But whether or not I support strictly adhering to state standards or not, I understand it and do follow this. I am also happy that my students have developed a deeper understanding, rather than jumping around to one topic after the next to read the entire Science and Social Studies textbooks. 

Freebie for Science and Social Studies

We create a World Habitat Mobile when studying the Desert, Rain Forest, Tundra, Grassland, and Ocean Habitats. They turned out to be adorable and a good cumulating activity.

Get: World Habitat Mobile Here!