Welcome Aboard.

I know I know I know I know I know!!! This post is WAY overdue! School has been in session for over a month and I can't believe I am just now posting these photos. It has been a bit of a rocky start for me. Being a first year teacher is somewhat of a challenge and I have a feeling that it's maybe even a bit (or quite possibly A LOT) more challenging at this particular school. In case you haven't noticed, I don't tend to give a lot of specifics in regards to my place of work. Some of you have asked why I haven't mentioned that anywhere in my blog and the main answer is that I don't want someone to be searching my school on the internet by name and have my blog post pop up. I keep things pretty positive on here as a general rule but, still, since this is a public blog and I've chosen to keep it password-free so that it's easier for everyone to access, I feel like I need to be somewhat careful about what I say. So if you want the real scoop -- shoot me an e-mail or give me a call :)

 

Here's a photo of how the classroom looked the week before school started: 

 

There were some things on a few of the bulletin boards, well, actually the class was pretty well set up but it had been used for a younger group last year so there was a lot that I needed to change and I knew that if I didn't make it my own, I would never feel at home in it. So I worked my tail off the week before school creating and laminating pirate-themed things for my bulletin boards. I also moved bookshelves, swapped dozens of books out for higher level reading books, and all kinds of crazy stuff like that. There was a lot more heavy lifting in those 6 in-service days than I had anticipated.

First day of school! Can't say that everything was exactly where I wanted it to be on the first day but it was pretty close. I've made a few small changes since then. I definitely ditched that awful pocket chart that's hanging on the board -- it wasn't working for me. And I've added a magnetic schedule to the board that I'm actually really proud of. Can't believe I didn't get a picture of that!

I did look pretty well organized on the first day, which was good since I was feeling all chaotic and frantic and kind of still freaking out.

In the front of my classroom I have this little reading corner, which I think turned out to be pretty cute and the kids were so excited about the amount of books I have in my classroom -- all supplied by the school. So much for all those boxes of books I've been saving "for my classroom"... I made the treasure chest and the sign out of construction paper and laminated them and then I made little books (by printing photos of book covers from pirate-themed books) and filled the treasure chest with them. It's looking a bit sparse but maybe someday I'll get around to adding more.

Here is my calendar and jobs board. The calendar I purchased at a teaching store and just laminated so that I could use double-sided tape to stick on the days and months. The days and months were pirate-themed printouts that I found on teacherspayteachers.com, which is a very handy little website with all kinds of fun resources. I wish I had gotten a closer picture of the calendar. The days have cute little parrots on them. (Sidenote: we have a few rules at our school that I don't think you'll find anywhere else. One of those rules is that you aren't allowed to cover your bulletin boards with background paper or fabric -- you have to keep the color that the board is made of as the main background. You're also not allowed to use borders. Just wanted to make sure that you understood that and didn't think I was being lazy or lacking creativity. I'm doing the best I can to make my room awesome and still work within my limitations.)

Close-up of the jobs board. I just used random clipart photos for the jobs and the helm pictures I found on a teacher blog. Each student has one and they have velcro on the back so I can move them around when we switch jobs. The velcro concept is one really nice thing about these old bulletin boards.

And here is our birthday board. It took me a while to decide what I wanted to do for it since I didn't want it to be like any of the other classrooms and I'm not a big fan of the standard birthday-cake-for-each-month-with-a-candle-for-each-student thing. The cannon was Steven's idea and I love it! It's a big hit. The kids think it's really special when it's their turn to be shooting out of the cannon :)

This school has a very unique program. Actually, there are lots of things that are unique about my school but we won't get into all that right now. Anyhow, we do individualized instruction, which means that I don't actually get up in front of the whole class to teach. I work with students on an individual basis because almost all of them are at different places in the curriculum. As I'm teaching a student at the back table, the rest of the class moves through centers -- this is kind of an odd/foreign concept and may be a bit difficult to visualize. This is one of my favorite centers. I have a few different audio books that I checked out from the local library and students follow along in a book while they listen to the story.

This is the computer station (I let them play typing games as one of their centers) and the tower of supplies (glue sticks, scissors, rulers, etc.) and the shelf space where they put their binders during the day since we have tables instead of desks, and a lot of board games that don't get a whole lot of use.

 



Can you see the lovely retaining wall outside my windows? Great view, huh? It's actually a bit depressing -- I don't get much light in my room. And then there are these strange hanging bulletin boards. They're more than a little obnoxious. They're really heavy so they're a pain in the tush to take down, decorate, and then hang back up, but at the same time, it's not so easy to staple things to something that's swinging form the ceiling either. I need to do an activity sometime soon to put up on these boards since this one was at the beginning of the year, but this project was pretty fun. I had everyone do an acrostic poem for the word "patriot" and my older class got to make American flags with torn up paper and glitter. I was the first teacher to have student work up on my boards - yay me! I'm hoping to do something with pumpkins next but I don't want it to be too Halloween-y so that I can leave it up through most of November too.

 



Here are some pretty flowers that my mom brought me on Parents' Night. She didn't stay, even though she is my parent, she just knew that I was feeling super stressed about it was having a tough week so she stopped by with flowers and it was really sweet of her. It was fun to show her my classroom :)

So there it is! Now you've seen my classroom.