There's a SPOT for you!

I hereby promise to attempt to keep a blog. For reals! I have been terrible about keeping up this blog. Best intentions, but then reality set in. As I was teaching my students this morning about how blogs are a type of text, I showed them my blog... and realized just how long it's really been since I posted! Yikes!

This is my second year at my current school, and it's amazing how different the second year can be. This is my third school, and it never ceases to amaze me how much better the second year is. I'm finally settled in an enjoying my class.

It's a bit late for this, but I still thought I'd highlight a few of the changes I've made to my classroom this year. I've perused a gazillion blogs around the cyber world and made a decision to embrace a classroom theme. I chose polka dots!

For today, I thought I'd show you our hallway bulletin board and locker decorations that go along with our polka dot theme!

My student teacher got construction paper and began to cut lots and lots and lots of circles. She cut some slightly smaller than the others and layered two colors to make more interesting spots.

This picture isn't the best, but you'll get the idea. I printed the class names onto mailing labels in a fun font. I made several sheets of their names so I could label everything---books, bags, folders, name tags, files, etc. I don't know why it's never occurred to me to do this before! It saved loads of time! 

This was our hallway bulletin board. I don't love the brown on brown, but I wasn't thinking it through when I pulled everything together, so it just happened that way and I was too lazy to cut out new letters. :) It was still readable, and I got a lot of compliments on it.

We made the word SPOT 3-D by hot gluing pieces of drinking straws to the back and then hot gluing sticky tabs to those to hang them on the board. I love the little POP of those letters.  

We also made coordinating "spots" for the locker labels. We're fortunate enough to have these lockers right outside our classroom for each student.  

Have I mentioned what a mammoth bulletin board this hallway board is? I can't even get a very good picture of the whole thing. This is my best attempt. 

Happy teaching, everyone. See you SOON, I promise. :) 

Grub Work

And so it has begun.... today was the third day I spent in my classroom. I'm so thankful that the school kitchen had these HUGE carts that I could use. I unloaded a van load of stuff in about 20 minutes... hooray!

I began by stacking it against the cabinets so that I could arrange the desks before all of my stuff inevitably explodes around the room. (I told myself it wouldn't, but let's be realistic...) So then I arranged the furniture...

This is the first year that I'm not starting the year in rows... I'll let you know if I like it this way or not! I've also decided I'm going to let the kids pick their seats for the first day...they can claim their spot at Open House the day before. After all, I'm just making random guesses by placing them somewhere, so I'd rather let them choose and then fix it later if it turns out to be an error in their judgment.

I started arranging the shelves for my class library. I clearly do NOT have enough bookshelves in this classroom...and I even brought two of my own! I will have to remedy this somehow very soon....

 By the end of day one, I had at least the bulletin board behind my desk almost finished (notice the border jetting out the top and bottom of my board...I couldn't find my scissors!)

 And, as promised, by the start of day 2, I had stuff everywhere....

Day 3...I solicited some help from my very sweet and willing friend, Sharon. Thanks to her, all the bulletin boards now have at least paper and a border!

(Yes, I teach in a Christian school, so this bulletin board is A-Ok! :)

My desk is STARTING to resemble a space I'd like to hang out in. I'm hanging scanned copies of my college diploma, and my teaching license. The frame on the bottom is a sweet certificate my 5th graders from a couple of years ago made for me. 

And, finally, another finished product thanks to Sharon's hard work... my cabinets are all labeled! I stole this idea from my friend Julie, who teaches 5th grade at a local public school. I walked into her classroom one day and noticed her genius! Now when a kid asks for, say, construction paper, I say, "It's in cabinet O." Brilliant! I used die cut letters I had gotten in a big pack at Target once upon a time, and then put clear contact paper of them to attach. Love!

It's the Little Things...

So, I had grandiose plans about blogging like crazy while subbing this year... and you know, I just lacked inspiration most of the time! I really discovered that, while I love teaching... I hate subbing! After a couple of months I began to be requested by teachers at my favorite schools, so at least I got to know the kids a bit and the teachers, too. But I'm telling you what, it's nothing like teaching. I miss teaching.

And I'm glad. It means that I made the right choice to become a teacher, and I know I'm going to appreciate my own class next time so much more than I even did before! I won't take it for granted!

I may have a couple of leads on a job for the coming school year... but for now it's a waiting game. In the meantime I have two weeks of subbing left before I head to Virginia to help my cousin out with her kiddos for the summer.

I never seemed to collect enough information on one idea to create any quality posts, so I'm just going to make this a "random" post containing some of the fabulous ideas I've "collected" (a.k.a. stolen) over the last four months of subbing.

Idea #1: Kindergarten Table Trash Cans. Brilliant. The kids toss their paper scraps into their own table trash and then are responsible to dump them into the bigger trash can once or twice during the school day. As much cutting and pasting as kinder kids do everyday, this saved so much time and mess!

Brilliant Idea #2: iPhone Bulletin Board 
Now, maybe I'm an oddball, but I have been SHOCKED at how many teachers have non-functional bulletin boards in their classrooms. I mean, c'mon! The wall space is limited and precious, and you fill a whole wall with letters spelling "Happy Birthday" and balloons with the kids' birthdays on them? Can't you limit that to a poster in a corner of the room? I don't know, but I am really not a fan of the fru-fru kind of teacher decorating. I like functional.

Which is why I like this bulletin board so much!

 Each "icon" was inside a plastic sleeve affixed to the wall. It fastens on one side using Velcro so that it can be opened. Inside is a pocket with "tickets" that the kids attach to their finished work.

Each "icon" came with a file. These were on a bookshelf just to the right of the bulletin board. 

The kids pull one of the "Settings" activities, for example, out of the green folder. They complete the work (see example), and then return it, with the "ticket" attached, to the pink FINISHED folder. If the work is done well, the teacher returns the ticket to the student. The tickets were used as a sort of currency in this classroom. They could purchase rewards or have tickets taken away for irresponsibility or bad behavior. Because I already have a mini economy, I would either turn these into opportunities to earn money, or put the tickets into an end of the week drawing for a privilege the following week. 

 Cute idea #3: Presidential Reports

I just really liked these! I thought it was a clever way to display the kids' reports on the presidents.

Other Smart Ideas for the Classroom Walls:

 

 I hope this is the philosophy of every teacher. I like the way it's worded here, so I took a picture to copy it. :)

I really like these quotes, and then the breakdown of the teacher/student responsibilities. This was in the middle school, but the principles are great across the board.

As we celebrate kids' different learning styles, we can give them choices about their learning. The only choice they don't have, however, is to do
nothing!

I spotted these in a 2nd grade classroom this week and it made me smile. This is how I learned to add/subtract in 1st grade...using the dot system on the numbers! The funny thing is...I STILL tap the invisible dots when I add. It reminded me that sometimes we don't even have a clue what "sticks" with our students. But 21 years after the fact, I'm still adding this way, thanks to Mrs. Carver! :)