New Ideas... Maybe

As I've walked around my classroom as I have been making decisions about how it would be most functional for me this year, I realized that some of the things that do not seem very creative to me might be more exciting to someone else.

This year, I waited until the first full week of school (the second week) to lead a discussion about classroom expectations. I wanted the kids to have experienced the routines and schedule so they could make their expectations more specific to what will actually happen in our room. I started the discussion by having students come up with rules they think we should have in the classroom. Once they got started this list became really long really quickly. The rules were all listed individually and were very specific.
Then, I had students work in groups to try to put the rules in categories. (I had categories in mind, but wanted to see what they would come up with.) With prompting, discussion, reflection from past years and some guidance, students came up with the categories Safety, Respect, and Responsibility. Then, I had each group use the original list along with new ideas to write about what each of those things looks like, sounds like, and feels like in the classroom. We reconvened as a class and made a giant list in three categories (looks/sounds/feels) for each expectation. After charting them together, I made them into smaller posters to display in the classroom all year. Here are the pictures.

I hung these on our heater since wall space is becoming limited and they are not something that students need to be able to see at all times. They just need to know where they are for a reminder now and then. Just a note, our heater (as far as I know) does not seem to get hot, so it shouldn't be a safety concern. 

I know the idea of generating examples about what rules/expectations look, sound, and feel like came from my amazing mentor teacher in college! I don't remember whether she did it for class norms though ( I think she did). 

This is my daily attendance/lunch count system. Students come in the door (just to the left of this picture) pick up their card, check the lunch menu, and put their card in their lunch choice (cold, hot lunch 1, or hot lunch 2). Any name left in a pocket is a student who is absent and the lunch count is done for me. I usually have a student count how many students selected each lunch and report to me while I'm recording the attendance on the computer. (This idea is also one I've been using since learning it from my college mentor teacher.)

I bought a large, shallow Rubbermaid container for each student's desk. This is where they keep all their loose supplies. Most supplies in our classroom are community supplies, but this works for the daily stuff and the supplies that it doesn't make as much sense to share. It acts as a drawer in their desk and doesn't take up much space. Also, it limits the amount of junk they can collect. I plan on checking these every once in a while to make sure that students are only keeping the essential supplies in them. I stole this idea from my partner teacher this year although my containers are smaller than the ones she uses. I couldn't find hers but this size works fine! 

Good finds at Target

I went to Target tonight to find that all their school supplies and teacher stuff was on the end caps on clearance.
I found a whole bunch of space themed die cuts, window clings, and a solar system poster for half price! They were each $1.25. There was a bunch of stuff for other themes too including safari, ocean, sky/planes, baking/cookies, bugs/garden, etc.
The end caps of aisles are where it's at during this time of year! Their leftover school supplies were also reduced by at least 50%.

Since my job chart is still not done and I haven't made any more progress on it since before school started, I'm abandoning the idea to make the space shuttle with kids' pictures in the windows. Instead I'm going to use some of my new rocket die cuts for the job labels and laminate them so I can use Vis-a-Vis pens to write students' names on them. The board will still be space themed, but will be much easier to put together.

5th Day of School

The kids and I are finally getting settled into the classroom. Workers are still coming in and out periodically to redo wiring and connect the other portables, so it certainly isn't done yet. I started working on my classroom library yesterday, since my book bins were finally delivered from The Container Store. I bought 3 cases. I was anxiously waiting for them to arrive and was at school until 7:30 last night trying to finish it (which I didn't). I have way more books than I realized!

Portable Life

The portable has been working out nicely. It is a little tight on space, but I changed the seating arrangement today which freed up a lot more space. I'll try to remember to take a picture soon. I'm hoping to do a lot of lessons and practice on working in groups so students learn to work effectively in the new arrangement. 

Bathrooms and water have been my biggest pet peeve so far this year. Students often do not want to use their recess time to do these things (I don't really blame them since the bathroom and water fountain are so far away and take a lot of time to get to). However, I'm not willing to compromise learning time for students to go all the way into the building. 

For water, I have encouraged students every day so far to bring water bottles. Those students who have still not brought one have very little sympathy in my book. 

My solution was to let each student go to the restroom or get a drink in the building once a week during class time. It's Tuesday and 4 students have used their weekly pass, not too shabby. Teachers, have you ever noticed the phenomenon where if one student asks to go to the bathroom/get a drink, five other kids shout out that they have to go too? Maybe this just happens in my class, but as soon as I remind them that it would be their only pass for the week, most kids say "never-mind." 

Since we're away from the building, I make students go to the building with partner for safety. The phenomenon mentioned previously helps me to find a partner because often there is someone else willing to use their weekly pass. I try not to send friends and always gender match the partners. If there isn't someone else who wants to use their pass, I just assign someone to go with the other person and don't count it against them. 

9/11

It was kind of strange to teach students who were just days old or not born yet about what happened 11 years ago. To most of them, it seemed like history. Some students had stories about what their siblings or parents were doing on that day. One of my student's parents had to postpone their wedding because of all of the airport closures. Other students asked what 9/11 was and acted as though they had never heard of it. 

Last year, I saved the September 2010 issue of Scholastic News and used the cover story "I was 11 on September 11th, 2001." Then, I found a video on BrainPop and invited the two other 5th grade classes to join us in watching it (since they don't have computers for their presentation stations yet). It was a tight squeeze for about 80 5th graders in one portable, but we made it work with standing room only and the new desk arrangement. 

After the other classes left, I read September 12th: We Knew Everything Would Be All Right to wrap up. 

Last Day of Prep and First Day of School!

Sorry I didn't post yesterday! I was at school until 8:00 last night getting ready! That's right a full 12 hour day! I didn't even come out of my portable for the Back to School BBQ! I felt so antisocial!

Anyway, I started my day with what else other than more furniture deliveries! That was quite the trend leading up to school. I think I ended up with new furniture every time I went to my room! I thought I had my classroom all set up (as far as furniture goes) and then they brought me new bookshelves and a whole set of cubbies. The carpenters delivered them and found space for a few of them which made my whole perimeter full of furniture and plopped the others in the middle of the floor (since there wasn't room for them) and then bolted all my other furniture to the walls.

This one is right in the middle of the front of my room and is where my Smartboard is supposed to go, so I moved it to the library area along with two others and got rid of the splintery bookshelves that were there. 

This one I left in the same place since it was kind of dead space anyway with the closet next to it. It is still empty though! 

The ones there wasn't room for left in the middle of the floor (and the mess). 

Student cubbies. 

I wish they would have stopped to think before bolting it all down. So.. in order to replace my bookshelves with the new ones, I had to track down a drill. I learned we don't have one at the school so the principal asked a PTA member to bring one from home. As soon as I had all the bookshelves unbolted, the carpenters were back and wanted to bolt more stuff down. They also said they could've unbolted it all for me.. if only I knew they were coming!! I sent them away to another room while I figured out how to rearrange furniture, which bookshelves to get rid of, and transferred all my books from the old bookshelves to the new ones. This was NOT what I was planning on doing yesterday!

New bookshelves in use (obviously not done)! I'm waiting for plastic shoe boxes to be delivered from The Container Store to use as book bins to organize my classroom library by level and genre.

I got the rest of my room cleaned up (for the most part). However, the closets and my desk still aren't as organized as I would like them to be. I sat down to plan the first day with my partner teacher and made copies of everything we'll need. Right now, we're taking it a day at a time. Once we get through the craziness of the first days, we'll probably sit down again to plan more long term (probably this weekend).

This is what my room looked like from the door shortly before I left last night. Before I left, I cleared the top of the bookshelves off by the green bulletin board, erased the whiteboard, put the box on the floor away, and some other tidying.

First Day!

Today was the first day with kids! I have to say that it went really well! Of course, everything I had planned took much longer than anticipated and we have a bunch of leftover stuff to finish tomorrow. The kids were chatty and excited to see each other. I can already tell that I'll have to stay on this class about talking at appropriate times and raising their hand to ask and answer questions. One of my students withdrew sometime between yesterday and today, so I am down to 24 students! That's a 20% reduction from last year! I have lots of boy energy in the room though, I think I have 15 boys and 9 girls. 

Here was our schedule for the first day. We will be finishing a lot of this tomorrow. 

Start of Curriculum Planning

As I mentioned before, I went to two weeks of professional development this summer. A week for readers' workshop and a week for writers' workshop. My team teacher was there too, so we had the opportunity to talk and figure out how we were going to implement our new learning in our classes. My district has signed on to using Lucy Calkins' readers' and writers' workshop curricular calendars. This means that we have a series of units we can follow throughout the year. The units help guide our instruction. Although the lessons we teach and the specifics that we decide to focus on within each unit are up to us based on what our students need, the framework is created for us. I'm feeling good and ready for literacy instruction this year.

The district science department sends us three science kits throughout the year with their adapted instructional guides to follow. I try to add in some extra readings, videos, and assessment tasks to help students with background knowledge, make it more entertaining, and/or holding students accountable for their learning. I taught two of the units last year and just have one new unit to learn this year.

Today, I started trying to plan math for the year. I think this will be my toughest subject to plan this year.
My school is getting ready for common core standards and we are encouraged to start using them to guide our instruction. However, our math curriculum does not align to common core standards. There are also major differences between the current math standards and common core standards (CCS). Since we're still being tested on the old standards, and the students are coming with knowledge from the old standards, and the math curriculum doesn't follow either set of standards, it is a challenge to start incorporating common core standards.

I spent a couple hours today looking at the common core standards, our math curriculum and pacing/instructional guide (provided by the district), and the old standards to try to find some alignment and way to plan units for the year. Our math curriculum is a spiral curriculum, but the CCS focus on teaching to mastery. Trying to align three different things that are all very different was frustrating and hard to keep track of. I was able to break the CCS into a few units and compare that to our curriculum to figure out what parts of the curriculum would be "extra" in terms of the CCS. I still need to compare all of that to the current math Performance Expectations to make sure my students will still be prepared for the MSP and to pick up where they left off in 4th grade. Then, I'll either cut out some of the extra stuff in the curriculum that's not in either set of standards to save some time or have students' do an assessment task to figure out what I need to review and what I can skip.

At this point, I think I'll dive deeper into the units that overlap since the CCS places importance on deeper understanding and reasoning. Once I figure out how many more units I will have to add in, I can  start figuring out how long each unit can/should be and compare that to our academic calendar to get a general outline for the year.

I have a lot to do tomorrow (including finishing my classroom) before the kids show up on Wednesday.

The highlight of my weekend was getting my new mailboxes! I'm so lucky to have a dad who's willing and able to build them for me. They are gorgeous!

Day 6- Only one more in-building work day!

I went in to school today for about 5 hours. I didn't feel like I got much done in that time, but looking back, I did accomplish a few things. My room is more of a disaster than it was when I started today, but that can be cleaned rather quickly on Tuesday.

The first thing I did today was put organization options in my huge closet. Now it is a more functional space.

Then, I finished the bulletin board that I ran out of paper on the other day. I couldn't find more paper, so I had to get creative. The perfectionist side of me is not very happy with it, but I can deal with it, at least for now. (The blurt chart and extra copies folders are very strategically placed.)

 

My biggest accomplishment of the day was finishing my filing cabinet, which means that my desktop file is empty and ready to start the school year. I use this desktop file to hold all my copies for the week, divided by subject, and any master copies that I use frequently. 

My filing cabinet is also not the prettiest thing, but it needed to get done.

I committed to using this funky shelf for student supplies, so I switched all of the supplies that I want students to have easy access to from my black Ikea shelf to this one. Taking out some of the compartment dividers helped to customize it for my stuff. 

 The most exciting part of my work today was hanging my space pictures around the room. I laminated them last year and today I backed them with black construction paper, then stapled them up. Using black construction paper gave me something to staple through without harming the pictures and makes them "pop" on that white wall. I still have a few more to add, but I'm not sure where I want to put them yet. (Thanks Greg for donating these to my classroom!)

 This is all of them in the corner. There's one more on the left side that I couldn't fit into the picture. As you can see in this picture, I still have one bulletin board to cover (around the fire extinguisher). I just can't stand the look of those carpeted walls, so I'm turning all of them into bulletin boards.

Tomorrow and Monday, the building is closed. I could go work in my portable, but I don't really like the idea of being out there alone. Instead, I'm hoping to start curriculum planning for the year (or at least the first week). It is hard for me to start planning curriculum without having my physical space set up. The late start on setting up my classroom is making it harder to plan for the year, but I have to start at some point. While I was going through files today, I was reminded of how last year, I thought about rearranging some math units instead of following the pacing guide exactly. I brought my math curriculum home and am planning to map it out this weekend. 

I went to a week each of readers' workshop training and writers' workshop training over the summer. It was facilitated by Columbia Teachers' College coaches and was extremely valuable. My team teacher was also there, so we got to think through how we were going to implement each workshop in our classrooms and how we can align our instruction. 

I'll add more about my plan for the start of the year at the end of the weekend.