First Day Thoughts and Four Corner Name Tags

Today went better than last year's first day, when my teammate and I promptly left school after dismissal to commiserate over pizza and beer. I'm really afraid to jinx myself, but I think I have a pretty good class, all in all. The first day always feels like one big act, though. Kind of like when I used to play school with my sister and stuffed animals. While I'm feeling pretty comfortable with the classroom management side of things, I'm finding myself a bit more stressed out about planning, especially since we're revamping all of language arts. I feel like I'm rambling on and not really thinking coherently, so I'll just share one of my favorite getting to know you activities and then head to bed.

One of the first projects that I always do on the first day of school is making four corner name tags. This idea comes from Responsive Classroom's The First Six Weeks of School. Each student decorates an index card with his or her name in the middle and then draws pictures in each corner to represent his or her family, favorite food, favorite place on earth, and favorite hobby:

Here's my example:

Once the name tags are completed, I randomly assign partners. (I used my sticker cards, which worked out great!) Partners introduce themselves to each other, and then we come together as a whole group and each student introduces his or her partner to the class. In the past, I have displayed them on a bulletin board for back to school night, but this year, I am laminating them and using them to label the student work display squares along the bottoms of my bulletin boards.

I'm really looking forward to getting to know my kids better, settling into a routine, and getting into the meat of our curriculum. I'm hoping it will be a positive year!

Finally Ready

No matter how much time I put in over the summer or how prepared I think I am before the teacher work week begins, it's always a bit of a frenzy to get everything ready for open house. After meetings all day on Monday and the superintendent's pep rally on Tuesday, we had Wednesday and Thursday to work in our rooms before kids and parents arrived on Thursday night. We even got our class lists a full 24 hours before open house! I think I have a good group this year, certainly with a few challenges, but it doesn't seem like I'll be dealing with the same level of disrespect and defiance that I had last year. After open house ended at 8:30 Thursday night, I was really dragging when I had to be back at school less than 12 hours later. I did manage to straighten up after open house, get everything totally prepped for the first day, and snap some pictures of my room.

The view from the door:

 Meeting area at the front of the room, with the first day's schedule, morning message, morning work, and homework. I'm so excited to have a ceiling mounted projector this year. I'm going to try posting the morning routine using power point each day instead of writing it on the board.

I'm trying book bins this year. These are the 5/$2 magazine files from Ikea. I don't expect them to hold up well, but the price was right to see if I like the system. I printed a label for each student, and I plan to let them decorate their book boxes with crayons or markers.

These metal modular shelves are from my college days. I had handed them down to my sister to use in her dorm, but now that she's graduated, I reclaimed them for my classroom. I got all of the milk crates at walmart, and I'm loving the extra storage!

Reading corner and CAFE board:

Standing in the meeting area, looking toward the back of the room:

My desk area:

The help-yourself-shelf and my calendar bulletin board:

A couple of ideas I found online. I got the idea for a Family and Friends board from Rachel of In No Simple Language, and the Word Watcher sign from Miss Teacher of Juice Boxes and Crayolas. I also added a spot for a new 24 card each day. I started putting a card on the board last year for early finishers, and it was a big hit. There's a box on the shelf below for students to submit their answers, and I'll pull a name for a small prize each day.

I have two long chalkboards in my room that I've covered with paper to use as bulletin boards, so I needed several small, strong magnets to use in place of push pins. Inspired by Nancy of Teaching My Friends, I used magnet buttons, scrapbook paper, and fish bowl gems to make over 100 of these for less than $20:

A pretty uninspired writing and science board:

Space savers for my social studies board:

I lined the bottom of my bulletin boards with scrapbook paper to display student work. I got this idea from the Science Gal, who also works at my school. Once the two of us had these papers up, the idea went viral around the building, and several other teachers have created similar displays.

My News board, which has a lunch menu and lunch choice tiles, information about the Boystown skill of the week and the word of the month, and the kids' writing prompts for the local newspaper. I left room in the top corner for current events.

Looks like I need to bring in some stronger adhesive to reattach the lunch choice blocks that have already started falling off their magnets!

My student teacher came up with this idea for my door:

I feel mostly ready for school to start tomorrow; I'm not sure I'd ever feel totally ready, no matter how prepared I am. I had my annual back to school nightmare last night. This time, it involved me being late for school on the first day, and the school was so swarmed with parents and students that I couldn't get in the building!

Good luck to everyone else who starts tomorrow! I'm hoping to be back a couple of nights this week with some back to school ideas, but please forgive me if I decide to just veg out on the couch instead!

Where It All Goes Down, Earthquake Update, and Three for Thursday

I didn't get a chance to post pictures of my room yesterday, but it doesn't really matter, because there's not much to show yet. I haven't officially started back (Monday!), so my classroom isn't put together. Here's what my room looked like the last time I was in!

I went in yesterday and did a bit more work before meeting my teammates for a working dinner to write our curriculum maps. While I was at school, I walked past the gym and saw this:

Tuesday's earthquake took down some of the ceiling tiles! That seems to be the only damage to the school, thankfully!

I've still been on the lookout for some good articles explaining the science behind the earthquake so that I can talk about it with my students. This article from CNN has some good explanations, and Scholastic News has an article that is kid friendly. Has anybody else found any good articles?

So, now on to today's Teacher Week topic from Blog Hoppin': Three for Thursday!

Favorite Font

I can't download fonts to my school computer, so I typically use Kristen ITC for all of the titles and headings of handouts and Arial for body text. So uncreative, I know! I feel pretty lame since Kristen ITC is quickly becoming the Comic Sans of this decade.

 But, when I want to create a title with a cool font, I get around the issue of not being able to download files by going to a site like dafont.com and browsing their handwriting fonts. You can type in a text to preview, so I type in whatever I want my title to say, and then I take a screen shot of the words in a font I like and paste it as an image in my document!

Favorite Blog

It's so hard to pick! Now that I've discovered teacher blogs, I'm actually worried that I won't have time to read all of the blogs I like once I go back to school! That being said, I love reading Miss Teacher's Juice Boxes and Crayolas! That was one of the first teacher blogs I stumbled on, and I was so excited to find such a great 5th grade blog! Miss Teacher has been blogging since before her first year of teaching, and it was fun to skim through her archives. She also shares a ton of great resources for the upper grades, especially if you're looking for Daily 5/literacy activities.

Favorite Online Resource

Does google count? :) Gosh, there are so many sites from which I gather resources, it's hard to think of one that stands out from the rest! I love Reading A-Z and United Streaming, but both of those require accounts. (I'm lucky enough that my school district gives teachers accounts to those sites.) For a free resource, I'll share Scholastic News. I love pulling articles from their site to share during class meetings, in guided reading groups, or simply on my News and Announcements board. I can usually find excellent information about current events that are of high interest to my students.

Now, off to school to work on my room!

Classroom Setup, Day 1 (and a half)

School doesn't start here until after Labor Day, so I still have a couple of weeks before my classroom needs to be done. I put in a few hours yesterday because:

• I hate feeling rushed during teacher work week... they really should call it teacher meeting week!
• I'm always excited to go work in my classroom this time of year, even though I won't admit it to some of my teacher friends who are too cool to spend any summer time doing anything school related.
• It was a good excuse to give our new puppy some practice home alone in the crate; gotta build up his stamina before I go back full time!

I taught summer school during July, and I did take a bit of time one afternoon to move the big pieces of furniture in my room with the custodian's help (that's the "and a half" from the title of this post). So when I got to school yesterday, all of the bookshelves and my desk were already in place, but I still had lots to move.

This was the view from the doorway. Cabinets and sink on the left, my desk area by the left window, front of the classroom to the right:

The front of the room... how I wish that were a smart board! The projector screen is just pulled down, though I am excited that they finally mounted my projector in the ceiling. No more huge cart in the middle of the room!

Standing at my desk, looking back out the door:

I can't really call these "after" pictures; they're definitely just in progress. I focused solely on organization yesterday... decorations will wait for another time. I got the desks arranged and all of the other furniture situated. Trying a slightly new configuration this year, one that gives me a reading nook plus a meeting area.

Looking towards the front of the room... my reading nook is under the far window:

My desk area still looks like a mess, but I did clean out my file cabinets:

 The red carpet under the window is my new reading nook. My meeting area will be on the large tan carpet.

I inventoried lots of textbooks (most of which I rarely use), including part of our newly adopted math series:

This will be my small group/conference table. It used to be in front of the cabinets in the back of the room, and I used it mostly for dumping things. I've read Daily 5 and The Cafe Book this summer, and I'm going make a much greater effort to include small group instruction and individual conferences during language arts. Right now, the table is still covered in school supplies that my team ordered:

I feel pretty good about the progress that I made yesterday. Of course, it left me itching do do more. I love setting up my classroom each year and looking forward to a fresh start!