The First day and some catch up!

Well, today was the first day of school! I know, I didn't blog at all this weekend. Let me tell you why. Friday was Open House, so I was at school from 8 am to 8 pm, and when I walked out, I left my computer right there in my classroom, along with my camera! I was in so much withdrawal this weekend without them! I did give myself a pass, figuring a 12 hour day at school was enough to make anyone forget something. But I have everything now, and I'm ready for you! Let's go backward a bit and I'll show you my final preparations for my room. I did finish my crate chairs in time, so I have them around my teaching table. I'm really happy about it too, considering the number of desks I have to have in my room!

So here they are, they turned out great!

Let me show you my room. I tried to take pictures of every part of it.

OK, so the picture above is my reading area. The bulletin board isn't 100 percent complete, as I'm going to add phonics and grammar skills to it as we learn them. The top of the cart will be the writing area, where students can get their writing binders and other supplies they will need for writing. The bottom picture is my computer center. I hate that big L-shaped desk, and whenever I used it as a teacher's desk it just got in my way, and ended up being a place to "collect" stuff. So, I put it to better use this year and made it into my computer center. The bulletin board is for great papers or work I want to show off.  I wrapped pink "cheer" material around the desk to hide the hanging cords, and made a little pink curtain that I hung from the bottom of the bulletin board to hide those cords. The empty space on the desk won't stay empty. I've got a little 13 inch TV and  V-smile game system that will go there. The V-smile has three different educational games and two controllers. (and only $2 from a yard sale!) And if you are curious, the little pink piece of paper on the wall is a sentence strip that has the computer password on it. There is a large chart on the left side of the picture that I'll use to add websites to, as students learn how to use them. (they will also be bookmarked on the computer)

Next is my birthday wall. This wasn't a bulletin board space, I created one with hot glue and fabric. *wink*  It is for the birthday idea I got from Pinterest, which came from someone 's blog. I am going to take a picture of students whose birthdays fall in the same month, having them hold a sign up with the date of his/her birthday on it. Then, I'll post the pictures of the students under each month's heading.

The bottom picture shows my AR board and my center cart. The AR board is designed to look like a football field, and there are footballs at the bottom with student numbers on them. Each section of the field is 1 point. As students earn points, they move their football up the field. I'm going to add a heading that says "Score in Reading with AR." The center cart is just that, a place to keep all my centers, which I keep organized in containers. When center time is over, students know where to return their boxes.

The above picture you've seen before, and here it is finished. I did glue the dugouts at the bottom to appeal to my fella's sports nature. The bottom part has my Homeworkopoly board on it and the game pieces.





The next picture is the smaller desk in the room, which I use as my desk. It has the computer that is hooked up to the Promethean board on it, and other technology, as well as a few office supplies. On the board above it is my Boggle game and my lesson chart, which we have to have posted in our rooms. Up above you see a glimpse of my number line, on which I used baseball and soccer stickers to mark off the numbers used to count by 5s and 10s.

Next is my guided reading area. See how the crate chairs fit so beautifully! Yay! Behind the table are some drawers that hold supplies and my leveled readers, as well as the calendar. The bottom picture is my listening center. The boxes on the left are those divided boxes. Last year I used them for sorting papers, this year I'm am going to use it as a drying rack for art, since last year I had papers lying all over the room after art. I'll sort papers in a file crate this year. As you can see, I use the space under the table for a little extra storage. Turned longways like they are, there is still plenty of room for students to place their feet when at a chair at the table.

And here is my room from as far back as I can get, so you see how my desks are arranged. I've got groups of five, with the stools in the middle as materials tables. The two other stools I had gotten where not really sturdy enough for me to use after all, so I am short two again, and HOPING that I find two more quick, fast, and in a hurry! As of today, I already have 24 kids, and I am supposed to get 2-3 more tomorrow, and so I have no idea where I am going to put 2 MORE desks, but I guess I'll have to make do.

Fast forward to today, the first day of school. It actually went pretty well considering I had 24 kids in the room, and my para didn't come in till almost 1.  They seem to know a lot from last year, so I was really impressed. I've got a couple of darlings who will need a little catch up, but I think they'll be fine. We just went over some basic concepts so I could see what they knew, and I was quite impressed when they recognized and could tell me the value of the four basic coins. I actually acted like they knocked me off my feet with their "smart-ness," they got a kick out of that.

Of course we went over rules and procedures, a LOT of them, and they did really well considering I had to talk so much. They loved the hallway song and the name on the paper song. I've got a great group of kids this year. Oh, I showed them the voki of Molly, and they enjoyed that too, especially after I brought her out to actually meet them. They were just a talking to her and asking her all kinds of questions! They even wanted me to bring out Jade to meet her. Jade is a stuffed dragon that I introduced at Open House. He gets to go home with a student every Friday and the student writes in Jade's journal about what they did together. We had a lot of fun with those two. It was nice break from talking rules and routines all morning.

Well, I've been writing for the better part of half an hour now, and I guess that by now you are tired of reading. If I had not had Open House on Friday, and not left my computer at school, I was going to start doing installments of FYI Friday, in which I discuss ADHD, what it is, it's indications, and how to accommodate for and teach children with ADHD. So, I'll start it up this Friday instead. Hope you enjoy!