Classroom Reveal

I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' for their Classroom Reveal linky party! I have been waiting all week to see everyone's post on this. I love decorating a classroom :)

Welcome to C-3, my home away from home for the last 6 years. It has seen many changes as I have tried to find what arrangement worked for me. It isn't a typical Kindergarten room, which are usually large, it's just a square. It also has no bathroom, but it's my room and I love it. Especially this year! I am in love with the color scheme on the walls. I think it calms me. I think it calms my students too! So here is a tour of my room, taken as if you stood in the center and took pictures all the way around...which is EXACTLY what I did! Ha!

Under Meet My Class I put my monthly name portrait assessments. I hang them one on top of the other as each month passes. That way I, and others, can flip through them easily and see the progression. The best is the progression from the first month to the last month. Oh my word, amazing!

Here is the South wall. I keep my math tubs, math manipulatives, student consumables (for math) and the math curriculum here. Generally I hang math student work on the wall up above the shelf there, but not always. I don't put titles on my wall so that I can pin things up and change them out really easy. I keep everything that hangs on the wall for either portfolios or memory books.

Moving counter-clockwise..

My ever changing language arts focus wall. It changes with what I am teaching which for the beginning of the year was PBS skills. Our phonics/phonemic skills are always under the rainbow. My heart poster, I totally copied from The First Grade Parade. It's pretty much verbatim, but it's genius and it works! I've used it for a couple years now and my kids go up to it all the time for ideas for writing.
There is also an easel and a white board next to this wall. I teach from both sides of my carpet. I just tell the kids to turn there bodies this way and that. If they ever have to sit longer than I'd like them to (or they'd like to for that matter) sometimes I just get up and switch sides to changes things up.

When I am on this side of the carpet, I am generally reading a story. Our morning meeting and read alouds usually take place when I am in the rocking chair. And actually, I only sit in it when I read a story. I walk a lot when I teach. Most teachers I know are the same way. I am hoping for a Fit Bit from the hubby for my birthday in 3 days (hint, hint), so I can track just how many miles I do around that room!

 

The green table in the front is the Center #1: The alphabet center. During center time, 2 students each round visit the alphabet centers. This is where my students work on their interactive alphabet notebook.

This is my teacher desk. It also serves as a table for my ELMO and projector. Mostly it's a mess by the end of the day. I clean it every single day but no matter how hard I try, it's like Kindergarteners danced on it by the end of the day. Pointers?
The balloons on the front of the desk serve more of a purpose for the students than me. It has student names on it with a magnet on the back. It helps the students learn name recognition right away, not only for themselves but all of the other students as well.

 

Here are the cubbies on the left. On the white board is my centers chart (I'll post about that soon), and table captain chart.  Center #2 is the hanging pocket chart on the right where the students work on phonics skills.

 

 

There is my intervention table. I hot glued cloth to the underside and hid my class Christmas tree and boxes of holiday decorations under it. This wall is all windows, which mostly parents peek through. I hate the thought of closing the blinds because I love natural light. So this is my compromise. I copied the window idea last school year from School Girl Style. Then at the end of the year, when I had to take them down, I laminated them. Perfect of easy removal and to reapply. They were so much work to make at first. I also hung pennant banners up...I think I made them 3 years ago, just with random colors and they still look so good! The paper must have been fadeless (I don't remember). They've also been taken down and put back up each school year.

 Here is more of the window wall. There are the kids book boxes along the top shelf. They contain all the different kinds of notebooks we use: Interactive alphabet notebook, sight words book, alphafriends book, Ready Common Core book, Number book, and Daily Fix-It book. There are also name, number and alphabet traces in there that I slipped in sheet protectors, as well as a white board marker. Early finishers use these items.  

There is also my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree I created about 3 years ago. My school had an increase in class size which resulted in me getting a larger carpet. When I unrolled it, it had a very large, very thick cardboard roll inside. Dream come true!! I turned it into a tree using a green umbrella at the top and an old umbrella stand to make it stand. When we do our CCBB unit, I hang the letters the kids create with their families up the tree to be like a real CCBB tree! (In fact, it's decorated now, but I'll show you in a later post)

My (ugly) fridge and microwave are here too. I don't know what I was thinking when I Mod Podged those papers on to the fridge. I need to change that ASAP.

 

 My writing center. I teach with Lucy Calkins Units of Study for writing, (got the oppurtunity to go to New York and train in this program 2 years ago. So awesome!) so later this area will have more as we learn. Above the writing center, but facing outside is the parent information area. My parents wait outside this door at dismissal, so I give them plenty of reading material ;)

 My Giving Tree. I got this idea from my daughters Kindergarten teacher. Whenever our class needs something, my very generous parents just take an apple and bring me the item within a couple days. I hang it on the door so they see it at dismissal and drop off.

  My Giving Tree. I got this idea from my daughters Kindergarten teacher. Whenever our class needs something, my very generous parents just take an apple and bring me the item within a couple days. I hang it on the door so they see it at dismissal and drop off.

 

  The yellow circles are pizzas for AR (Accelerated Reader), it also serves as a visual for the parents to see how well their child is doing in AR. Each child gets a "pepperoni" (red dot sticker) for every point they earn. If at the end of the year, any student has 30 pepperonis, then they get to have a pizza party lunch with the teacher. This includes pizza, capri suns, and Kidz Bop on the Pandora...and maybe some dancing ;)

Student desks as they looked on the first day of school. Name tags for shirts (with a Minion sticker to make it fun), and name tags for desks.  I have tried many ways to deal with name tags and keeping them semi nice and last year I finally found a solution. Albeit, a solution that is pricier than I would like, but since it works, I figure it is worth the price. Last year, they looked pretty good by spring break. I had to remove them about a month before the year ended because they started looking thrashed, but by then, they weren't needed.

This is the desk were my intern sits. All K/1 classes get a college student to work in their rooms to help with students. Mine is fantastic (and so was last years!!) She sits here and does assessments, AR tests, small groups, art projects, catches up absent students, and paints hands every month for the memory book :) She is my right AND left hand!

Behind her is my TE shelf. It has a whole lot of dust on it because I RARELY open those books. I feel like I am a pretty good teacher who knows her standards well, and does not need to read from scripted curriculum. So that is where they sit... looking all cluttery. ha! To the right of the clutter is my listening center, it hadn't been set up yet, but y'all, it's nothing to see. I have ONE, count them, ONE tape CASSETTE player. Yes, cassettes. It is the saddest, most dilapidated player you ever did see too. I also put my ipad there to even out the dilapitated-ness.  The good news is I set up a DonorsChoose account to *hopefully* get a new center. Fingers crossed

This is the desk were my intern sits. All K/1 classes get a college student to work in their rooms to help with students. Mine is fantastic (and so was last years!!) She sits here and does assessments, AR tests, small groups, art projects, catches up absent students, and paints hands every month for the memory book :) She is my right AND left hand!

Behind her is my TE shelf. It has a whole lot of dust on it because I RARELY open those books. I feel like I am a pretty good teacher who knows her standards well, and does not need to read from scripted curriculum. So that is where they sit... looking all cluttery. ha! To the right of the clutter is my listening center, it hadn't been set up yet, but y'all, it's nothing to see. I have ONE, count them, ONE tape CASSETTE player. Yes, cassettes. It is the saddest, most dilapidated player you ever did see too. I also put my ipad there to even out the dilapitated-ness.  The good news is I set up a DonorsChoose account to *hopefully* get a new center. Fingers crossed

Yay! If you are still with me, you made it all the way around my classroom! All of these pictures were taken right before the kids entered on the first day and it doesn't look too different except for having tons of student work up on the walls. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe got a few ideas!

Until next time...

First Day of School Rewind

Oh the first week. It was this week and to say I am exhausted is an understatement. Because you know there is tired and then there is first-week-school-tired! It actually went pretty well today...as well as the first week of Kinder can go, you know...like herding cats...or ...something. It was definitely one of my better first weeks.

So I have been teaching Kindergarten for the past 8 years and have been slowly perfecting my first day lesson plan. My school is half day (8:50-12:10) Kindergarten up until the 2nd trimester. After that we go full day. This makes a perfect little transition time for the kids to get acclimated into school life. It also means I am crunched for time! It stresses me out like you would not believe. The plus side is that I am more organized during this time of the year. It's a different story after November, but ask me about that another time, ha!

Back to lesson plans. I am not sure if this will help anyone but maybe you can glean a few ideas off of it for those of you still *lucky* enough to be on summer break! (I envy you!!)

Here is what my day looks like:

So let me break it down for you:

This is where our parents meet us and after all the students are in the line with their parents in tow, my principal makes some announcements and we are set free. It's kind of a chaotic, hot time but whatevs... I roll with it :) When it is all over, the parents get to come with us to the classrooms.

I let my students into the classroom one at a time. I greet each child with a handshake and a comment or 2 on their new school clothes. I hand this paper to each parent and ask them to complete these steps:

It gives the parents and children a task to complete while I greet the rest of the students and talk to parents. 

Once we've said goodbye to our parents ( I had one itty bitty that didn't want to say goodbye, hence he became my shadow for the rest of the day), I show the students my attention getter and we practice it a few times before they clean up the blocks and come to the carpet. Normally, we will have a carpet routine but the first day is a little different. I take roll and teach them to say "I am here!" when I call their name. This is always the hardest part because I haven't taught them to raise their hand or to stay seated yet, so of course in between calling names I am reminding students not to get up or to let me finish taking roll before they ask me more questions. Which is a perfect time to lead into...

We have a little talk about why we can't all speak at once (it sounds like blah, blah, blah and I can't understand) and I go into the steps. I display the chart with it's steps and we practice a few times. I make a big deal of those who follow directions.

 After going over these rules, I read them a story I wrote about... me! And my family too.  It's an ABC book of my family. They enjoy getting to see the pictures. I created my book using Shutterfly and a free code I got when we went to LegoLand over the Summer (Summer -I miss you!!).

 By this time, I usually have children chomping at the bit, practicing the new skill of raising their hands and asking me if they get to use the pencils, crayons or scissors yet.  To which I reply, "Of course!!"

I whip out my Name Writing Self Portraits for August. I LOVE these. I have been using these for years (I just revamped them this summer) for name assessment and showing growth. Then at the end of the year, they double as part of the memory book. They are super fun to look back on. Plus I keep them up on the wall all year, I just tack the newest portrait on top, then I can see the growth with just the flip of a page.

Don't they look so good hanging up in my room??? I love it!

For this, my buddy teacher and I helped each other (as we always do, isn't having a good teammate awesome?!). She took all the girls into her room and I took all the boys. We used this time to go over our bathroom expectations. I always tell the kids that there are 3 things they can do in a bathroom: poop, pee and wash their hands. Nothing else. Just saying the words poop and pee gets their attention, it's amazing. We make a little poster of looks like/sounds like for each rule my buddy teacher and I came up with ahead of time. The kids came up with the looks like/sounds like portion. They loved making the sound effects for Do Your Business. Inappropriate? maybe. But definitely necessary! ha!

Before we go to the bathroom, I also show them this quick video of ducks walking in a line behind their Mama to show them what I mean by a line. Then we practice.

 After getting the chance to show off our skills of how to use a school bathroom and walk in a line appropriately, we headed to the playground for snack. While they ate, my buddy teacher and I traded off narrating and using the playground equipment appropriately while they watched us. We probably looked completely ridiculous but we all know we do it. We are Kindergarten teachers, right?! We had also made a powerpoint showing the kinder team using the equipment both correctly and incorrectly, but as most first days go, we ran out of time!!! I did show it the next day though. I will spare you the horribly (I guess funny) pictures we took...well, maybe I will share just one :) Only because we look... the least amount of ridiculous compared to the other pictures, haha! I am the one on the left. My buddy teacher next door is next to me.

 After recess, we brought the kids for a little story time with our favorite bad boy, No David! That little naked butt running down the street becomes every kindergarteners obsession from this day out. Amen?
Anyway, let me backtrack for just a moment. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the I Teach K conference in Las Vegas over the Summer (AMAZING experience, best PD ever, hands down) and on the last day there, I changed one of my classes to see another presenter. Her name was LeAnna Wolkis-Goldstien. And OMG, she was completely adorable, first off, and her ideas!! Oh such good ideas! That I just had to stay in her class the whole rest of the day. The reason I am telling you about her is that she introduced me to the magic prop bag. This is a cloth bag I sewed together with scrap cloth real quickly one day. I made one for me and one for my buddy teacher.

 Inside I included the book, a broken toy (my daughter found a broken tiara for me), a toy pot and pan with spoon and a happy/sad face.

Before reading the story I *dramatically* introduce my "Magic Story bag".  I pull out the book first and we all gasp. I really ham it up as I peek in the bag (and they are all up on their knees "What is it?! What is it?!") and pull out items one at a time and make guesses as to why that item might be in there. After reading the story we discuss if our guesses were correct. I now use this bag to introduce every story and I have them just eating out of my hands. They cannot get enough! I'll create a post more about this later as it is one of the best teaching tools I've learned.

 Now it is time for using glue and scissors for the first time! Eek! I am VERY explicit with my rules for scissors and glue. I created a powerpoint that showed me using those tools right and wrong. They thought it was great. And it works!

 (just an example, not the whole PowerPoint)

 Then I print out the pictures of me and we sort them on a anchor chart and keep them up all year. This way I can refer to it all year long when I spot someone who forgot the rules.

After we have gone over that, I let them practice by creating the snack calendar. Each month, we create this calendar as a keepsake of art work that children's parents can delightfully hang up and at the same time it gives the parents an easy way to keep track of what is going on in the classroom and when they need to bring snack for the class. I didn't get a picture of this one, dang it! Next time!

It's finally the end of the day!!! I take the last 20 minutes of the day to introduce them to dismissal procedures, where their cubbie is, things like that.

So, that's my day...what I got done at least.I had a craftivity for No David that we didn't get to until Thursday! We all know we over plan that first week because so much time is spent getting them to just stay put, stop tapping you (my pet peeve!) and to teach procedures. I felt really good that my class was heading in the right direction by Thursday and I am super excited to see them again tomorrow! I have fun week planned for them. I would like to give you a peek at my week but Mommy duties have been calling my name. I have been trying to ignore them, but they are as persistent as Kindergarteners.

First Day Idea - Telling Your Students About You

I have always believed that you can be more scared of the unknown than anything else. This definitely rings true for our new little friends coming into Kindergarten. They have no idea what to expect, they don't really know what their teacher is going to be like, or for our non-preschoolers. what a teacher even is, all they know is Mommy and Daddy won't be there and it might be hard. All of that is more than little scary. And then there is us, the teachers, all a little scared of what the year might bring. Especially the first day. I agonize and worry about my first impression to the parents and kids. Will I have a runner? Or how many criers? How many students will I have to peel off the parents’ legs? How many potty accidents? How many times will I answer “When is it time to go home?”. How long will it feel like I am herding cats before I have them trained to stay... there. Stay where ever it is that they need to be...centers... their seat...the carpet. ahhh! My heart is starting to race just thinking about it. So. Many. Things. I am not alone in this right??? I can never sleep before the first day of school thinking about all of these things. Anyway... I am getting a little carried away here!
So, what I really meant to talk about was the children and what can be a very stressful day for them with all their worries about the unknown. I came up with a couple of things I do to alleviate their anxiety so at least one of us is more relaxed and EXCITED about the first day J My ideas aren’t ground breaking or even new stuff but they are just something I do that works for me. Maybe it might work for others too.

ABC’s About Me
A few years ago, a friend of mine gave a code for a free 8x8 photo book from Shutterfly. My kids were 3 and 4 years old at the time and I saw an idea on Pinterest to make them an ABC book of their current life. So I did. It said things like "A is for Allison, B is Beach camping, etc... and it included pictures of us and things we did, and places we've been. It turned out so cute and they love it! I read it to them as a bedtime story often. When it came for school to start up I thought it would be a perfect little story to read to my new little Kinder babies to tell them about me, my kids, my pets, my husband and the things we like to do together. My students loved it just as much and would ask me to read it to them several times during the year. As they got to know me, and the people I talked about most, it was something of a novelty to the kids to connect these names to faces. Or stories I’ve told them about my family to the events in the pictures. This is the first book I made:

Click here to view this photo book larger

Create your own custom photo books at Shutterfly.com.

Last year, when I brought out the book on the first day, I realized that it was severely outdated. My kids were 3 and 4 years old in the pictures (they are now 7 and 8 years old), the pets we have now were not in our family back then, and there are more family events I can include now that we’ve done them with our few years older children. So this year, I got my hands on another free code when we went to LegoLand in May. I finally just finished our new and updated ABC book. They take a bit of time to make, but in the end, so worth it. Plus it’s a family keepsake that serves 2 purposes . I will show you my new updated version when it arrives on Tuesday. Follow me on Instagram @SmartCookiesInKinder

Letter Home
I never had a teacher send me a letter but my siblings did. I knew I wanted to be a teacher back then and when they received a letter in the mail from their teachers, I thought it was the coolest thing. I tucked that little idea way in my head for future teacher use. It took a few years of teaching to get my hands on an address roster before school began but eventually someone let me have it. I now write a letter every year that looks like this:

 I just edit a few things and change out the pictures to updated ones. When Kinder orientation comes (Meet The Teacher), many students bring the letter with them and are so excited to share with me that their favorite color is pink like me or they love the Dodgers too! They tell me about their pets or their brothers and sisters and they are the oldest child like me. Right away I have broken down that barrier of the unknown, because now, they know me. They know I am a Mommy and that Mommies are nice. They know I like kids, and sports. Then when the first day of school rolls around, they are excited to come back and see me. I haven’t had criers or runners since I started doing this...maybe about 5 years ago... Though I still stress over the possibility of having one.
Is there anything you do to help your students cope with first day nerves and get to know you? Please share!

Math Tool Kits

I was fortunate to be able to attend the SDE I Teach K conference in Las Vegas last week and learned so much that I just had to get started as soon as I got home! Did anyone else feel that way? It really motivated me! The first thing I wanted to get started on was the Math Tool Kits that Dee Dee Wills over at Mrs. Wills Kindergarten taught me. I took 2 of her classes and now I have a laundry list of things I want to complete based on all I learned from her.

Here is how I did mine:

First I took a trip to my local Walmart and purchased 3 ring binders. They were on sale for .97 cents each. I bought 13 of them so that my 26 kinders could share them. I plan to make my kids math partners, which will be a perfect change for how I usually do things. What worked last year was that I introduced lessons from the carpet while the kids sat in what we called our "Math Circle". Since I had a (wonderful) student teacher last year, one of us would be teaching while the other would be passing out our tools to use when the lesson was over and independent practice began. This year I will not have that luxury because that student teacher will now be running her own classroom. When I heard this idea from Dee Dee, I thought YES!! That is what I need!

I made a list of things I wanted to include in my tool kits. Most things I made myself and some I got from here and here.

I still have to add the manipulatives like dice and counters, etc. that are in my classroom but for now, I prep what I can from home. The pouches are 97 cents at walmart right now. I am hoping they keep, we'll see!

 

The outside cover I got from the Dee Dee Wills download. I had to tape mine on since the .97 cent binders do not have the extra outside clear pocket. Boo! But yay! for cheap!

Our first unit at my school is sorting, so I included lots of different sorting mats that sort several items, 2 items and 3 items. In my pencil pouches, I plan to include things to sort by color, shape, size and attribute. I included a graph too so the students can add in that skill a little later on. I learned a lot about teaching graphing from Kim Adsit that I will share in a later post.
My large sheets are in sheet protectors and my half sheets are laminated. I plan to also include a white board marker in their pencil pouches so they can write on all of these mats.


I included a 100 chart, addition, subtraction frames and mat for making 10.

I included 2 ten frames. We will start by just using the top and then moving on to using both as our numbers become bigger than 10.




These are quite a bit of work, but I think they will be well worth it in the end. If you would like a copy of the mats I made, just email me Aphisrose@yahoo.com and I would be happy to share them with you :)

Do you do math tool kits like Dee Dee's? What do you include that I haven't thought of? I would love to hear your ideas!