First Week Survival

Do a little dance, because we made it.  Despite a hundred challenges that should have  never happened, we survived.

The kiddos started this week on Monday, and I must say that I am rather excited about my class.  I have never taught in a school where the same kids have stayed year after year.  I can already tell a difference in these kids from last year's in terms of behavior, and am excited to see the progress they'll make.  They already know the routines, schedules and expectations, now I just have to break some bad work habits! 

Aside from the kids, however, this week was interesting to say the least.  The copier broke last Thursday (before school even started), and didn't get fixed until THIS Thursday (yup, you heard me, 6 days with no copy machine).  The laminator broke.  My document camera broke. The second day of school I forgot my flash drive at home (that will NEVER happen again, all my precious documents are now in drop box).  We had no preps this week.  We all had lunch duty every day and only about a 20 minute break later in the day to actually eat our lunch. Then Thursday I woke up sick.  This one was for the books.

Now that we have our prep schedule, I know things will get better, but geez I'm exhausted.  If I were in Arizona right now, I would get up early and go for a hike in the mountains to release some of this steam.  However, mountains are no longer available, so I'm going to walk up to the Farmer's Market instead and get a cup of coffee.  Today will be spent shopping for a few last minute things for my class, and then tomorrow I will hit the books and finish up my unit plans for the next couple weeks.  It will be very very nice to have all of those done.  Off to the market.  Who knows, maybe I'll buy some pretty flowers for my classroom!

Changes to the room. . .

The countdown has begun.

The last three days have been absolutely insane, as we have been sitting in meetings from 7:30 - 4:00 both days.  In other words, I have spent every possible second before and after school trying to get my room put back together before we get kids on Monday.  Chaos. Organization Madness.  Monday with children.  No wonder I haven't been sleeping well (not to mention I've just HAD to stay up and watch the Olympics!).

There are a few things I am changing this year, and am pretty damn excited to see how it works.

Change #1 - An Organization Center.  After reading a post from Teaching in Room 6, I was inspired to add this area to my room.  One thing I noticed yesterday was that my kids, even after thousands of reminders, seemed to get temporary amnesia when it came to finding things or putting things away.  My thought was that if I had all supplies in one place and labeled, we will drastically reduce the number of "Where is . . . ?" questions.  This is my hope anyway, we'll see how well it actually works.

Change #2 - Group bins for independent reading books.  I know that a lot of younger grades keep their independent reading books in bags on their tables, and this eliminates the getting up and wandering around in search of your book.  I figured if 8 year-olds can do it, so can we.  Instead of bags, I created a bin for each group to house both class' independent books.  I paired them up with supply boxes for each group and gave them their own home on top of the bookshelves.  I would prefer that there were bins of organized books up there, but I think this is a relatively adequate use of this space as well. 

Change #3 - Library organization.  Last year each classroom received 500 books for an independent reading library from the network.  These books have been separated from my own personal books since last May, knowing that I was going to reorganize things this fall.  SO, I labeled each of my books with my own personal label, and color coded them (with sticky "dots" on the spine) according to genre.  Then, I mixed them all together!  I now have over 1000 book library in my classroom and it looks awesome (if I do say so myself).  They will no longer be able to complain about not finding a book to read!

I'll be posting more pictures as this next week progresses and my room continues to add a little more personality on the walls!  Only two more days until the kids come. Still so much to do . . .