A peek in my room on the eve before the first day!

Well this is it.  I'm as prepared as I'm going to be!  My room is as done as it can be!  My sweet first graders will come tomorrow for their first day!  I'm very excited to get to know them and begin this journey with them.

Here's a peek into my room as I left it today -

A view from the doorway into my room....on the opposite wall you will see my word wall and my schedule

Our carpet for carpet time with my chair and circus wall

My "messy" corner of centers storage and outdoor play toys along with our
Juggling Jobs clown

My boys' and girls' restroom with our library in between.  A few of our first days books are on top of the library with SkippyJon for now.

Each bucket in our library has a different type of duct tape on it.  Each book in that bucket also has the same strip of duct tape across the spine.  This enables my student whose job is librarian to know which bucket to put the books in.  

More of our library...

An example of a bucket with the strip of duct tape

The left front of my room with student boxes, centers trays, color words and our Whole Brain rules

The board area of our room

My agenda board with our essential questions and objectives as well as my teaching table

Looking back at the door into the hall with our 200 chart, shapes and number words

My data wall to hold student benchmark scores as well as goals and "Did we meet our goals?" information.  Please excuse my mess under the board.  Some are my items and some are supplies but those desks will hold my student netbooks when we receive them later this week.

Well I better get to finishing up my last minute things so that I can go to bed.  I hope I can sleep!  Can you sleep on the night before school?  I'm always SOOOO excited and nervous that it's hard to actually rest!

More back to school planning!!

I think I may have finally figured out my centers dilemma.  Whew, I had so overthought (is that a word?) the whole process.  Tonight, feeling overwhelmed by my large number of students and my even longer "to do" list, my brain shut down and I just began to click through old blogs and links that I had saved from years gone by.  On the second link, I came across a page on centers.  I think it was an answer to prayer! Here it is if you are interested - Mrs. Mcdowell.

I'm not going to share her chart here because that would be "plagiarizing" but basically she suggests only 3 rotations a day - me, centers, seatwork.  This will give me eight students at each rotation and since they work in pairs, there will be four groups in centers at a time.

SO....for my class of 24 students, I will have 8 working with me, 8 working with partners on seatwork, and 8 in centers.  We will have three rotations of 20 minutes each (actually around 18 minutes with 2 minutes to move about the room).

Since there are five days in a week that we will be doing centers, I will need five centers (the other way I had planned 9 centers each week - YAY for extras!).

My five centers are as follows -
1.  Bump/Scoot Game
2. Computer time
3.  ELA center
4.  Math center
5.  Writing center

I feel so much better about all of it!

I also worked on desk name plates today.  I often have my kids work in pairs and also in teams of 3.  Last year I felt grouping 3 confused some of my kids because they weren't sure who to group with.  This year, I have a plan!

On their nameplate, each child will have a color and a shape at the end.  This child is a member of the purple pair and the triangle group.  Each member will be at the same table sitting next to each other but this will show him to speak to if I say "color group chat" or "shape group chat".

How do you do centers?  How do you group students for class chats?

A Winner!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have a winner!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Class Lists, Meet & Greet, and a GIVEAWAY

A while back I had received what I thought was my class list.....it had 23 kids on it....I was 

shocked and stressed to have so many firsties.  Since then, I've seen that lots of you

have that many or more on your lists.  After receiving my first list, my class grew to 26, and then to "too many kids to have in one class" so now they have taken back my list as they sort through exactly what to do with my sweeties.  

Tomorrow I get my class list AND tomorrow I meet my babies for the first time.  I hope that somewhere in there I have time to put their names on something.....at least one thing before they come in.  I have never in my 13 years of teaching had to do it so last minute but if it keeps me from having 26 or more kids I'm all for it.

Tonight at midnight, my giveaway ends so be sure to check it out here!!  

 Thanks for stopping by!!  

One year and 100 followers later.....GIVEAWAY!!!

Last year on August 1, I started this little blog as a way

to journal my thoughts on teaching and my classroom.  It has also

become a way for me to connect with other teachers to share ideas.

I think it's so neat that I hit 100 followers just last week as I 

neared my one year anniversary of blogging.  In order to celebrate both

milestones, I have put together this little giveaway.  

Here's a look at our fabulous prizes!!  

(Clicking the picture will take you to their blogs.)

Good luck!!!  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Working in my room, pictures, and a giveaway coming soon!!

If you've been following along with my journey, you know that Friday at lunch 

I left my almost set up classroom in order to get a larger one.  

I've worked really hard since then to 

"catch up" to where I was when I decided to move rooms.

Yesterday and today, my boys and I have spent full

work days in my room (read that as 8-5) in hopes of 

it being finished by the time I go back for inservices on Thursday.

How in the world is it already time to go back to school?!?!?  

With the exception of cleaning some more of my junk and 

decorating the last bulletin board (which is behind some stuff that needs

to be moved out of my room to another room, we are pretty much done with all that I can 

do before I get student names.  

Here's some pictures of what it looked like today when we left.....

This is going to be a student work board after school starts but I hated to leave it bare

so I put all of the encouraging monster posters

in the middle of it.  My banner across the ceiling is the same one 

I used last year.

On the far left is my schedule for each day.  Color word balloons in the center and my 5 WBT 

rules are on the right.  The red pockets on the right hold my papers for each day.

My calendar....I obviously don't do calendar time.  I've never felt that it was as beneficial to my 

students as it was time-consuming for me.  We do 

morning work in the mornings that covers both math and ELA as a review

but we do not do calendar time.  The white paper under my calendar is our "Strive 65" 

behaviors and the poster will hold my birthdays once I know who my kids are.  Oh yeah, you

thought I had gotten my kids right because I said last time I had 23 but we now have so 

many that we may have to adjust or add a teacher so I may lose some.  

The empty spaces under the birthday poster will hold our school monthly calendar and lunch calendar.

Off to the right of this one you can see the bulletin board that I have not finished.  My hall board is done but I am waiting on names so I will share it later.

This weekend I'll be celebrating my one year blogiversary and my 100 follower celebration!!  Someone will win my entire store as well as prizes from a few other fabulous ladies who have

been gracious enough to share with us!!!  Come back Friday for a chance to win!!!

Surprise of the Week and a few pictures

I have been trying to go to school each day for a few hours these last couple of weeks to prepare my room and purge the extra stuff I had from last year.  Junk just seemed to grow in my room.  I was just about finished purging and was beginning to put stuff on my walls when......I heard that one of our "big" rooms was available.  

This room has its own a/c, 2 bathrooms, and is 1.5 times as big as the other rooms.  It's one of the rooms we drool over at our school.  So what does a good teacher do? Yep go to the office to ask to be moved!!!  

THEY SAID YES!!!!  

So, all my decorations.......

(I had chosen clown #2)

All of my decorations had to come down.  

My really organized teacher shelves.....all coming down.  

I started moving yesterday at lunch time and with the help of a super sweet facilities gentleman who stuck it out with me to the end, we finished a little after 4 yesterday.  It's all moved into the new room.  It is not however organized or decorated!  Did I mention that my kiddos come to meet and greet on the 5th??  

One last look at my old room.....it was nice and cozy (read: cramped) but it was home for the last year.  

Part of my new room....my four student tables are already set up.  The open door in the back left is the boys' restroom with the girls' restroom on the other side of the black bookshelves.  

The other part of my new room....excuse the coke machine!  This was going to be a teacher's lounge this year but we have too many students!  The small door in this picture is a "sink room".  I think this must have been some kind of art room long ago.  The "sink room" is about the size of a linen closet with a HUGE sink in it so it's completely unusable to me but this room is amazing!

The computers on the shelf are not mine so don't get excited yet!

A view of my his/hers bathrooms with my class library in between.  

I also got my class list yesterday and I have 23.  23!!!!!  I've honestly NEVER had 23 before in my life so that kind of worries me.  I had my centers all set up for 20 which is our "perfect class size" at our school but sadly I'm going to have to make more!  I also don't have an even number.  I hate odd numbers because someone is either left out of a partner for Whole Brain Teaching OR I have a group of three where someone really doesn't share as much.  How do you handle odd number classes?  I've asked for one more/one less but for now I have 23.  

SO that's where I am at in my classroom just one week before I meet my students for the first time.  I hope you have a great weekend!  I go back officially on Thursday!