Classroom Tour...Finally!

Welcome to Mrs. Ziegler's Kindergarten! 

Tonight's open house was a smashing success with 16 of my 20 students coming to meet the teacher.  Half of my class is hispanic so communicating with the parents was challenging on more than one occasion but overall it went rather smoothly.  I only had 1 hispanic family that could not communicate at all (and that includes the kinder of the family) and one little boy from China who has only been in the states for a few weeks and will only be here for one year.  I am pretty comfortable with the challenge of teaching to such a large group of ESL students but have to admit I am pretty apprehensive about working with the little boy from China.  Not only am I unable to speak or understand Chinese...but neither is any other child in the classroom or any adult in the entire school building.  How on earth do I deal with that on day one?  Any suggestions?    

I am however finally ready to share pics of my classroom.  Do you remember how bare it was the first time I stepped in and then how messy and disorganized it was while I moved in?  Well, all the hard work payed off because I absolutely LOVE my new room...

 

 View of the doorway entry from the hallway

 

View as you enter the room!

 Our Calendar Area.  I made all the cute calendar headings myself and am considering adding them to my new TPT store!

 

My BEAUTIFUL carpet:)

 My center-block word wall.  These letters are in my TPT store and they are PERFECT for this space.  I have to thank my best teacher friend (Mrs. Morgan from Asheville) for this inspiration!

Our Reading Center!

 Our Math Center.  The golden framed area will be for our math vocab words.

 One of my favorite parts of the whole room.  If you looked at the pics of my old first grade classroom you might recognize the blue and yellow pages.  I used to have them on our word family wall.  Now they will be used to help display student work.  Notice the super adorable banner hanging above?  That is all thanks to my amazing new assistant.  I was talking out loud about how I couldn't think of a cute or catchy heading for our student work and an hour later she had whipped out this adorable banana banner!  LOVE.

 My Corner.  Isn't it wonderful?  If you look REALLY close you can see my teachers toolkit peaking through the arms of the chair.

 This is the entry to our classroom bathroom. Also pictured are the backpack and coat hooks for the kids.

 This will be our block and games and puzzles station!   I still need to add labels and I wish I didn't have to keep my teacher resource bookshelf RIGHT there...it's so ugly but oh so necessary!

So that's it, my new classroom.  I have worked super hard and now I'm ready to focus all that energy on teaching the sweet sweet kiddos that I got to meet tonight for the first time.  Hope you enjoyed the peak into my room!

Caution: Enter At Your Own Risk!

Oh my goodness friends!  I have been one busy little beaver these past three days.  The moving-in process FINALLY started on Monday.  My husband and I showed up at the school  bright and early Monday morning, ready to begin the long process of hauling my 3 + pallets of stuff  from the receiving room to my classroom (did I mention that the school was nice enough to let me store all my stuff there until my floors were finished)? Anyway, I deem it necessary to point out that the distance from the receiving room to my room is a really, really, really big one when your pushing or pulling or carrying mounds of boxes!  So we were about thirty minutes into it when we saw a man coming our way from the far end of the hallway.  The man started waving at us and I looked at my husband and just shrugged, saying "I have no idea who that is", but as the man got closer my husband recognized him as one of his Sergeants!  Turns out that my dear sweet husband had recruited some help without even filling me in.  So the two super strong men cleared out the entire receiving room in about an hour!  It was wonderful.  We begged his Sergeant to let us buy his lunch but he steadfastly refused and just looked straight at me and said "Thank YOU for teaching our children!"  Aahhhh.....how incredibly sweet and amazingly refreshing to have someone completely unrelated to you or your profession take the time to give such a sincere thank you.  While moving and working hard, the sergeant shared with us that THIS had been his elementary school as a child.  I thought that was so cool!

So we finished moving things in on Monday but then spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying a delicious lunch-out.  It is VERY seldom that the husband and I ever have time alone together without our two kiddos tagging along.  So we took advantage of the day and made it into a lunch date.  I did go back later that afternoon on my own but spent about two full hours just standing in the room and thinking about where things would go.  I like to take my time when setting up a classroom and tend to be very methodical about every decision.  I have never been able to fathom how some teachers can wait until those work days at the beginning of the year and then come in and have their room all ready to roll in one or two days.  It ALWAYS takes me at least a week, and when moving classrooms, at least two!

So now two days later, progress has been made.  It is very slow moving as I spent ALL day yesterday and the majority of the today just cleaning out the cabinets.  The teacher before me had left quite a bit, some that belonged to the classroom or school and some that had belonged to her.  So I had to go through everything to decide what belongs in which pile.   I made a give-away pile, a return to supply closet pile, a move to storage room pile, a recycle pile and a trash pile!  The give-away pile is HUGE and continues to grow.  I hope people claim it all, otherwise it all get's trashed!

I have a few pictures to share to give you an idea of the chaos that is my room at the point:

Day 1: Most of what came out of the receiving room, now spread out in the classroom!

 Day 2: Let cleaning and unpacking begin!

 Table and assistants desk full of things that need to find a home somewhere in the classroom!

 Another new teacher came in to work on her classroom today and as she passed through my room she said "I feel overwhelmed just being in this room...you have so much stuff!"

 But here was the highlight of my day.  My brand new carpet was delivered!  I was going to wait until I had everything in place before unrolling it but I just got too excited and curious about how it would look so...

Isn't is BEAUTIFUL!!!:)  

So tomorrow, I will return with the goal of having EVERY box unpacked by the end of the day so that I may spend next week on bulletin boards, wall displays, and organization things.  I'll be sure to keep you all updated!

Preparing for the Move

I went into my current classroom the other day to begin the process of packing up.  I forgot how much stuff I have.  Ughhh.  I spent the majority of the time just staring around the room trying to figure out where to start and the rest of the time was spent thinking about where I will put this stuff in my new classroom.  So, I got very little packing done, which is unfortunate because I won't have another opportunity to get back in there until next Tuesday.  Oh wait, did I say "unfortunate"?  Let me suck those words back in because there is NOTHING unfortunate about going to the beach which is the reason why I can't get back into my classroom until next Tuesday!:)

I did have the chance to talk to the teacher who will be taking my place, teaching first grade in the school I am leaving.  I am incredibly excited for her. She is a first year teacher (well...kinda....she has been an assistant for many years and has been the computer teacher for a long time, but she has never had a class of her own).  Regardless, I was happy to spend some time with her and answer all the questions she had about first grade, the curriculum, classroom management, organization tips, etc.  She is feeling a bit overwhelmed (and we can all relate to that feeling) as she is trying to wrap her mind around all the work that goes into getting a classroom ready, in addition to the many trainings she will go through over the next month or so.  My advice to her was this: Just make the classroom presentable and functional for now.  At this time it is more important to focus most of your attention on the curriculum and how you will teach it.  All the rest will come with time.

 I also told her a lesson I have learned about classroom setup as this will be my seventh classroom!  Always start by setting up your "teaching hub" first; this is the space you do most of your teaching from.  If you have an interactive whiteboard (which she does), this needs to be your starting point.  Turn the projector on and set that area up as if you are going to teach a lesson right then.  Keep the projector going as you are arranging the room so that you will be able to make sure it is viewable for every child in the classroom.

These are just a couple of the lessons I have learned over the years:)   I will try very hard to keep these lessons forefront in my mind as I work on setting up my own room.  I have been obsessing over the layout of my new classroom ever since visiting it for the first time on Monday.  So, of course I did what all good slightly OCD teachers do; I made a list.  I used the pictures from my previous post to make a list of every piece of furniture in the room.  Then I sketched an outline of the classroom and played around with the setup....

 I think I actually have a pretty good plan.  I can't wait to get in there to see if it will work out the way I have envisioned it!  The good news is that I can get in there now to start putting things in cabinets and working on wall displays.  The bad news is that I can't arrange the furniture until the week of August 6th.   The situation could be worse....I will still have a full week to work in the room before the workdays begin.  I need to have it all done before the first workday on August 20th because EVERY workday has been reserved for professional development.  Crazy....right?!?!

Well, friends...it's off for a toes-in-the-sand kinda of trip! I'll be back next week:)

Blank Slate!

Oh my, I am so excited!  I just saw my new classroom for the first time and am overly anxious to get in there and start making it mine.  I also found out some fantastic news....it looks like I will be able to get my room set up BEFORE mid-August.  WOO HOO!!!!

Don't you just love moving in for the first time, when everything is still so bare and empty?  I have always been a huge fan of any kind of makeover shows because I LOVE before and after projects.  This will be my 7th classroom so I should be pretty good at this moving stuff by now!:)  Here are some pics of my classroom right now.  The room is bigger than the pics portray, it's always so hard to get the different angles.  Can't wait for after pictures!

Tour of my First Grade Classroom

Although I will not be teaching first grade this year; I thought I would share pics of my first grade classroom just in case someone sees something they like. One of my very favorite things to do is visit other classrooms (in real life or online) to get ideas. So I am happy to welcome you into mine. These pictures were taken just before Meet the Teacher night so some things look kinda bare since I like to start with a blank canvas (of sorts) before adding things with the kids. You will also notice that everything looks so neat and tidy....if only it stayed like that ALL the time! I added captions but if you see something you want to know more about don't be afraid to ask! FYI: If you click on the picture it will enlarge on your screen:)

Our meeting area

Standing in the front of the room, looking out toward two tables and our meeting area

The teachers corner (my space), students are taught from day one that they are only allowed in this corner if I am with them:)

The Entrance

View from the back

This picture gives you a good idea of just how HUGE my room was!

Side view. In the left hand corner of the picture are the boys and girls cubbies. They are on wheels, which is AWESOME because you can place them wherever you want them to be!

My small group table and our word family wall. This wall was inspired by some word walls at Caleb's Creek Elementary in Winston Salem, NC. I would give credit to specific teachers but I am sad to say I have no idea who actually deserves the credit. My collegues and I were at a workshop last summer at Caleb's Creek and walked around the school during break time to see teacher classrooms and get some ideas. This was one of the fantastic things we saw! I used the idea for my word family wall. It does not replace the high frequency word wall which is in the front of the classroom. I will blog more about what we do with word families in a separate post!

Aghh...it looks so bare from this angle...but remember it was before school actually started! LOL

I just put my donation station on the white board (easy set-up and easy take-down). Parent's could choose from two categories on the board: "Help us meet our needs" and "Make our dreams come true". The sign reads: If you would like to donate one of the items on the sticky notes, please remove the sticky note from the board and send the item in whenever you wish! Thank you.

These are our leveled take home readers. Students go to the basket with their just right level on Monday mornings and choose two books for the week.

I have to give credit to my amazing colleague Mrs. Kacsmarek over at Krazy Fun Teaching with Mrs. Kacz for this one. You can grab her button on the side bar! Use these super cheap photo frames for signs that parents need to see on Meet the Teacher.

Our writing station

This was my first year trying the bucket filling idea. It pretty much went unnoticed (thanks to my own forgetfullness) the first half of the year but boy was it useful when those kiddos came back after Christmas. I think they must have been tired of each other because they suddenly started being incredibly mean. So I rolled this bulletin board to the front of the room and we re-read

Have You Filled a Bucket Today? and started using it. Wow, it sure did make a difference! You can learn more about bucket filling HERE.

Our reading center

This what the student desks look like when they get to see them for the first time on Meet the Teacher

The reading center with easy access from either side!:)

Part of our math station

The reading center from a child's view:)

Our Jobs Chart. I sit my students in groups and name each group after a day of the week. Each group has a "gopher" each week that is in charge of getting any supplies that the group needs for work throughout the day. The gophers are switched out at the beginning of each week along with the jobs for each week.

Our crazy 6 day rotation for specials. I found that an easy way to keep up with it was with this pocket chart. We moved the big red arrow down each morning so we would know where to go!

A posted schedule is essential for little people (the truth is we all want to know what to expect ahead of time). For first grade, I kept it simple by just naming the subject or activity on each card. We would go over the schedule every morning during our meeting.

I promise to have a separate blog explaining my classroom behavior plan. I have used the same one for 10 years, with just a few tweaks depending on the grade level I happen to be teaching. I LOVE IT and it WORKS! Here are our five basic rules. I adopted these rules while teaching at Glenn C. Marlow Elementary School in Fletcher, NC. Oh, how I miss that school! It was there that I spent the first five years of my teaching career and boy was I lucky, it is such an amazing place to be (as a teacher or as a student)!

I can't wait to tell you all about my behavior system. Wait until you hear about the auction...kids LOVE it, it teaches great economic skills, and it's cheaper than keeping your treasure box stocked with shiny new toys all year long. Keep your eyes open for a post on this. If you are anxious to hear about it now, just let me know and I'll get the information to you as soon as possible!