A Frolic through First? More like a sprint...

Hello Everyone! During calendar time this morning,  I had the realization that ten days of school had passed before my very eyes. It seems like the first day was yesterday. Wasn't I at new teacher training a few days ago too? After this mind-blowing experience, I thought, "Wow, I really gave my blog a bad name. I'm not frolicking through first. I'm sprinting." 

Then, I realized, "Oh hey, you haven't posted on that blog in a while because you've been so busy well...ummm...planning, planning, and ummm...more planning." That's how your first year truly is everyone out there. You plan for a week, but you never stick to that plan. Things always take longer or shorter than you expected. You need a back-up plan and a plan for your back-up plan. If you're not planning, then you're in a meeting of sorts. It could be a grade level "team meeting," a "school-wide staff meeting," a "new teacher" meeting (with a mentor....BEST meeting EVER!!! Use your mentor wisely.), and then there are other meetings that really depend on your school such as meetings with Title or ESOL. Don't get me wrong, I really do love meetings. That's all I did as a Senior Resident in college. Meetings with residents who broke the dorm rules, meetings with the staff members that I supervised, meetings with my area team, and meetings with my own supervisor. Meetings are incredibly informative and I love learning from professional development sessions because I'm always eager to improve my skill set. Meetings just take so much time and I find myself coming home with a lot of my work even though people tell me to "relax" and "have some down time." Teachers don't have a 9-5 job where they can experience this so called "down time." Teachers work long days. Mine starts at 5am and generally ends at 11pm. 

So, here's my effort to reflect on my first 10 days of teaching and Open House. Open House occurs a couple days before the first day. This is a time when your room is packed with students and parents. They all want your undivided attention. Your tables start to look like shelves at Walmart due to the plethora of school supplies that are brought in for the school year. 20 boxes of tissue, 20 bottles of hand sanitizer, 20 composition notebooks, 20 glue sticks, 20 boxes of crayons, etc. You get the idea. I think I need to invest my money in Walmart stock. 

Also, word of advice for new teachers; make a list of everything that you put a student's name on at the beginning of the year (desk, cubbie, coat hook, word study baggie, folders, etc). You will want this list at the beginning of each year, so you don't ask yourself, "Have I labeled everything that I need to label?" 

Highlights from the first ten days:

1. Creating Hopes and Dreams- The students colored some of the most creative giraffes I have ever seen. Red ones, blue ones, and normal yellow ones with brown spots. You can see my teacher example in the pictures below. 

2. Answering "What do you want from your teacher this year?"- This question was asked to get students to start thinking about what they wanted to learn in first grade and how I, as their teacher, could help them learn those things. Eventually, we would connect these ideas with their Hopes and Dreams along with the Class Rules because following the rules/ being a good student will help you accomplish your learning goals. As you can see from the chart picture below, my students solely want to learn about animals. Literally every animal under the sun. This may be in part to the fact that my room is jungle-themed. They probably think that I'm entirely knowledgeable about every animal they listed. I didn't have the heart to tell them, "Well, according to the curriculum, we learn about animals for approximately one week. There's no way I can teach you EVERYTHING about EVERY one of these animals." I guess I'm just going to have to incorporate some of these animals into guided reading group books and maybe some other literature based activities where they think they are learning about animals only, but my main intent is writing or sight words. 

3. Learning about each other- Students love to share. It doesn't matter what grade you teach or even what workplace you're in. People generally love to share information about themselves. My kids had a great time talking about things they like, what they did over the summer, and their names. For names, we read Chrysanthemum and talked about how we are each unique (names, interests, looks, etc.). Then, they added different colored construction paper scraps to a name template that my TA traced on black construction paper for each of them. My example is found below in the pictures. 

4. Creating Class Rules- As we brainstormed rules for our class, a HUGE list started to form. We had things like "listen to the teacher," "don't hit," "don't punch," "don't throw things," "be nice," and the list goes on and on. My favorite suggestion by a little boy was, "Take care of the teacher." :) So, we brought ones that were similar together like "don't hit" and "don't punch" and we turned it into "Respect each other." Our rules ended up being "Respect each other," "Be a student that SHINES," and "Take care of the things in our class." You can see our class rules poster below. Students drew examples of them following rules on index cards to go around the poster. And, I ran out of masking tape or you could see the pledge posted on the wall. Every student signed a pledge with their name and that meant that they would follow these rules all year. 

I think those are my top activities/ memories from the first day. Other than, the story that most of you may have seen on my Facebook page. A little girl from my student teaching kindergarten class came up to me at recess and said, "Are you a first grade teacher now?" I said, "Yes. I'm very excited about it!" And she replied, "Good. I'm glad that you don't have to be bossed around anymore." Then she hugged me and ran off with her friends. Well, this was wonderful just reflecting a little bit on the first few days. Once my routine starts getting finalized and things start settling down, I will try to post more often, but for now.....here's to the next 170 days of school :)

"It's a jungle in there"

               As I set up my classroom over the past couple weeks, I could hear both adults and a few students in the hallway saying, "It's a jungle in there!" I was thrilled that my jungle theme was drawing people into my room. The theme sparked conversations with other teachers about themes they used in their classroom in the past.
            From my new teacher academy training, I saw an example first grade classroom. I loved how the teacher had labeled every box and she had made signs for content area stations within the room. After multiple days, every box in my room was labeled whether it was a container of pattern blocks, a basket of Clifford books, or a box of markers. I had designated specific areas of the room for math, science, social studies, reading, and writing. My science and social studies shelves are very small, but I hope to expand those areas in the future when the students begin conducting their own experiments or they start designing projects that fit into those content areas.

Within my reading area, I made an author study bulletin board.  I hope to focus on a new author every month. We will read several of the author's books and create anchor charts to display in the classroom. The students will be engaged with authentic writing activities where they will model the author's style. Eventually, the students will discover their own writing style from absorbing the craft of another.

 

I hope that you all are enjoying my blog thus far. 

If you have any questions about my room set up or where I got specific items, feel free to post a comment on this post and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible.    

P.S. During the creation of this room, I'm pretty sure that I became best friends with the paper cutter, the copy machine, the laminator, my scissors, a stapler, my animal print duck tape (let's face it; everything is better with duck tape), and a few glue sticks. Couldn't have done it without you all :)                                                 

 

     


 

Transformation of Self and Space

Standing the middle of my new classroom, my mom and I began to contemplate our next moves. We were already exhausted from rolling in cart after cart of my school possessions. These possessions include roughly three hundred books that my mom and I had picked up at flea markets, yard sales, and thrift stores. Tons of stuffed animals that correspond to specific book characters lay scattered around the room. I had boxes of paperwork to sort through as well. Some of the paperwork included lessons from my student teaching experiences, worksheets from other teachers, and a random box of assorted construction paper that I have carried around with me since my own childhood. 

My mom and I were going to transform my empty classroom into a jungle-themed learning environment. Little by little, I unpacked my belongings. Some things were moved into plastic containers that would later be labeled for organizational purposes. Other things were filed away on shelves in a storage closet in my room. Since I'm not incredibly gifted with tools, my mom put together many of the shelves that line the walls of my classroom.

At the end of a four day period, the majority of my room was unboxed. It was time to leave the room. I needed to refuel and think through my classroom layout. I needed to sort through all of the ideas I had compiled from Pinterest. I needed to simply breathe because it was overwhelming staring at all of my things. I would revisit my room in approximately a week to finish the transformation process. Throughout those few days in my room, I learned a valuable lesson. No matter how organized or how beautiful my classroom may look after the transformation process; the successfulness of the class depended on my own teaching skills that I had learned through my Master's program and my student teaching experiences. I was the one who would impact my students' lives. They would love the jungle themed room, but I was the one that they would ultimately remember many years down the road.

Guess I better start lesson planning too! :)

Final room pictures will be posted soon as well!

Empty Room, Full Mind

Welcome to First Grade!!!!

As a new teacher walking into her first classroom,  I was undeniably anxious.  I wanted to see the space that I was going to transform into a learning environment for a group of excited (hopefully), first graders. When I walked through the doorway, my heart abruptly stopped beating. The emptiness startled me. I had never seen a classroom completely empty before. I had four tables,  twenty-four chairs,  and a bookcase to work with. I knew that my future encounters with this classroom would be filled with blood (due to my manifest clumsiness),  sweat (due to the amount of effort that I am going to have to exert),  and tears (because something will inevitably break beyond repair or not turn out like I want it to- I'm slightly a perfectionist).  My mind began to rush over the things I would without a doubt need, the things I definitely want, and the things I couldn't possibly afford with a teacher's salary. I had hope though, because I had ideas and lots of them. My mind wasn't half full or half empty with ideas; it was absolutely FULL of ideas. From my student teaching experience at the same school, I was familiar with the arrangement of the class that had previously inhabited my new surroundings. Additionally, I had taken an entire album full of pictures with beautiful bulletin boards, organized classroom libraries, and theme decorations galore. I'm also an avid pinner on Pinterest with a classroom board that contains an ample amount of classroom management techniques, noise level charts, worksheets, and content area games. With all of these examples in my teaching tool belt, I felt confident that I could turn this seemingly desolate landscape into a thriving jungle of knowledge and learning.

Let's see what I can do in the upcoming weeks. I hope that you will follow me on this exhilarating adventure as I frolic through first grade this year!