Gator Classroom

People. I've been in the classroom for two days now and it has been a WHIRLWIND. It's like everything I learned rushed out of my head when those kids lined up at my door Monday morning. Talk about panic.

BUT

the good news is this week we are on the short day schedule (7:30-2) and we have an hour long enrichment block where the kids go to Watoto (which I mentioned in this post). I am definitely feeling overwhelmed, but I have a lot of support through TFA, my 4th grade team, my school, UF teaching friends, and my roommate! I also have to remind myself that Rome wasn't built in a day and I can't be perfect day 1.

I do want to introduce my classroom in all it's Florida glory. Mind you, it's a work in progress. I still need some rugs, some student work, and to put up my Florida posters and gear, but hey, it's better than the last post! Enjoy =]

Front door, word wall, and class library 

Close up of the word wall with writing posters above.
Eventually I want a table to use for writing underneath it.

My reading corner, before the cozy rug that's coming!

Yes, that is a dollar store blow up alligator

Best part of my room! Still need to add my little individual gators!

The front of the room

Good work bulletin board, calendar, and chart paper 

My school-wide rules and areas for the daily objective and standard

Teacher area and Gator of the Week

My little corner =] Especially love my class picture from last year. Miss them!

Love love love these pom-poms! Made of tissue paper and inspired by this

My SMARTboard. A little bland... maybe some Gator curtains??

My storage area and "take a break" chair. Needs a rug and some color....

Desks in pods of 4 (hey Kagan!)

Swampy name tags

For my front door

Behavior punch cards as my classroom incentive.
Different colors for different periods (three 4th grade classes)

Rewards for punch cards (taken from here)

Also taught them the "It's great to be a Florida Gator" chant and have attempted "Na na na na na GO GATORS!" but it was a bit of a struggle. I'll keep you updated. We were also misidentified as Florida State today. NOT OK.

First Peek in my Classroom

Woah. It has been a busy two weeks! We had district induction with the ASD and learned more about Common Core and how this year is going to run. It has been insane as we go 8-4 everyday in sessions, meetings, and planning with other teachers. It's been so great to get to plan with some other 4th grade teachers though! I'm not sure if I said this on here yet, but I will be teaching 4th grade ELA, math, and social studies. We have three 4th grade teachers and each of us teach ELA and social studies to our homeroom, then we switch and teach all three classes either math, science, or technology. So I'll be teaching three hours of math, two hours of ELA, and one hour of social studies each day. I'll post more about my schedule another day!

Today was the first day of our planning week with our individual schools, which meant going over procedures with our teams and then getting into our rooms for a couple hours. Ready to see S202?? They were taken on my phone and are a little rough, but it's my first peek! These are the before pics, for sure.

When you first walk in the room.
The board on the far wall is my SMARTboard! Yay!

I made the back left corner my "teacher area"
because that was where the big cabinets were. 

Check out those lockers! No cubbies for these fourth graders ;)

My "teacher area"... for now

So today I moved the students' desks into pods of four (Kagan shout-out) and moved the kidney table over to my "teacher area". I wanted an area for guided reading, but also a "home base" that I could keep papers, folders, binders, etc. We were given a generous gift certificate to an education store in Memphis and boy am I ready to shop! I need to figure out some organization, for sure, and am ALL OVER Pinterest right now.

Each room has a college name to encourage the kids to reach for college and OF COURSE I picked UF. I went ahead and decided to make Gators and the swamp my entire theme. Get ready for some orange and blue bulletin boards, friends! If anyone has some Gator gear burning a hole in their pockets, email me ;)

Excited to spend a weekend "relaxing"!

Teacher Binder Revisited

Happy Thursday! We had Monday and Tuesday off this week and, ya know, I think EVERY week should start on a Wednesday- just a thought ;) This week I wanted to focus on organizing so get ready for an overload of pictures:

One of my most popular post is this one on my "ultimate teacher binder". Unfortunately, once I started my internship, I accumulated a LOT more papers and soon, my cute little binder ripped :( Instead of buying a new one, I decided over winter break to break up my one big binder into five small ones! You ready for this??

My first binder has three sections: Important Info, Weekly/Monthly Lesson Plans, and Example Lesson Plans. This is where I keep all our schedules, school maps, phone numbers, etc. I created my own weekly lesson planner, then, I used the monthly lesson calendar I found at KindergartenWorks for a big picture. I also keep all my observed lesson plans in this binder. This way, if I need to plan, I only need to bring home one binder!

You may also notice I changed the cover- different school, different binder cover!

My weekly template

Monthly planner. I go back and highlight everything at the end of the week.
Everything gets color coded!

The next binder I made is Student Info, Course Info, and Meeting Notes. This is where I keep all my records on the kids (testing, scores, growth charts), all my course info for grad school, and the meeting note template found on the Ladybug Teacher Files blog. I bring this one to meetings and conferences instead of having to bring all of my stuff.

Pretty self-explanatory

The next binder I made is my Standards and Assessments binder. Here, I have the Read Naturally assessments for 4th grade, the spelling lists for the year, the 4th Grade FCAT Specifications for language arts and math (it's all here if you want to print it out), and the 4th Grade Common Core checklist (we bought it here). This is also mainly a reference binder, so I can leave it at school if I don't need it. Score!

This is what we bought on TPT

This is an "I Can" checklist for all the standards

Finally, I have a binder of lesson plans that my mentor teacher gives me. Basically, every time we have an extra copy of something, I put it in that binder. Never hurts to have some extra stuff stored up! Especially because my mentor teacher is fabulously innovative so these are not your run-of-the-mill worksheets, but fabulous units and lessons!

Every subject has a tab!

Ok, so that's it! Hopefully all this info helps if you're trying to get organized. The pictures are also kinda fun if you just like looking at other people's organization ;) And where do I put all these binders?? In my new teacher cart I got for Christmas! Thanks daddy :) Remember, if you're curious about how I made the covers of these binders, you can see on my original post for the links.

Everyone come see how professional I look! hehe

Behavior Management

School has been in session for over a week and, while I know the kids in your class are sweet baby angels that love to sit still and practice their handwriting, I have found that some sort of behavior chart is necessary to make the day go smoothly. A lot of people remember something like this when they were growing up (I know I do):

I STILL remember the day I was told to move my clip in first grade. Strikes fear  in a child's heart.

It's just so tragic when you get on red, isn't it? Well say goodbye to the traffic sign and HELLO to the pocket chart!

TADA! We love pocket charts in elementary school! 

A little close-up to see the tallies.

Ok so here's how it works. Each child has a pocket with their name printed on a card (blacked out in the picture). When they come in in the morning, they take a little yellow person and put it in their pocket. BOOM. Attendance at a glance. Then, throughout the day, they can earn good tallies or bad tallies for their behavior. Good tallies stay in their pocket all day, but bad ones can be earned out if they "turn it around and make better choices". If you want to make one, the tallies are just strips of laminated construction paper, and the little people are also laminated construction paper. The name cards are about the size of business cards and have each child's name written on them. Hang up a pocket chart and you're good to go! Here's a breakdown of tally options posted above the chart:

Hmmm are you making appropriate choices today?

The biggest thing I've learned about discipline the past week has been to be super firm the first month or so. Every experienced teacher I've talked to has told me that if you don't assert your authority at the beginning of the year, the kids will eat you for lunch (or as one teacher put it, "eat your lunch". Not sure which is worse!). So our policy has been one warning and then a tally! As we give bad tallies, we jot down a note on a pad of paper so we can remember what it was for and so we know if someone gets it taken out. For example, we would write: [Jennifer- yellow (talking in line going to recess)].  At the end of the day, we write in the planner about good and bad tallies, even if they get it taken out for turning it around. If you want more deets, here's the letter sent home to parents explaining it. Hope discipline is going well in everyone else's classes! Good luck and don't let the kids eat your lunch haha!

My Ultimate Teacher Binder

One thing I discovered last semester during my pre-internship was that I like having one big binder that I can put everything in, instead of individual notebooks or binders for each subject/class. I used and abused my binder last semester so bad that I knew I wanted a bigger one this year and I wanted it organized and not thrown together last minute (not that I did that last time ;) ) So after bunches and bunches of blog hopping and pinterest perusing, here is my little beauty!

The first thing I did was make a binder cover for my 2 inch binder. I found these adorable workshop binder covers and added my school logo and mascot to make it my own!

The cover of my binder

The inside page with a To-Do list behind it

The inside page with the quote is from The Curriculum Corner that had an amazing post with tons of free printables, including covers like the one above. 

Ok so I guess the real purpose of the binder is for information and not just cute stuff (whatever), so I divided up my sections into: Important Information, Lesson Plans, Student Data, Course Information, Meeting Notes, Standards and Assessments, and Miscellaneous. 

Those owls! Too much, right?! I used the templates I found here for the cover pages for each section. You can edit them in PowerPoint and use them for anything! New favorite resource. The font is called Good Dog and you can get it here.
For the important information section, I put the district schedule, a class schedule, our school's last accountability report, and anything else I'll need quickly!

Anything to make lesson plans more fun, right?

It's just begging for plans to be filled in

For my lesson plan section, I have a calendar template for each month I found at KindergartenWorks and you can write in the general idea of what you'll be focusing on each week/day. You can see her examples on her blog. This is also where I'll put finished written lesson plans and other guidelines for the curriculum.

For meeting notes, I printed out some copies of these meeting notes so I won't have to waste a notebook writing little notes here and there. It will also keep my excessive note taking to a minimum. Half page and you get cut off. Sorry. No more notes for you. Here are the rest of my section titles. I also put my internship manual in the back and my little personal planner in the front.

My Internship manual in the back of the binder.

The best part of something like this is that I can add and take stuff out throughout the year, which is great because I have a feeling some unexpected things will happen, just call it a hunch ;) Do you keep a binder? Or individual notebooks? Am I missing anything?? Hope all your pre-planning preparation is going well!!