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After a not so brief hiatus...

Hey everyone!  It's been a super long time since I've posted here.  Let's just say life got in the way and now there is this cute little girl that captures A LOT of my attention (cue the AWWs).

Meet Hailey!  She's now five months old.  :) 

Between Hailey and my son, Kevin, I feel like I never stop.  I am always juggling so many things.  I can't applaude all of the teacher moms enough for managing their time well.  As for me, I am still learning how to juggle everything better.  It was easier last year when it was just Kevin and he was at my school, but now he is a big middle schooler. 

Do you have tips on how you better manage your time?  I would love to hear them.  I returned to the classroom 12 weeks ago after being on maternity leave for 10 weeks and am still trying to find that groove.  

Setting Up My Classroom!

I have been anxiously awaiting the okay from our principal to get back in my room and set everything up.  I am not the type that can just throw things together in a day or two.  I need TIME and lots of it.  Well, that okay finally came and Monday I was allowed in my room.  I was lucky enough to have my grandma come in the whole week to help me.  Here are some before pictures.  My room did undergo some changes this summer.  I had a new sink/cabinet area put in the last week of school.  I requested a new white board and that my room be painted.  I had some awful paintings on the walls and bulletin boards last year.  They were enough to make me want to cry.  I like pretty things and they were far from it!  Anyways, I was lucky enough that all of the requests I made were granted.  Here are some pictures from before I got to work. 

From the doorway looking forward (Monday am)

From the doorway looking forward (Monday am)

From the doorway looking at the back of the room (Monday am)

From the front looking at the back of the room (Monday am)

From the front looking at the monstrous furniture pile in the back of the room (Monday am)

I couldn’t decide what to do first when I walked in on Monday morning.  I had my son Kevin with me which doesn’t always make things the easiest.  He loves to help when it’s good for him.  J  I started to rearrange furniture before my grandma came in.  I had decided that my teacher desk was going to a new location this year and moved that first.  Boy, oh boy, that thing is heavy even with my handy dandy furniture movers.  I got my desk and filing cabinets set along with my student desks.  I still had several tables, my small group table, and shelving to set.  I must have moved all of these items a dozen times.  I’m still not exactly sure I like where they are placed, but I do know that it looks more organized this year.  I went home on Monday physically exhausted!  Moving furniture is a big job and I didn’t get much else done.  Here’s some pictures, I took after I finished on Monday. 

From the doorway looking forward.  My teacher desk is now all the way at the front of the room and my computers are all set up.   (Monday pm)

From the doorway looking forward.  I have the desks set in groups of four and five right now, but only time will tell if I leave them this way.  (Monday pm)

From the doorway looking at the back of the room.  My small group table is now all the way over by the window.  Last year it was right next to the doorway which just didn't work well for me.  (Monday pm)

From the front looking at the back of the room.  The bookcases are set and I have set up a listening station. (Monday pm)

From the front looking at the back of the room.  (Monday pm)

From the front looking at the side of the classroom.  Oh, those cabinets are so pretty! (Monday pm)

Tuesday, I was ready to get things up on the walls.  I invested in some fabric last year for my bulletin boards because the paper we were provided faded so fast and I had to use more than one layer of it to cover the paintings that were on the bulletin boards.  I planned to reuse it this year but in different places.  This meant that I wouldn’t be able to reuse all the pieces I had bought last year because all of the boards are different sizes (SERIOUSLY, all 6 are different sizes).  I reused some and got it up.  Tuesday evenings are always busy in our house because my son has swim lessons, but we made time to stop at Wal-Mart on our way to swim lessons to try to find some fabric for those boards that were empty.  

I did find fabric for all of my boards and I LOVE LOTS OF COLOR!  I tried to tie them together with similar colors and my boards are just popping right out there now.  Wednesday, I hung things up and finished my bulletin boards.  My grandma got my Fancy Nancy Loves Fancy Words Bulletin Board back up.  We tweaked this a bit from last year.  Here's a few more pictures.  I am rather photo-obsessed! 

Here are my focus boards.  I still have to make a "T" for social studies.

Front of the room with my bulletin board and the math reference board.  (That's Kevin and I have no clue what he is doing!)

Front bulletin board.  Last year it was used for science, but I'm not sure what we will use it for this year.

Thursday brought forward the challenge of assembling my word wall.  Last year, I used a bulletin board behind my small group table and found that students would get up to look for a word while I was meeting with other students.  This year I have a ton of wall space that I was determined to use wisely.  I started assembling my word wall with the materials that I had created in my Super Hero Kids theme (available in my TPT store).  Now this may seem like a small job, but between cutting, laminating, cutting again, and then hot gluing to ribbon it was a HUGE job.  I managed to fill the entire wall with my word wall.  I’m hoping that my students are able to use this word wall with ease.  I can say that it’s not quite done because I ran out of poster putty (go figure!), but it was all hanging when I left.  I just need to provide some additional support when I can get back in.   Here's a sneak-peek at my word wall. 

I am in love with my word wall!  This isn't the best photo, but there will be more pictures to come later with my full classroom reveal.

So far, I am loving how my classroom is turning out.  I will have a big change in my classroom after school starts though.  I recently had a Donor’s Choose project fully funded and will be receiving a class set of balance balls to replace our chairs.  I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.  

For now, I am back to enjoying a few more days of summer vacation.  I can’t get in my room this upcoming week because our maintenance staff is doing the hallway floors in my building.   I have created a few new items for my TeachersPayTeachers store.  I uploaded a set of Super Hero Kids Alphabet Posters.  I also uploaded a freebie for all of you that are getting ready for back to school.  There are now Super Hero Kids desk name plates or name tags.  Whatever you call them, they are currently free in my store.  

Remember, August 4^th and 5^th are the Blast off Back to School sale days for TeachersPayTeachers.  My store will be 20% off regular prices.  Use the code BTS14 for an additional 10% off.  

Make sure you all enjoy those last few days of summer vacation!  I will most likely be headed to the beach.  

Jessica

Classroom Library

I have battled with how to set up my classroom library for a year!  I was very fortunate to have my grandmother volunteer in my classroom last year.  She tackled the job of leveling all the books that I purchased.  I can hear her groaning now at the mention of new books.  She even leveled the books that were already in my classroom (not exactly what I needed but hey they were books so we left them).  In February, I had an issue in my classroom that I never would have expected.  A couple students were stealing books.  Now, I am not talking about 1 or 2 books.  One child was caught with almost two dozen books in her backpack!  The other child had nearly as many.  I was baffled.  I had no idea what to do.  I took a closer look at my classroom library and realized that it had been going on for quite some time because there were A TON of books missing.  I already wrote my name on the inside cover, but needed to come up with a better system.  In the meantime, I had to put all of my books away and just leave the school’s books on the shelf.  I couldn’t risk losing anymore.  I don’t even want to think about how much I spent on books this year.  I know it was outrageous and I’m good about finding every possible bargain that I can find.  I sat everyone down and we had a class meeting about what had occurred and why they wouldn’t be able to use my books for a while.  Most of the class was very upset that others would take things that didn’t belong to them (I had some really good kids!).  They asked if they could start using them again if the other books were brought back.  I was hesitant but knew I had to come up with a system.  I told them that I would think about it and let them know what would happen.  The other books never came back, so I didn’t have to come up with a quick solution.  

It took me a while, but I had finally figured out what to do.  I ordered a pocket chart for a book checkout system.  Each student had their own pocket where they would place the card that came out of the book they chose.  The books from my personal library would only be available for checkout from me.  The kids couldn’t walk up and just grab one.  They had to ask, have it approved, and bring it back to me when they were done.  This system worked great!  It is just a ton of work…

In order to use this system, I had to put pockets in all of my books, create cards to go in those pockets with the title, author, AR level, quiz number, and point value.  I brought all of my personal books home over spring break since they were just sitting behind my desk and under my desk and got to work.  It took many, many hours to get the books cataloged.  I wanted it perfect and to run smoothly once I had it in place.  Wouldn’t you know that vacation went to fast and I ran out of time to finish it all.  

Now let’s talk about these pockets that I was putting in every book.  Remember back when we were all kids and we had to take the card out of the back of the book and give it to the librarian to stamp?  These are the same type of pockets that held that card we had to get stamped.  I thought “oh these won’t be that expensive.”  Yeah right.  They are ridiculous.  They are at least $7 for 50 cards.  Remember, I said I had a lot of books.  The count was well over 500 then.  Purchasing pockets was just not an option, so I made my own.  I’m pretty crafty and love to scrapbook.  I’ve seen envelopes made before, so I figured it couldn’t be that hard to make a pocket.  Sure enough, it was super easy.  I got a template made and used some of my scrapbooking cardstock paper.  I traced some and went to Sunday dinner at my grandparent’s house.  I brought everything with me knowing that I could enlist some help while I was there.  My grandma started cutting while I traced and then assembled.  I was thrilled how they turned out.  They are big enough to hold an index card and fit in the back of practically every book.  Now not all glue is created equal.  There are some that did not work out as well as others.  I found Zig Memory System 2 Way Glue at Hobby Lobby (used my 40% off coupon) and it was only like $3.  It holds so well!! 

My system still wasn’t perfect but I brought a big chunk of my books back to my classroom and allowed students to check out books.  The end of the year came and of course more new books arrived (I can’t resist a good deal from Scholastic or even Costco).  I packed up all my books again and brought them home.  I still needed to perfect my system.

I started to finish the project I began during spring break this last week.  Mother Nature has been rather mean to us here with her nasty thunderstorms, so I figured why not tackle it while we were stuck inside.  I have learned a few things.  1- I have a ton of books!  2- I need to learn to just say no to a book sale.  3- I can only listen to the G.I Joe and Transformer movies play so many times before it drives me crazy!  4- IKEA is a dangerous place for a teacher who needs to get organized.  

As you can see, I am almost organized.  :)

I’ll have to create some labels to go with these baskets.  I’m excited that my library will be running smoothly at the beginning of the year.  Books will be easier to find and students will be more accountable.  

How is your classroom organized?  Do you feel that you have a good system in place or are you still trying to perfect it too?

Jessica