Back to School! Displays, Organizations, & Quick Tips (this is my 3rd Blogaversary!!!)

Before the classroom can be picture perfect and ready for the students, so much work has to go into setting up the classroom. Here are a few things from my classroom that I wanted to share.

1st you have to put the room together after summer cleaning and everything is shoved to one side of the room.

 It offers a great time to purge and clean out things you did not use from the previous school year.

Tip 1- Library Organization
I have all of my books in these bins separated my genre or author. I also have color-coded all of the books to show their level.

Tip 2 - Make Lists
Best tip a teacher ever shared with me for setting up a classroom is to make a list on the board so that you mark off as you go...even the little things.

Not really a tip but just a quick show the schedule board after using it for a couple of months. Since I had a chalkboard, I used chalk-paint for semi-permanent messages. It wiped off with water but not when just erasing with a normal eraser.

Tip 3 - Create bulletin boards where ever you need them.
This wall needed to be painted badly and had wires sticking out, so I made it stapled fabric to wall and created a year-round bulletin board. Since I had to use a staple gun to put the bulletin board up, I chose to put up a Growth Mindset board so that when at the front of the room, I could just point and positive approaches for the students to try instead of giving up. What the students didn't know was the eye-sore that was behind there.

Tip 4 - Double Border on the bulletin boards. I have spent a lot of money over the years at my favorite "Teacher Store" buying border. I realized that my bulletin boards looked disconnected with different trim on each board so now I customize each board for what they cover but I use one common teal chevron border along with the themed border. It helps to have flow within the classroom. This may not be important to most people but when I spend so much time in a room, it bothered me to have so many themes from super hero behavior to reading owls.

Tip 5 - Organization Bins
I have used milk crates and bins to create shelves and storage for years. This is simply 2 milk crates held together with zip ties. Then I attached a letter basket to the top with zip ties. The letter bin holds lined paper, a box of tissues, and a storage bin. In  the bin, there are post-it notes, a box of markers and glue sticks. These supplies are located at each group. This eliminates excessive roaming and offers supplies when students need them quickly.

 Tip 6 - Student Supplies
On the first day of school, as we get the students organized with their materials, I have a basket of everything they should have plus a few extras for students who are missing materials. This gives me the ability to model and label all the materials that we will be using throughout the year.

Tip 7 - Teacher Corner
I believe that the classroom belongs to students but its nice that I have a little corner with my supplies. I have a cute mouse for my computer that is wireless, which helps when I roam around the room but still want to control what is displayed on the board. I also have all of my pens neatly organized for quick access. Lastly, I put up a small bulletin board for personal photos or drawings from the students.

Tip 8 - Poof balls are more than decoration
I use to get headaches while teaching and realized that it was the lighting. I happen to have had a couple of poof balls in a corner and noticed kids like to read in that corner more that anywhere else. So I moved the poof balls, added poof balls to coordinate with the color of the storage bins and reduced the harshness of the lights. I love 2 for 1 ideas.

Idea to share-
I believe in a positive classroom and believe all students should be heard. Some students are shy or don't want to share aloud. I had seen ideas like this on Pinterest and decided to try them myself. The students responded so well that a couple of students took over the messages that the students responded to each time.

Last display to share-
I created a classroom Instagram for parents and students to follow so I decided to created a classroom Instagram bulletin board. The plan to change out the pictures throughout the year. This is the board that everyone sees as soon as they walk into the classroom.

Erin Condren Teacher Planner Comparison of New to End of Year!

About this time last year, I posted how my 1st Erin Condren Teacher Planner was utilized by the end of the year. Today, I am pulling out my brand new one for next school year of 2016-2017 and comparing it to the very much used one of 2015-2016.

I decided to show my new planner versus my end of the year planner.
I ordered next year's planner a couple of months ago when they were having a sale, and then I saw this cover. It reminded my of Kid President type quotes.
That is probably the first change I made with my teacher planner was buying interchangeable covers. I caught them on BOGO sales.

The inside didn't change much but my students were constantly giving me notes at the end of the year, so there are several that are just shoved into the front cover of my planner.

I pack this page with all of my passwords, there seems to be so many in our teacher world.

Unforunately, we do not have a lot of volunteers at my school, so this page stayed blank the whole year. I hope to change that for the upcoming school year!

Calendar pages that I thought I would customize but didn't...

Traditional pages

Attendance is a big issue in our district.
 I tried to customize the pages with washi tape,
but never found a purpose for these pages

These pages came in handy for sketching out,
 but decided not to share to much.
Erin Condren did make a larger grid this year.

I ordered customizable labels and broke down our curriculum for the year.

LOVE the lesson planning pages. I printed our schedule on small Avery labels and used washi tape to block off our lunch and specials' rotation. My favorite addition I added this year was I found a tip on Pinterest to tape off the edges per quarter using different colors/prints of tape to see at a quick glance how much longer was left in a quarter. This tip really helped me while planning for testing and report cards.

A close up of the different colors/prints I used to separate the quarters.

Another addition I used this year was the personalized dividers. They are very cute but not necessary since the planner is already broken down in sections so well.

I used leftover pages from my previous year's planner to add into this year's planner.

Great resource for staying organized.

I love the idea of these stickers but there were some left over from my previous planner, so I have even more leftovers for this upcoming year.

I love the clear sleeves and pockets, I use them for everything from schedules to stickers.

I hate the idea of wasting the extra pages, so I tore them out and cleaned up the edges to use as clipboard checks or notes for this upcoming year.

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Ready to get back to school...

I usually don't post about my classroom but I am super stoked about a couple of things! My position is an interventionist for first and third graders. I teach reading and math at various levels.

First my student display wall. My classroom is very bright and mostly in an owl theme. I wanted to create a display wall for student work using these owl clothespins/clips I found at World Market but they only had one 6 pack so I needed a new idea... My third graders are obsessed with mustaches, and while at World Market, I found mustache clothespin/clips. (They are meant for clipping gift tags to gift bags)

The Wall - Mustache Theme 

Fan "STACHE" tic Work

 

Close up of the mustache clips

My next fave is the board just outside of my classroom that greets the kids and any visitors that come by our room.

Next is my owl board to display STAR WORK, I had to use those owl clothespin/clips even though there were only 6. The focus of this wall is to showcase work where students show their best work! I change this board weekly. The kid have bragged to their home room teachers when I put their work up, so I think it helps to make them feel special.

My Word Wall for the first grade Sight Words.

Reading Boards-I teach two different grade levels and they need to use different resources. Some posters will stay all year where as others will focus on a skill we are working on at the time.

1st Grade

3rd Grade

Learning Targets

I was having the hardest time posting my learning targets so I found a board similar to this on Pinterest and decided to give it a try. 

You will notice the at the bottom a sign that says "Paper Jail" that is where my no name papers end up and if not "bailed out" they will be tossed out.

Other classroom shots...