The New Room 2011-2012

My classroom is officially done. (Well almost!) With only a few finishing touches left to do (i.e. label, etc.), I thought I would post the pictures. I've very excited about my classroom this year. I can't wait to meet my 26 new fifth graders tomorrow at Open House.

My Classroom

My Desk

Job Board

This year my school is beginning Covey's 7 Habits for Healthy Kids initiative. As a part of this, I have developed my job board. This year my students will be filling out applications for their positions. Each job is posted along with a description of each blog. I'm interested to see how this will work this year. Each student will hold their job up until the week before Winter Break. Then we will re-post the jobs and spend that last week training the new job holder. I hope this works!

Organized Book Shelf

This is my second year teaching. Even though I have more books than last year, I still am working on adding to my classroom library. At this point I have organized them into baskets and plan to add the labels tomorrow. I can't wait until I have a massive classroom library. I love to see my kids read!

My Podium

Here is a good view of two of my 7 Habits posters.

Here are 3 more of my 7 Habits Posters.

The last two 7 Habits posters.

My door!

Recipe: Spectacular: 5th Grade
Ingredients: 11 Charming Boys, 16 Delightful Girls, Dash of Happiness, Sprinkle of Curiosity, Lots of Leadership, Carton of Fairness, Heaps of Hard-work, and a case of cooperation

Yield: This recipe makes for 27 well-rounded students fully prepared for 6th grade. 

Bulletin Boards and Displays Through the Years

Through all of my college education, I had to make many displays. I've never really shared any of them with others, but I thought I would start. So enjoy :)

 Division Vocabulary Game

MLK Board

The students wrote on the stars how they could help keep MLK's dream alive. I had some really funny answers.

Students drew names and wrote something nice about the person on their tea bag.

My favorite door of all time. I made this for the 2nd grade classroom I was student teaching in. The kids loved it!

Then the teacher next door asked me to make her a door decoration, too!

Good news board for 2nd grade.

Such a cute idea. So many cute stories.

I love making collages. Especially as a formative assessment.

Native American Housing Project

Since I've only recently started this blog, I wanted to go back into last year and share some lessons and activities that I used in my classroom. One big part of fifth grade in Kentucky is social studies. I am the lucky teacher that gets to teach this. I absolutely love teaching social studies to fifth grade. I've always been a fan of American history and now I get to share that love with my students. Here is a project that I did with my fifth graders last year.

I was so impressed by how the students took this take home project and ran with it. The parents really loved this too! It was a great reason for students to spend some quality time with their parents. I couldn't believe how creative some students got with this project. I saw everything from used folders, straws, aluminum cans, sheets and even clay. Every single students submitted a project. Even if a parent couldn't come up with supplies I pitched in to help out. I didn't want one student to miss out because they weren't as fortunate as others. The students were so proud of their projects. We displayed them in the library for about two weeks after they were turned in.

A New Begining ...

As we begin this new school year, I love to look back on the last and reflect on my improvements as a teacher. Last year was my first year. I can remember back to last year at this time. I had just received my first job. I was full of wonderful ideas (too many to use). And I really had no idea how to actually start a school year. Looking back, I can see that I didn't exactly start my first year on the right foot. I felt like I was having to react to everything. One goal I have for this year is to be proactive. I want to fix problems before they even occur.

So with this new beginning, I wanted a new classroom theme, layout, and management system. Here are a few of my classroom pictures from last year. I'm currently researching ideas right now for this year. I will post pictures very soon!

As a first year teacher, my classroom library was very very small!

I went with a Hollywood theme. This board was used all year to celebrate accomplishments (i.e. A's, distinguished work, special awards, etc.).

Used paper to cover these horribly ugly cabinets. This year I'm considering painting these.

Sticking with my theme.

Classroom helpers board.

My desk :)

These actually stayed pretty organized all year!