Death by Pinterest and Classroom Reveal

***WARNING PHOTO OVERLOAD***Okay, so I am obsessed with Pinterest. Admitting you have a problem is the first step, right?  I spend hours on projects that I think will take a "few" minutes. I've spent the last two weeks working like a madwoman trying to get my room ready.  If you know me, this is no small feat.  I am the teacher who is ususally the first one in the building unpacking and the last one at the end of the year.  My new class wasn't ready for move-in until 2 weeks ago, so I'm still "adding" to it daily.  Almost every corner has "pinteresting" feature.

This is the view as you enter thedoor.  Even though I'm not Dual Language, I like to split my room up into 4 quadrants: Math, Literacy, Science and Social Studies. I also like having a student generated word wall with vocabulary.

Another pinspiration idea from April at ChalkTalk, but I still need to add a few vowels and graphic for each letter.

I lurve Ladybug Teacher Files.  I still need to decide on an alphabet but I'm loving her genre dots.

My leveled library in progess...

Recognize those dry-erase spots?  Yup, pinterest!  I also have my brownie points, birthday balloons, homework club, rainbow polka dot storage carts and teacher papers organizer below all from Pinterest. 

My small group area has 5 gallon bucket seats and my "stop" sign per Debbie Diller inspiration.

How can I forget the inspiration from Sarah Cooley and her awesome writing station. I'm working on getting my "writer's eye" together as well.

I also have my whole brain rules from GingerSnaps and my very own classroom rules freebie!

I am in awe of all the truly fantastic teacher resouces available made by teachers for teachers.  I'm sure I failed to give credit where credit was due for all the wonderful inspiration, ideas and work from fellow teachers  Thanks ya'll and have a great year!

Writing to exhale....

Well the first two weeks of school are now over and I have truly enjoyed my Labor Day Weekend. For some strange reason my mind keeps drifting to the never ending LIST. It's been a wild ride already.... I've been slowly organizing my brilliant bunch's supplies, notebooks, binders and etc.

Editing Cups
I finished the editing cups for their writing station. This is a major accomplishment for me because it means that this year I'm committed to teaching writing and it's not one of my favorites. I normally teach 3rd grade where the focus is passing our state reading test. Therefore, I've always kind of done just the minimum in writing. I'll have this group for 2nd and 3rd grade and it's up to me to give them a strong foundation in writing so I can slack a little in 3rd grade.

BEFORE PICTURE

AFTER PICTURE

Pencil Cup Labels

Writer's Notebook Tabs
We've already covered the basics of Write from the Beginning (WFTB) and done our first shared writing. Now we're moving on to using our Writer's Notebooks. We're dividing our writer's notebooks into 5 sections: Ideas & Inspiration (Brainstorming); Writer's Craft (Grammar, Mini-Lessons and Mechanically-Inclined); Quick writes & Discovery Drafts; References (High Freq Words, etc) ;and Word Collector (Interesting words and vocabulary). Our fifth grade newbie teacher, Ms. Salas gave me a great idea to use mailing labels as tabs in our composition books. She explained that you insert tables into each label and have them reversed so that you can read both sides when the label is folded. Cover the label with tape and Voila you have tabs!!!


Journal Tabs

Classroom Organization - Part 6

We're back at school officially in the morning and 7 more days until the kiddos show. I'm a little excited to meet my new students. I have a nervous pit in my stomach because I think I may have missed preparing something for the first few days. I just finished my behavior chart. I so love what Babbling Abby did with her rockin' behavior chart. I put a little twist on mine because we have a safari theme. Take a look...

Click on the picture for a printable version. I cut out each sign and put them on construction paper before laminating everything.

I am also working on my writing station's editing pencils. I went to Michaels and found a cute pencil organizer and decided to use color pencils for different types of editing. Take a sneak peek at the cup labels...

But more on that tomorrow....

Classroom Organization - Part 4 (Whew!)

I've been in my classroom this week and it seems the more I do, the more there is to do. Why do I have the urge to do a million projects now??? I had all summer - go figure!?! I didn't go to school today and had the opportunity to blog stalk. Of course this added about 20 projects to my already enormous list.

Project #1 - Word Wall
I was inspired by an idea from Oceans of First Grade Fun and I've made word family cards for the word wall. My classroom has a chalkboard that I'll be using for my word wall. I've divided the word wall into 4 sections: The parking lot (new words) A-Z Boxes, Blends and Word Families. Here's a photo although it's a long way from complete.


I plan on using the vowel pockets to keep word family cards and display them as we come across new words. I tried to color coordinate the word families into long, short and r-controlled vowels.
Click on the pictures below for the word family cards.









Project#2 Writing Center
I was inspired by an idea on pintrest to revamp my writing center. I'm almost finished with the models of each type of work and just need to label the writing supplies and editing pencil cups (each colored pencil is used for a different type of editing - capitalization/red, spelling/orange, punctuation/green, etc).


Project #3 Status Chart
I worked this summer to find clipart of every menu item on our lunch calendars and create magnets for our lunch menu choices. It turned out to be really cute. Just my luck the cafeteria decided not to do lunch count this year :( Sooo I decided to make that area and attendance board to keep up with students entering and exiting the classroom. I'm laminating the cards and student photos and putting magnets on the back to use on the side of our file cabinet. Here's a copy of the labels
Yaaawn....I'm sleepy
Well that's a start. Hope to complete these projects tomorrow and start on the next few...