Jennuine Teaching

Tomorrow is the first day of school and after a week and a half of redoing my room, I am ready to share what it looks like. First a quick story on my room. My first year of teaching I had a huge red wall and it drove me crazy by the end of the year. After that I ripped it all down and wallpapered my room in black. It stayed like that for 4 years. This summer I decided to redo one wall with purple fabric after talking to my teaching buddy/BFF. Once that wall was done everything else just seemed out of place. That's when I slowly created a purple theme. I didn't think anything was going to match, but somehow it all came together.  View from the door  My desk is to the right as soon as you walk into the classroom  Right side of the classroom  Front of the classroom  Where I display student work  Back of the classroom  Left side of the classroom  Bathroom  Word Wall  Anchor Chart Wall  Writing Wall Library I love my classroom this year ...

I hope everyone had a nice short week. I definitely had a very short week. Tuesday was the 100th day. As you guys already know I was at jury duty so I left a few things for my students to work on while I was gone. The most exciting thing was their 100 years old writing. We brainstormed on the Friday before. Then they completed the writing on Tuesday while I was gone. When I returned on Wednesday, they made the art project. I didn't make my students a template to follow since I didn't have too much time to prep for this activity. I basically just modeled it for them, gave them construction paper, and just let them go. This one was my favorite. She even drew glasses with a little chain. She came up with the idea all on her own. Who would have though!? I also got around to putting up our snow globe writing. I bought all of the materials for adding the fake snow and plastic plates, but due to time I left that part out. I still think they came out really cute. We finally wrapped up ...

Many people that walk into my classroom think that it is such a clean and organized room. Clean... yes. Organized... NO WAY!! Here is what everyone sees my classroom as... I love my room and I spent a lot of time rearranging it to make it fit my needs as well as my students' needs. It is a very functional classroom, aside from the organizational piece that is missing. Today I am going to share with you my "secrets". Are you ready for them? I must say that they aren't pretty. Be warned, you are about to see my BEFORE photos.   This area looks fairly organized, except for the fact that I don't use ANY of it. I ocassionally lift up the fabric to get the students' reading books and a binder here and there, but other than that, these shelves are taking up prime real estate.   One of my few cabinets that lock is filled with supplies that don't need to be locked up.  Math centers that have never been used because I still have no clue how I want to organize them. ...

Now on to what I made this weekend. I saw this pin and I thought it was a good idea. Then my coworker actually made on in her classroom. It looked so cute. I've always had a compliment chain, but it always took too long to reach the floor and it just wasn't that cute. I knew I wanted sometime cute, but I didn't want to use the jar. At first I was going to make Brownie Points and when students earn all of their "brownies" I would make them brownies. Very cute idea, but I went ahead and made a gumball machine instead. That way the students will be able to vote on their reward, that is half the fun and surprise!! The gumball machine starts blank and whenever the class receives a compliment for making smart choices, or for having a nice line, they will get a gumball added to their machine. When the whole machine is filled up, they will be able to vote on a reward (extra recess, movie, free time, etc.)

Tomorrow is the first day back to school. I spent last week in meetings and getting my classroom all set up. I even went in on Friday when we had the day off to lesson plan. I am glad that I did though because I am so ready. I always get nervous/excited to start a new school year. This will be my 5th year and I've never been so ready. In my last post, I had a video of my classroom tour and I promised pictures. So here they are!   This is the wall right next to the door. The door is on the left (out of frame). I love having this wall set up with class lists, bus routes, supply lists, and lunch forms. It makes it easy to catch every parent/student walking in and just make sure that all of the information I have is correct. After the first week I will turn this into a bulletin board featuring the students and eventually it will be our data wall. The chart underneath the bathroom sign is my behavior management clip chart. You can see a separate post on that here . Then of course we hav...