Back to School...Back to School...To Prove to Dad That I'm Not A Fool!

Ok, so I know I didn't blog alllllll summer (#sorrynotsorry) but let's see if we can start this school year off right. I've been in my classroom since August 1 trying to make it look just right and didn't officially start back until the 15th. But that's ok, because by the time we officially started back, my room was 80% done and I was able to focus more on the team meetings and planning aspect. Was I prepared for the first day of school today? Can I get a big NOPE! I felt totally unprepared this morning as students came strolling into my room at 7:40- BUT everyone ate, told me they didn't want to go home, and went home with the right people- so I'm calling it a successful day! Of course, I completely forgot to take any pictures of my classroom before the kids got there...so I took them this afternoon (pardon the supply bag mess- I promise, all the supplies are organized and stowed away now). Enjoy my 2016-2017 2nd grade class reveal!

This is what I started with....just a pile of stuff everywhere. And some of it belonged to the teacher that was in there before me (who was in Jamaica at the time...). It was a pain working around her stuff because I didn't know what she was going to be taking with her or leaving behind.

This was the first project I tackled (with my best friend's help- HI MICHELLE!). I love portable word walls for so many reasons, but their space-savingness (yes, I made that up) takes the top spot! And as Michelle can attest- this took a lot longer than any sane person would have spent on it...I mean about 4 hours (with a lot of taking it down and putting it back up to make the spacing line up). Trust me when I say my best friend is better than yours. :)

Writing area! This will be a Daily 5 rotation area with plenty of writing papers for students to write whatever their hearts' desire.

Cozy little reading nook. My students are already arguing over who is going to sit where (which being the first day of school, I'll ignore...but tomorrow- no arguing!) The supply buckets will hold any and all materials that my students will need for an Daily 5 rotations (or modified Daily 5 as it will most likely end up being)

Small group reading. Ignore my mess of supplies, please!

Classroom library (I promise I have color-coordinated boxes on the way!) and what will be Learning Scales (Please, don't even get me started on those things :( )

Front of the room with WBT rules, thinking maps, objectives, and a Mimio (*squee!!*). My desk area is off to the left of this picture.

Gathering area. We use this for calendar math, read-alouds, and during Daily 5 rotations for quiet reading areas. Also, my 1:1 technology cart (*double squee!*).

Book Boxes and my "Jazzy Work" wall. I love, love, love how this wall turned out and can't wait to start putting up my students' best work! :)

It was a lot of sweat and tears (thankfully no blood), but it's done. The kids love it and it's home now. On a side note- they told me they didn't want to go home today (and my incredibly-hard-to-reach-been-warned-about-this-kid-by-numerous-adults student told another teacher he likes me!) so I must have done something right with them (or it could be the fact that I let them play with play-dough this afternoon lol).

Shapes and more Shapes

I teach two math groups- one is working on first grade standards and the other is working on kindergarten standards. This month, my higher group has been focusing on subtraction skills while the lower group has been focusing on shapes.

We concluded this unit by making shape clowns. I got the idea from Cutting Tiny Bites. And, boy, did my kids love it! I started by giving them each a white piece of paper and having them draw a big circle on it for the face. Then they got to pick whatever color paper they wanted to make the various parts of their clown. It also double as fine motor skills practice which my kiddos sorely need. :)

 

 

Now, I know you don't know my kiddos, but each of these clowns shows their personalities perfectly. :)

I also came to the conclusion, that I needed a behavior plan for my kiddos (well, more accurately for their parents). Sadly most of my kids' parents aren't able to communicate with them (I don't even want to talk about that). There's been a ton of behavior issues between my boys- honestly, this group of boys is not a good combination. And my poor girls are getting stuck in the middle trying to keep the boys from acting out. So...I had to come up with something. I searched around on the internet (pinterest and TPT) and found this from The Kinder Polka Dot Patch. I needed to tweak it a little bit to better fit my needs...and I'm loving it! I also translated it into Spanish for a parent of mine that doesn't speak English (man that was fun...thanks Google Translate and my amazing aide, Christina!)
I made one for each month of the year and I know it's the end of January, but I'm starting to use them tomorrow! I hope this helps.

January...already?!

Yes, I know, I've been slacking. Honestly, I have no excuse other than December is a crazy time for a teacher. This year it  entailed a new student the day before an important field trip, an important field trip, being told at the last minute that we were to perform a song at our school's holiday show, 3 IEPs, my yearly formal observation (the final week before vacation!), and Polar Express Week...crazy, right?

Every year our district participates in Signing Santa. The adults (or at least I do) calls it controlled chaos. Imagine 50ish kids of varying ages (3-14ish) thrown into a school cafeteria with carnival like games scattered all around and basically left to socialize and play as they see fit <insert cringe face here>. Each year it's a big production and each year the kids love it! They get to talk to Santa, perform a song, play games, earn prizes, and take home presents. To them it's a huge success. To me it's draining, but I'm ecstatic that they have so much fun.

The day we got back from this field trip I was informed that we were to perform a song at our school's holiday show the following week... luckily we had just performed a song at Signing Santa and so we made our lives easy and recycled the song. :) Seriously, these kids are troopers- one of them literally learned the song in less than a day seeing as he started the day before this field trip. For your enjoyment here's a link to view the video of them performing at the Holiday Show (the end is the best part): Holiday Show

*For those of you that know sign language, don't judge the glossing too harshly, we were on limited time and it had to be kept simple for the little ones :)

**Michelle, we had the principal in tears over this and Jeanne approved, so the glossing is perfect in my opinion ;)

Classroom Reveal!

Whoop-whoop! I'm so excited to be linking up with Ashley from Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd and Angie from Lucky Little Learners once again this month! And this month is a great topic- one I know we are all dying to hop around and look through each other's blogs at- CLASSROOM REVEALS! This is quite possible my favorite time of year. All the classrooms look so cute, friendly, and inviting to begin with...and then our kiddos show up and destroy get comfortable in our space. Such is life. :)

Before we get going, I think some basic information about my teaching situation is in order- I teach a very specific type of special needs student: deaf/hard of hearing. This means that I have a small class (only 6 this year!) and a specially designed room. There's carpet on the floors and walls to absorb sound so nothing echos which messes up what they hear in their hearing aids. I also have specialized lighting in order to reduce glare. But I have NO emergency lighting and that's always fun when we're under a code red and the blinds are shut. Pitch black. And kids who depend on being able to see me. Always a good time. I try my best to arrange my room so that I have maximum open space so that I can see my students and they can see me when I try to get their attention.

I think that about covers it, so, let's get this party started!

Here is my entire classroom from a corner up front. As you can see, I have an odd shaped room. It's honestly not conducive to an environment where constant eye contact needs to be maintained. But I work with what I've got. I only have 6 students so seating arrangements are relatively easy.
Anybody want to take a guess at the one thing that drives me absolutely insane every minute of every day I spend in this room? Anyone? The clock! It makes me nuts that it's always behind my head...and as if that weren't bad enough, there's a light that goes across the top of the whiteboard/SmartBoard so it's 3-D which completely HIDES the clock from my sight even if I turn around. How insane is that? I use my phone for everything since I can't see the clock (and then usually get in trouble for having my phone out when an administrator walks into my room...*sigh*)!

And here's my room from the back corner. That bulge above the whiteboard is much clearer in this picture. And let me just tell you how many people come into my room through the door (the one with the window) and then try to go out through the other one (and end up in my tiny closet). Always good for a chuckle. Hopefully with the center/manipulative storage unit that won't be a problem any longer. :) I'm also lucky enough to have a mounted projector for my SmartBoard so I don't have a bunch of extra wires and an A/V cart in the middle of my room (that came after tons of begging and pleading for about a year!). But, I'll admit, that sometimes it would be nice to be able to move my SmartBoard since it takes up about a third of the whiteboard.

Here's my classroom from the front. Textbooks and Journals are kept in the blue bins, the pockets on the tables are for our reward system. The door leads into the 3rd-5th grade Deaf/Hard of Hearing classroom.

Here's an up close look at my word wall. Love, love, love the new headers I made (and I love monkeys too! lol). :) I use an interactive word wall. Students are allowed to take the ring of words off any hook and go back to their seats to write the words they need. Then the come back and put it away. This year, I'm planning on using the word wall more during center rotations and our writing block. :)

Next to my word wall is my student work display. Those are the two boards I'm required to have...which is a good thing because in a room this small I only have room for these two boards. Those feather boas and two masks are authentic...bought somewhere on Bourbon Street (or a side street tourist shop. I can't remember anymore) in New Orleans. I had another student added to my roster since this picture was taken so now there's 6 pieces of yellow paper. On the first day of school I have my kids color a paper with their name typed up to add to the papers. They love knowing where their Jazzy Work will be displayed all year! :) I haven't really decided what I'll be using the long table for this year, though I'm hoping to get some computers in my room (*fingers and toes crossed!*) and that's where those will go.

Over here in a little alcove is where I'm going to teach reading. In the past I've taught it at the big table up front, but I never came up with a good solution for storing the materials. They were always kept back here on the countertop. And for the past five years I've had a nurse in my classroom all day for a medically frail child. Nurse would set herself up at this round table so she'd be out of the way. Well this year, she finally moved to the other class so I have my round table back! Yay! So I'm going to try it out and see if it's better to teach from back here. Being back here also gives me eyes into my reading area that I don't have from the front of the room which will be great for the few times I'll have more than 3 students in my room during this time. **Just as an aside- scheduling in our 3 rooms (2 teachers and 1 SLP) is a complete nightmare!!! It usually works out that because I have the younger, less mature students that need more adult help I rarely have all my students in my room at any one time without an aide. I'll make sure to do a post about what our scheduling nightmare looks like at a future date**

Also you can see where my kiddos Brag Tags will be displayed. This is the first year I'm going to try this and I really, really hope they understand this concept!

Across the room is my reading area. Again, I work with what I've got. :) My students are unable to pick appropriate books for themselves nor are they really able to read so they each get a box of books with their name on it and I rotate out the books about every 2 weeks. I have a bunch of books stored in the tall cabinet. They're usually pretty good about only looking at the books in their box or that are available on the shelves. See that rocking chair? Yea, that was mine from when I was about 2. And I can still fit in it...albeit a little sideways. But still, that counts for something, right? :)

This year I actually have built in calendar time!! So it's displayed here and we gather on the carpet around here to do our daily calendar routine. I got sick and tired of the same boring green and orange squares so I created my own calendar squares. Now I don't want to puke every time I look at it. The beanbags were not my choice. I'm just sayin'. These were the brilliant solution of my AP who thought that it would solve some of the behavior issues I had/have (he's gotten much better in the past year) with a student. My AP thought that when he got frustrated or needed a sensory break he'd be able to come over here and lay down for a few minutes to recuperate...Well, I knew that was NOT what was going to happen, but who am I to argue with the AP? I just wish she would have asked me first because I could have given her much better ideas of things to get. Anyway, the first time this student got frustrated he was led over here and told to relax for a few minutes. I turned around to head back to the front to keep teaching and a beanbag chair went flying past me. Yea...Nowadays he doesn't throw them, but he doesn't relax on them either... :-/

Last but not least, over by the closet, is my alphabet and schedule. I got sick and tired of posting the alphabet to the light box thing above the whiteboard and coming in every morning to find it on the floor because NOTHING sticks in these dusty, humid, moldy rooms. And by the end of the year the strips would be destroyed from falling down every night and curling up on the bottom because they're too wide for the thingy...So this was the solution I came up with and I haven't heard any complaints, yet. :) My schedule- once the kids arrive- contains their objective for each subject and eventually a small clock showing the time (it's on my never ending to-do list).

So, that's my classroom. I didn't think anyone wanted to see my TINY closet complete with a Signing Exact English (completely outdated and no one uses exact english anymore) book from 1973 that I'm NOT ALLOWED to get rid of. I've already asked. There's a bunch more crap in their that I'm not allowed to get rid of either and it makes me crazy since I have limited storage space to begin with. But, like I said, I work with what I've got. 

My Dream Classroom

It's Tuesday! Another Tell-All Tuesday! Yay!

This week's topic is

My dream classroom?! 

For starters, it would be about twice the size of my current classroom. Since I teach special education I have a much smaller class size than a general education class. So I have a much smaller classroom. And it sucks. There's nowhere to put anything and we all sit on top of each other. I have no real space to create separate learning areas which really drives me crazy. My students all work on independent centers and I have no way to separate them without them getting distracted by others. The nice thing about my classroom is that it's completely carpeted (floor and walls) and has special lighting all of which reduces the glare and echo so my Deaf and Hard of Hearing students are able to better learn. And I have a SmartBoard (which when I started teaching wasn't that common). Those are things I wouldn't trade!

So yes, a bigger classroom with more storage and work space is a must. Then I want it completely done in a monkey theme. Anyone who knows me knows I have a thing for monkeys.

Picture from The Creative Chalkboard

I have a lot of monkey stuff all over my room to begin with, but there's a lot I can't do because we have a really strict fire marshall who yells at us over everything (including the door stop I use to prop open the door while we're at recess!)

I'd also want to be able to arrange desks in an ideal format for deaf students such as this:

Picture from chancetohear.blogspot.com

Again, having no space in my room doesn't allow for this. :(

I also have an intense need to be organized and clean. I need everything in its place (or at least hidden away lol). Every May I spend a week or so cleaning and reorganizing my cabinets. And every May I bemoan the fact that I have NO storage space!! My closet is filled with crap that I'm not allowed to get rid of but have never used in the 8 years I've been teaching (I mean there's a book on Signing Exact English  {which no one uses anymore} from the 70s- and I can't throw it away!) Ugh. Makes me nuts!

This is one of only 2 cabinets in my room

So in short, my dream classroom would have more space. And the ability to allow me to fully decorate and arrange for my students' needs. :)

Thanks again to My Day in K and Teach Talk Inspire for another great topic! I can't wait to hop around and see what everyone else's dream classroom looks like. I love comments so feel free to leave me some! :)

Fun Friday

May 1 was our Fun Day of Fitness. And boy did they have fun!