It was a Scorcher!!

My room was the hottest it has been all week on Friday!  If we would have had to stay all day, I think I would have cried.  My students were irritable and were complaining of others looking at them.  It didn't matter how many warnings I gave there continued to be chattered.  It must have been the same in the other two 1st grade classrooms because they asked if we wanted to watch one of our safety movies before lunch.  We did get our spelling tests out of the way and that about did most of them in.  Individualized spelling lists is quite the process but so worth it.  I'll comment more on that another day.

Since we got out early, I took the chance to snap a couple of pictures of my room that I could compare with the ones I took the first time I stepped in my room.  It might have been the most overwhelming thing I've gone through.  I came into a completely empty room and didn't have a clue as to where to start.  I spent three hours in my room the first time I went and tried putting two bulletin boards up but took both of them down.  I moved my desks, stared at my blank walls, drew a diagram of my room, and drove back home.  It came a long way in about a week.

Enough of the writing though...here are some pictures.  I need to give credit where credit is due though.  I got almost everything off of TeacherspayTeachers.com and laminated it.  My parents got me a Scotch laminator for Christmas last year and it works like a dream!  My mom also helped cut out things, sort and label books, and make curtains.  And well Gavin got to deal with me being frustrated, acting like a 1st grader when I got really excited about something, and he claims I pull out sayings on him that should only be used with 1st graders.  Ooops!

I should point out that my classroom theme is Welcome to the Jungle!

The desks were actually in rows when I showed up.  Moving them into pods like this was about the only thing I did that day.

As of Friday, this is how my desks look like.  We had a couple of issues with the pods and had to rearrange.

 The area behind my desk.  I must not have taken one of back here as it looks now.  But it is covered in all of my teaching materials.  

The sink in my room and part of the front board.  This also has gained a lot of decor in the past two weeks.  We brush our teeth everyday after lunch so they hang on the wall. 

Thanks to my mom, the cart beside the door is now covered by that awesome curtain.  I took down that black paper and covered all of my bulletin boards with fabric.  My classroom helpers is the one that you can see in the picture to the right.  The tubs on the counter are where all of my students turn things in at.

These sit by the pencil sharpener.  You can see them in the picture above.  Instead of having students sharpen their pencils all day long.  I have a Helper that does this once a day....although it doesn't look like it has been done for about a week.

Another overwhelmingly empty room picture.  I was standing in my door way and looking towards the far back corner.  On the right is the new and improved form.  

 This is now the shelf that lines the outside wall of my classroom.  With the help of my mom, each book has a sticker on the back cover that helps the students get all my books back to their correct tub.

My reading corner!  I LOVE THIS SPOT IN MY ROOM and we spend a lot of time back here.  My mom and I made the crates.  They work as seats and also storage.  I should give Gavin a little credit because he cut the boards to fit in the crates that are now covered in fabric.

The top shelves hold the rubbermaid tubs full of books.  The bottom shelf hold the baskets that I found cheap at a garage sale.  More on my garage sale extravaganzas at a later date!

A close up of the alphabet and numbers that line the top of my board.  Once again, thanks to teacherspayteachers.com!

 When I student taught in Waverly, my cooperating teacher, Jessica Meier, did this and I absolutely loved the idea.  Each child has their own bucket and then has someone else's name in their bucket.  On Fridays, each person writes the person in their bucket a "bucket filler".  Meaning, they write that person   something to make them feel good!

 It goes along with the book.  I read this to them the first week.  It talks about  how you can be a bucket filler or a bucket emptier by the words and actions you do to other people.  Great book!!  Jess also gave me that bucket on my last day of student teaching!

 Our daily schedule!  Hangs right beside my desk!

Our Jungle themed behavior chart.  Students can move up by making good choices and down for making poor choices.  They can move both ways throughout the whole day.

 Face of a Reader!  Holds all of our reading strategies that we are learning about dealing with, Fluency, Accuracy, Comprehension, and Expanding our Vocabulary!

 I am supposed to be getting an awesome horseshoe table to replace this one.  I will do small group work back here.  You can also see our word wall.

 The Daily 5!  More about how I run this in my room later but here is the bulletin board.  We have only gotten the chance to practice the top three at this point and in a very structured way but hopefully next week I can run this more completely and have the chance to conference with individual students.

The tac pictures are the way that I can show where each student is at in the Daily 5.  I hot glued big pushpins to names that I printed out and laminated.  You can see them in the big picture beside Read to Someone.

Calendar Math!  Takes the typical classroom calendar and adds some math skills.  I haven't used the patterned days of the month yet but will this coming week.

 and while I start my day with a clean desk.  This is how it ends up by the end of the day.  Things EVERYWHERE!

Sorry for such a long post but I wanted to get all of those added.  That's all (LOL) I have for today.  Have a great and safe Labor Day weekend!!

Toodles!