My New Classroom

This is my seventh year of teaching.  I had gotten pretty comfortable in my classroom, but when my next-door co-worker left us for another school (boo), I realized the silver lining was that I could now have his classroom!  It's way better than mine - it has a sink and bookshelves!  It was really designed to be the reading classroom, so I moved in.

Enter a TON of work.  I knew it was going to be a pain, but it was, like, ten times the work I expected!  However, after 1.5 days during the summer, a little bit here and there over the last three in-service days, and today's work day, it looks like this:

View from the door

View from my desk - the counter needs work, but I have to wait for the tech guys to finish setting up my workstation first.

View from back corner

In addition to the new room, I'm trying a few new things this year.  One of them is keeping glue sticks on the tables.  Each time we use our ISNs - which is very often - students need to use glue sticks to glue their work into their ISNs.  Last year I had them in one location, which meant transition time. In order to eliminate this, I have placed a basket on each table with glue sticks.

It also includes highlighters and a pair of scissors.  I bought them in six different colors as well 1) because I like it that way and 2) because when I do seating charts, I can just say "This group at the red table" instead of "the table closest to the door" or whatever.

I'm a little nervous about my last new thing, and that's having the students keep their ISNs in these crates at the front of the room:

Last year I kept them on a shelf, but this year I wanted books on my shelves, now that I have actual built-in bookshelves.  I got the idea for crates from a co-worker.  She sets it up so that the first student in gets all the ISNs out and lays them on the carpet nicely.  Then students can just come in and grab theirs.  We'll see how it goes.

This is a very exciting time of the year. I miss getting to spend so much time with my family, but I love the normalcy of a routine and being productive all day long.  I also really love seventh graders at the beginning of the year. They are so nervous and afraid they are going to get lost or shoved into a locker. It's nice to be able to help put their minds at ease.

School starts Tuesday...can't wait!