Classroom Reveal & First Week Fun

There is no tired like a first week of school teacher tired.  Can I get an amen?  On Friday night we hung out with friends - which is usually what we do on Friday's, and we began watching a movie and I knew I wouldn't even make it half way through.  Sure enough, I passed out on the couch until the end of the movie and then slept 11 hours that night.  Incredible how exhausted your body becomes after one week of school.  Oofta.

 I decided I should finally do my classroom reveal and give you a peek into the first week of school in our 103 classroom! We had a great first week together and I adore this group of kids already.  They are so kind and caring and really want to learn.  Although they are all very chatty, we are working on the chattiness and pretty soon it'll be like they were never chatty in the first place!  I have 23 little nuggets this year compared to my 27 last year. Our week was filled with lots of community building games and activities as we got to know each other as a "family".  I'm a huge believer in responsive classroom and building community so I make sure at the beginning of the year to focus on building those relationships and a safe place to learn.  We start every morning with a morning meeting and then we've been closing each day with a closing circle.  I'm hoping to continue closing circle for another week and then getting it in when I can - our schedule is so packed!

 We did activities like active listening activities this week, we made jitter juice, did some fabulous coloring and started building our stamina up with Daily 5 and Writing Workshop.  Here's my brag moment - at the end of the week my kiddos were writing 15 minutes independently already. Can you believe that!?  They LOVE to write. I was able to sneak in 3 writing conferences each day to get ready for my writing groups I want to start in 2 weeks.  Our Read-To-Self time is up to 10 minutes which I'm impressed with as well! Next week we get into work on writing and we'll start talking about generating ideas in writing workshop time.  Go 103 - we are seriously the place to be right now. ;)

In my "professional development" Pinterest time this summer, I found a great activity that had to do with using our words and how they affect others.  The sweeties squirted out a whole tube of toothpaste, and then they were instructed to work together as a team to get it all back into the tube.  They had spoons and could use their fingers to try and get it back.  You would have thought I was crazy the way they looked at me.  It went from 'this is so much fun Mrs.Vanderbush!" to "how in the world is this going to work?"After we had cleaned up, we met back at the carpet and talked about how the toothpaste was how our words worked - once we said them to someone, we couldn't take them back.  My kids mouths literally dropped.  They were shocked.  We read the book "How Full is Your Bucket?" to give them a better idea of how to use non-toothpaste words and we've been referring to them all week.  It was a great activity and one I'll use next year too. I was so proud of how well it worked and how they took too it.
With all our learning going on, we of course needed to give our bodies some brain-break time.  We use GoNoodle in our room and my kids already love it. We chose a character and love to do different brain breaks to get us ready for learning. Here they are practicing some "yoga" before we get ready for math time. They're poses are so funny. We had a really great week - I'm so excited to see what next week brings.

Moving onto our classroom reveal - keep in mind it was after school when I took these pictures so it's a little messy at times.  Forgive me! I was exhausted and had to just sit for a bit before I cleaned up. :)

Here's our focus wall and carpet area. The focus wall holds our "I Can" goals for the week and our vocabulary and word wall words.  It's all ready for next week. :) With our math curriculum we start each day with calendar doing days of the week, graphing weather, and practicing writing the date.

 Here's our classroom library - the lamps are usually lit throughout the day. This has become a place my kids already love. I pick two people for "special spots" during Daily 5 and they get to sit on the pillows in the area. It's been a "cross-my-fingers" type of place for my kids already.

 This is my teacher prep station - it has everything I need for the day. It also holds all my PD books for easy grab when I'm planning.

Here's my teacher area. I love having my small group table right by my teacher stuff so that I have everything within arms reach. The shelf with the coral buckets hold our guided reading materials and then I carry around little teacher "caddies" for conferencing & small group time. It's messy - sorry! :)

 Our whiteboard - I don't really use it that much since we have a SMARTboard in our room, but I do use it to post their jobs and our morning routines for the day.  I also write the date on it for them. Below the whiteboard is our Math vocabulary.

 These are the kiddos lockers and our classroom word wall.  We put up their names this week and a few sight words from Kindergarten.  It's something we use all the time during the day.  The pockets under their locker names hold their lunch card if they have a "cold lunch" for the day.

 This is my "game" zone.  The things on the shelf are for word work during daily 5. The bins on top hold the kids writing folders - as you can see they are already stuffed with writing. Happy teacher over here! And the tall drawer holds math games and activities.  The little caddy on the right side holds my carpet area materials (markers, koosh ball, erasers, etc.) for our large group time.

This is our writing zone - there are different paper choices in the drawers and their writing toolkits filled with markers, pencils, crayons, erasers, etc. are below it. When we get our iPads going in the classroom, they'll be stored in the dish rack and their own headphones are right next to it. The black cart on the left is full on Daily 5 work on writing choices in they want to take a break from their writing folders.

There you have it - our classroom and our first week.  I'm off to finish some laundry, look ahead to next week planning activities, reading teacher blogs and relaxing. Enjoy your weekend! 

Until next time.