Meet Your Teacher Night

We had Meet Your Teacher Night on Tuesday! I had almost all of my parents and students come! That is a busy night full of new faces and lots of school supplies! To make things flow as easily as possible, I set up stations around the room for parents to stop at.


Stop 1- signing in and picking up necessary paperwork that has to be signed by all parents for the school. I also made flip charts this year to give out to all families in my class.

Stop 2- choosing a seat... the students love this part because they like to pick where they will sit on the first day! (I rearrange my seating arrangements every two weeks or as needed!)

Stop 3- Parents were able to sign up for Remind 101, which we are going to use this year! I had about half go ahead and sign up, so I hope that the rest will join in too soon!

Stop 4- This was supply drop off. This was obviously before all of the children and supplies arrived. By the end of the night my table was overflowing! (Good problem to have)

Last stop- Picking up "homework" (they were to bring in two things that represent their summer and themselves.... but more on that later) and there was a questionnaire for parents, as well as a PTO sign up sheet.

Hope you like my stations! If you want to snag them for yourself here is a link.

Classroom Tour

Meet your teacher night was Tuesday night. I can't believe how fast the first two days went! If you have already started school, I hope you are having as great of a year so far as I am. It looks like I am going to have a great class! Yay! Here are some pictures of my classroom setup this year!


View from the door. I made the leap from desks to tables this year! My school actually bought me brand new tables! That is unheard of around here!

Calendar and turn-in table.

Back wall with student computer and part of the classroom library.

My small group area and I turned my desk against the wall since I rarely ever sit there anyway. It was just taking up space. The kidney table makes a lot more sense!

More of my classroom library and word wall that I put up on my cabinets.

Classroom library. I have a Donor's Choose project up now to get a pretty new rug for this corner! Hopefully it gets funded soon!

A second reading area that I set up this year! Already loving the garage sale coffee table. Students are like a magnet to it! They love  to sit on the floor all around it to work.

Where I hang anchor charts and posters as we study them.

Another picture of my corner....

Pano of the whole room...

Hope you enjoyed my little tour!

Classroom Tour 2013

Well, here are some pictures of my classroom this year. We just had open house on Thursday and I start school Monday. Ready or not, here they come! I have 24 sweet 5th graders on my list so far... you never know how many will really show up or how many extras you might get. We shall see. Hope you enjoy the tour!

View from the front door...

My "ticket out the door" poster. Students will write something they learned on a Post-It note and stick it on the poster.

My Boggle board for word work.

View of my cabinets and cubbies. I will put my word wall on the cabinets and the cubbies hold their math and reading stations.

One side of the classroom library. All books are in baskets by genre and then stickered with reading levels. More about my library can be found here.

View of the front of the room.

Another look at the word wall and classroom library.

This is my data-tracking board. I will show student progress on this board through our formative assessments we give. It will not have their name on it, but rather, just show how many students in our class passed each skill tested. There is one for math and one for reading.

This is my small group table. I recovered the chair to make it match the room a little better!

My desk... palm tree is just a carpet tube, lunch sacks over it, and an umbrella in the top.

My podium and chair I also recovered so it matched.

Small reading and writing area. Table and chairs are from Target a few years ago.

Writing center with writing supplies and our VOICES posters.

These are my "turn-in" folders where all work is turned in. They turn in their work in alphabetical order inside the subject-area folder.

Table for staplers, paper, highlighters (to highlight their names before turning in their papers).

Behind my desk... kind of messy in this picture, but you understand that, right?

Open house homework... students are asked to bring in a picture of their family to show the class and parents are asked to fill out a survey about their child and family to return to me.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Organizing the Paper Overload

Do you get overwhelmed by all of the paper we deal with every day? I know that I do! I have to find a way to manage it so it doesn't pile up around me! I can't stand piles of papers everywhere. (I am a little OCD when it comes to organizing!)

My answer: this $25 cart from Sam's Club!

It has been an answer to prayers when it comes to paper! I used to have a slotted file holder on my desk to hold everything... but then it was all still on my desk! I had to try and look over it when visitors would come in my room. I just didn't like it.

My cart has been great! I have a separate drawer for each topic that I used to have a folder for.

My drawers are labeled like this:

-Important Papers-this is for anything that I need to save and have on-hand. I keep notes from my principal, log-in information,  and any important documents that need to be at the ready.

-To Be Filed-this is where I keep any extra copies at the end of the day, handouts, originals, etc that need to be filed, but I don't want to take the time to do it right then. I then spend the 15-20 minutes needed to file them all about once every week or two.

-To Be Graded-this is where I keep all of my papers that need to be graded. As students hand in papers to our folder system, I paperclip them and put them in this drawer. When I am ready to grade papers I either take the whole drawer out or grab the stack and stick them in my teacher bag to take home.

-Grades to Enter-this is where I keep papers that I have graded, but have not had time to enter the grades yet. I will often grade a few, stop, grade a few more, stop, etc. So, this is a central place that I can keep those random sets of papers until I am ready to enter them into our online gradebook system.

-Monday through Friday- This is where I put all of the copies, teacher books, supplies, etc that I will need for that day of teaching. When I prepare my lesson plans for the next week I file things into the drawers as I find and plan for them. When I get my copies back (we have to send off our copies to a central office to be made) I file them into the appropriate day's drawer. Also, anything that we do every week (like on Mondays we always do a vocabulary foldable) I can keep those in the Monday drawer at all times.

Upcoming Weeks-the bottom drawer is then for anything that I plan in advance and know that I will need in the coming weeks, but not sure what day of the week or when exactly I will use it. It is copies of lessons or tests that are coming up soon. I can then go through the drawer and pull those when needed to put in the appropriate day of the week drawer later.

I also have a file holder attached to the side. I picked it up at Mardel. It is the perfect size to fit the side of the cart. I have a variety of folders in it that are handy to have close, but that I don't use everyday like IEP's, Referrals, Testing Info, etc.

Classroom Progress in Pictures

I have been working on my room for a couple of weeks now. We start school a week from today! Summer goes by way too fast. Here are some pictures of my progress. I still have a few finishing touches to do.

Here is the view from my door:

I have student desks placed in groups of 7-8. This is my favorite desk arrangement. It makes my room feel like we have more space than when they are all spread out or in small groups of 4-5.

I also added bulletin boards (outlines anyway) on the back wall for each subject area to put my anchor charts on.

Here is my take on the Boggle board I have seen all over Pinterest:

I used the "Dots on Turquoise" line of letters and shapes. I got the printable alphabet from: Mrs. Rojas Teaches.

Here is picture of my whiteboard I added a pennant banner to, my "Brownie Points" pan (I found here), and a first day of 5th grade frame the kids are going to hold for a picture I take of them.

This is just a cart that another teacher was throwing out. I put some scrapbook paper on top and in the drawers to pretty it up a bit. I will use it to store the Boggle letters, brownie pieces, notebooks and such. (Please excuse the trash.)

Classroom Library and Cafe bulletin board:

Another library picture:

 You can read more about my classroom library here.

Here you can see my library, storage, station materials, word wall, and construction paper.

Well, that is all I have done so far. I hope that the kids like it. I just love this part of back-to-school! I have really enjoyed seeing everyone else's photos on their blogs of their classrooms. I always get great ideas!

Math Game Organization

I have tried a million different ways of organizing my math games and activities. I have tried putting them in a cabinet, sitting them around the room, and only putting out certain things. However, my current method seems to be working quite well.

I have the games organized by math topic (number sense, patterns, number operations, measurement, etc.) The students have been introduced to the games throughout the year. They are allowed to play math games when they are finished with their math work or sometimes a certain topic is assigned as part of their assignment for the day.

Students know where to find the games, based on the skill that they are practicing. They know that they are expected to put them back where they found them, so they stay really organized. Also, when I am starting to plan for a certain topic, I can pull that tub of games to put out for them to practice with. I also use the games to review skills right before testing.

So, how do you organize your math games and activities?