Classroom Update

This is my latest classroom video update 🙂

https://fbcdn-video-d-a.akamaihd.net/hvideo-ak-xpf1/v/t43.1792-2/10387281_10102510212990000_1127990701_n.mp4?oh=97220d9a24a4f182ef247d06d058972c&oe=5415CC1A&__gda__=1410713671_97fb97c78f84d492ee863da31dbfa7a1

I changed a few things since the last video a month or so ago.

I didn’t speak during the video because it was after school hours and I felt weird chatting away to myself in the quiet school when others were working…but anyway, I’ll give you a written tour 😀

0-20 seconds: My latest work 🙂
I found this on Pinterest–it’s called Tired Words and I thought it was an awesome way to get kids to use different words.
I hear “It is delicious.”  “No delicious” so many times a day…drives me crazy.
I also just moved the bookshelf again and I think it’s going to stay like this.  I like that it creates more of a reading nook than the way I had it before (flush against the wall).  I actually just bought two pillows (chair cushions turned pillows) at the dollar store (3,000W or about $3/each) and I had two pillows that I bought when I first arrived for whenever I got around to buying a futon, but that still hasn’t happened, so I’m bringing them to my room to get some use out of them.  Those will be added to that corner tomorrow.
Each student also has a good behavior sticker chart–good behavior only–and I have different colors for whenever they finish one.  I give them little prizes from Daiso (basically a dollar store) when they finish their chart.  The first one is cheap chocolate, one is a pencil with a fun animal eraser on top, another is a thing of bubbles (I found a bunch on sale in a bundle).  Anyway, I spend money, but it’s not much and it helps keep my sanity in the classroom and the kids get into it.  They like the stickers and seeing who has the most stickers and what color will be next.

:30–Another new thing I added on Friday.  This is a fake window in our classroom and I’ve decided to do a “Break Time Challenge” with fall vocab words that I found on Teachers Pay Teachers…for FREE.
I printed and laminated them and hope to change them out every few days so the kids get exposure to more words and get practice with ABC order.  In a fun way.  Heh…so sneaky.  🙂

Around :35 is basically the student station.  Kind of a catchy name that I just made up, but this area doesn’t have a real name.  The student’s work folders are here and extra pencils and erasers for students that forget (so I’m not driven crazy by the sounds of “I don’t have a pencil today” and me wondering why students leave the house without supplies.)  They all know to just grab a pencil when they need one.  We’re working on only sharpening pencils before class and at breaktime with some of the newer kids, but overall, this is pretty effective.  Kleenex/Tissue and hand sanitizer are also here.

Next up are the careers.  At the beginning of class, a student from each class chooses the next career and three photos to go with it.  I talked about this in the last post though.  I do this on Mondays and the students rotate.

I added the ordinal numbers on Friday and my desk is around :56.  Birthday wall is around :58.  Part of me wants to do something special for the kid’s birthdays, but then again…I dunno.  Maybe just a little certificate or something?  Still thinking…

Around 1:00 you can see the “Today is”, “Yesterday was” and “Tomorrow will be” section.  The kids in my last class help me change these out and they seem to enjoy helping.
Word Wall at 1:15…also new!  I love having this because it’s nice to have an organized place to put all the frequently asked spellings and that massive black shelf is finally gone.  Wahoo!  I also added these fall words to the word wall.

1:30–You can see the area where we have story time (sometimes…could be more, but the kids don’t seem to pay attention as much when they sit on the mat).  The red chair is also used for time-out.  I rarely do time-outs, but sometimes I just need to remove a kid from the situation and this is an easy way to do it.  We also have a magnet board with the abc letters.  I picked up the alphabet letters at Daiso for about 3000W (about $3) about a year ago and the kids love it.  My school bought the magnet board for us.  🙂
The colored bags under the long table in the back are for recycling.  The paper needs to go out…oi.  Not looking forward to that.

Anyway, that’s that!  🙂  Hope you enjoyed my (somewhat blurry) tour of my/our room!
Halloween decor to come in October!  Yay!

Side note:  I made a direct link to one of my main classroom Pinterest pages over there on the right >>