Jitters & Things...

What Stuck? & New Curtains

Today was the first day back at school with the students. This year has been interesting. We weren't allowed in our classrooms early due to renovations throughout the building. I had decided earlier in the summer not to go in early this year and I believe it was the best decision I could have made. Our administration was generous enough to give us ample time to prepare for registration last Saturday.
There have been quite a few changes to my room. Nothing spectacular, but different enough to spice things up for me! I moved my desk, added curtains, added a word wall, and updated my filing cabinets and storage unit. Of course, there are a few other things I'd like to do, but time is not on my side at the moment. Between revamping my interactive notebooking technique, designing an advanced course, finishing my Brazil project, planning inservice presentations, and incorporating global competencies in my curriculum, I'd say I'm slightly overwhelmed....but who's not???


Today marked the first day with my new kids. It took me FOREVER to fall asleep! I'm happy I was able to sleep well because upon arriving to school my computer crashed when I was supposed to go meet my homeroom! I was tardy(ish) picking up my kids, but eventually got computer to cooperate.


While You Were Out Board & Turn In Trays

It's so amazing how different each batch of kids is from one year to the next. I'm excited to see how the year unfolds! Today's group of kids completed an anchor chart on what they thought a great teacher should be. I got some very interesting and enlightened responses. We had a great discussion about their expectations of what teachers should and should not do. From the exercise, I was able to learn that my students wanted a teacher that genuinely cares about them and helps them learn. I didn't necessarily learn anything new, it sure does make a HUGE difference actually hearing it straight from the kiddos! Tomorrow's group will clue me in on aspects of a great student! I'm looking forward to an amazing year!!!!



Obsessed with my new The Hungry Caterpillar borde

I made it!

O.M.G.
What a crazy week! I am seriously exhausted after a great first week with my new sixth graders. So exhausted that I finally got out of the bed around 1:30 p.m. even though I have been up since 8:00 a.m. Crazy!??! They are so cute & extremely polite! It is refreshing to see that some parents are still teaching their kids manners.

I late posting a few things, so I am going to try to tackle a couple of things in this post.
Here it goes:

Hug Your Heart jar & Brain Break Activities (in the smiley face jar)

I have no idea where I originally heard of the Hug Your Heart jar, but I decided to make one a few weeks ago. I want to emphasis the good things that students do. I teach sixth graders and sometimes their actions can be quite the opposite of kind. Clearly, when I took this picture, I hadn't filled it with Hersey Hugs yet, but I think it's pretty cute. It is plastic because I can see it being dropped (sixth graders don't have the best coordination)! I covered it with owl stickers because for our Greek mythology unit, I am the goddess Athena. I try not to let my newly found owl obsession run wild!
I'm going to add a cute poem to this that I found on  a first grade blog. I will be making it owl themed of course...I can't resist.

The smiley face jar has brain break activities. I got most of the ideas from a third grade blog and added a few of my own. I have yet to introduce the concept to my kids since we have only seen my classes twice in four days, but they are really interested in knowing what is up with the smiley face jar.
I wrote the activity on one side of the stick and a description on the back. I'll have to link up my activities, but they include the following:
Cha-Cha Slide, Telephone game, Mab Libs, Simon Says, Seat Switch, and Hot Potato questions

That's all for now. I'm off to actually enjoy my weekend and not focus on school stuff for a while. Off to a practice tailgate party. As we often tell the kids, practice makes perfect! :)

Holy Moly...

First off, today is a happy day! Just found out that my very first DonorsChoose project just got funded in under 48 hours! This is one shocked and happy teacher! :)

In other news...tomorrow is the first day of school! I cannot believe it! Summer went by so quickly! I am clearly in a state of complete shock! Although, I cannot be too mad because the weather is cooling off and football season is gearing up. Bliss!

The last few days have been a fast and furious scramble to get everything ready for the big day. To my knowledge, everything is taken care of (schedules, lockers, health forms, course outline). I hope that when I wake up tomorrow, I still have this false sense of calm about me.
With all of that being said, I am really excited to see my new students. Summer Sizzle Fizzle was Saturday (registration). They kids for the most part were very excited to start the 6th grade. I can only hope that the enthusiasm carries over to tomorrow morning!

I did want to share a few pics of the room that I managed to remember to take this afternoon. Still missing one or two things, but it'll do for day one.

My desk area & the computer station

View from the doorway
Decided to pair up the students for the first few days of school

Student supplies & paper turn-in boxes labeled by class period

"Hug" Your Heart jar
The smiley vase contains our Brain Break activities

View from the front of the room
Labeled crates on the back table to hold their interactive notebooks

Wishing everyone a great first day of school!

Expectations

I've been "planning" a lot this summer a.k.a. perusing through pins on Pinterest. The other day I came a across a really cute way to display classroom expectations. I didn't quite LOVE the original version though. This year, I'm hoping to make my classroom student-centered. Of course, my kids are always the focus in my room, but this year, I'm differentiating my instruction so the student has more choice as to how they learn and display knowledge to me (CYOA: Create Your Own Assignment). More on this will come later (probably right before the school year starts and I'm getting my rear into high gear (hopefully)! :)
Here's a free pdf of MY VERSION and a link to the TpT version I saw via Pinterest. 
I do believe this will be displayed on/ by my desk this year. 6th graders LOVE to come up with some really creative excuses or recycle THE originals. No, really, the dog DID eat my homework...smh.

Woo