Back to School!

I'm not a very good blogger since it's been about a month since I last posted. We went back to school August 1st for 2 weeks of PD and our first day was on Monday. Last night, I was exhausted. I came home and probably slept for 2 hours. Thankfully my husband was super nice and cleaned the whole house and had dinner ready to go. I may or may not have told him that he better do something nice for me. :) When I came home tonight I was tired but nothing compared to last night. Thank goodness!

I was supposed to have 23 kiddos in my class and it was bumped up to 24 the first day. Between 4-5 students have not showed up each day so it's been nice hanging around 18-19 students. I've seen some other people in blog land who have around 30 students and I can't complain when I see that number. That's with an aid, right?? I've always thought that 2nd grade would be my ideal placement and towards the beginning of the year I can't help but think this again. I do LOVE first grade but with how much patience they take in the beginning, whooo, 2nd grade always looks a little better.

I thought I'd share some classroom pictures. You're sure to see a lot of ideas from other teaching blogs and Pinterest. : )

My classroom door- take 1. Thanks hubby!

Classroom door- take 2. I was filled with horror when there was a blue piece of tape on the door and I learned they were putting windows in our doors...without giving us any notice for someone who might have decorated it already!! Thankfully it still works and looks good!

This will be our visual tracker for the year. As students grow in reading they will progress up the building until hopefully meeting their end goal of growing 1.5 years in reading. (I have an awesome view. Last year all of my lockers were in front of the windows so they weren't utilized much. One problem though- we can't seem to stop watching others out on the playground!)

Classroom library. Last year I only sorted books by AR level but since I had to put away a good deal of my high books, I decided to add some different categories for students to browse. All of my read alouds and books I don't want torn up are in the 2 crates.

Calendar/ Math focus wall. I'm so excited about this! I covered up the dingy wall with a plastic table cloth from Dollar Tree, although next time I'll use fabric. I bought the Calendar Companion from The First Grade Parade and am loving this part of the day. There are so many concepts that we'll reinforce every day using this. It's still got some work but it's off to a good start. Do you also see my story map? I found the idea on Pinterest and loved this take on it.

Behavior chart and vowels from The Teacher Wife

Alphabet/ Word Wall (coming soon!)

View from the door. Where's my picture of my guided reading table? Oh yeah, no room for one of those!!! (So envious of those with big rooms!)

A portion of my desk. I bought a dish rack to hold files in, hoping that it'll keep me more organized. I have separate places for my Mr. Sketch markers, Sharpies, and Flair pens. Ahh, love the organization so far!

Happy teaching! :)