Back to School...and I Survived!

Well, one week done, and I don't want to count how many more to go...I'm going to let that be a surprise as the year goes on...lol

Actually, it was a pretty good 3 days.  I don't have a huge class - 22 students - but it's 2 grades (a Grade 3/4 split class) so it will still keep me busy trying to cover everything that needs to be covered.  Being a small school, plus I'm also the music teacher for K to Gr. 4 and the Tech. mentor for the whole school, means that I already knew all the kids by name (and a bit of their behaviours), so everything doesn't seem quite so brand new for me during those first few days.  However, for the kids, there are lots of new things...learning my expectations, having a few different teachers (while I am doing some of my other roles), using binders and looseleaf (Yikes! Who would know that this was a major deal!), moving from tables to desks...and throw in new programs (for both me and them) with starting Daily 5 and Daily Math...I know that all of us are going to have an amazing adventure this year!

Well, I will give you a quick tour of our classroom (while it's still neat...)...it's not a huge space, and it's certainly full, but hopefully it will do what I need it to do this year.

This first picture pretty much shows most of my space, including our new desks and chairs (I picked them because they are called "blueberry"...and I just wanted to be able to say our chairs were blueberry...lol).  You can even see my summer sewing projects...the skirt/cover for my projector cart, and matching curtains.

This is my front wall, with my white board/mimio space, as well as the kids' storage (cubbies for binders, and mailboxes for notes and stuff). If you look carefully, you can also see my behaviour clip chart that we will be starting on Monday.

Keeping with our new Daily 5 program, we needed to include some space for book/work bins.  For this year, I just bought some cheap magazine holders that will hopefully work for us (and our limited space).

Our back to school bulletin board welcomed my little "aliens" into our space, for an "out of this world" year!  :) After taking their pictures with our 1st day of school frame (as I'm sure many people found on Pinterest), I had them printed out and added onto our bulletin board for the second day.

This was my version of the picture frame..



(Thanks to www.CFClassroom.com for the free pics to design it!)

 

On another note, I had a sweet delivery made to my classroom on the first day of school with kids...nope, they weren't from hubby...they were from "my big sis".  "B" was a family friend, who ended up going into education, and actually did her last year of student teaching in my classroom two years ago! She then went on to get a teaching position in our school division. She knew of my tradition of sending flowers to my favourite teachers on the first day of school (my mom, my little sister, and my daughter...and now, her)...so she sent me this lovely arrangement, complete with an apple for the teacher!

I know that this is going to be a busy year, but I'm sure it will be lots of fun, with great kids and awesome colleagues! I hope everyone else had a great start to the New Year!

 



Tammy