School Is In Session

It’s September! Fall is officially here and summer is over. I love fall for so many reasons. I love the fall flavors of cinnamon, pumpkin, squash, and apples. I also love fall clothes like scarves and boots, hopefully it decides to cool down soon, so I can wear them! As an elementary school teacher, I feel a little sad for summer to go because I know that means no more sleeping for awhile. On the other hand, I always feel excited to go back to school and work with my students.

I have been so disorganized the past few weeks as I have been preparing for school. Making dinner/meal planning, cleaning, and laundry have gone by the wayside.  My caffeine intake is a bit extreme. This weekend I need to get back on track. I know I will be whipping up some quick meals, using the crock pot, and coming up with many one pot meals. As much as I love a luxurious dinner, when school hits I know during the week it has got to be quick, tasty, and easy to clean up.

Our first day of school was two Wednesdays ago. We had a nice short week, the Labor Day weekend and then another 4 day week.  This coming week will be our first full week. This year I am teaching fifth grade. I have a brand new classroom and a new teaching partner. This summer I spent quite a bit of time giving my classroom an awesome patriotic theme, it goes really well with our social studies for the year. My partner and I have the same fun room theme. The kids love it! They were really excited to see it in action.

I thought I’d give you a little tour of my classroom.

First stop, the library. I have the library organized in four ways. I have the books on one side organized by lexile and authors. The other side I have them organized by genre and book series. This gives the kids many choices on ways to find books. On the top of both shelves I have highlighted books and I will switch them throughout the year.

Here are some big views of the room on the first day of school! On each desk I laid out the students homework folder, unfinished work folder, a letter I wrote to them, their name tag, and a pencil. When they came in I greeted them individually at the door, had them find their desks, read the letter, and then they wrote me back. It’s a great way to start the year.

I got my cute pencil labels from Soarin into Second. You can get them here.

I also got the awesome table numbers (you can see table seven below) from the Cottage Market. I love the printables on that blog. You can get that freebie here.

We are a Leader In Me School and one of our goals this year was for each class to come up with a mission statement. This is the project we started to help us come up with our class mission statement. I asked my students several questions. They put the responses on post it notes. We had a discussion about the similarities of what we all want for our classroom. Then we compiled the ideas to make a class mission statement. The kids came up with a fantastic mission statement, which will be a guiding motivation for the year.

Here is our classroom door. We have a new superhero theme at our school right now. I started the base of the door. The students wrote on the stars “I will be a superhero this year by…” and then the students put the stars on the door. It is hard for me sometimes to give up control, but it is great for the kids to be in charge.

As a gift, I thought I would give you a freebie! These are my library labels. Free Library Labels. I printed them, laminated them and then velcroed them to my baskets. I am sure you can clothespin them or hot glue gun them too. Whatever fits your fancy. I left a few blanks for you, you can write on the laminate with a vis-a-vis or expo marker. Enjoy your freebie friends! I hope you have enjoyed your sneak peek into classroom. If you teach I would love to connect with you and talk about your class. I’d also like to connect with anyone trying to balance life. (Isn’t that all of us?) Any great easy weeknight recipes? I can’t wait to share with you. Happy September!

 

Here is to always learning,

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