Designing the Classroom

Last year, I spent all day for a week straight turning my classroom from what was a 4/5 classroom into a Grade One classroom. Holy cow, did it ever take a long time. This year wasn’t as bad. I had to turn it from a 5/6 to a 3/4, and I found I could keep a lot of the materials that were left there (in other words, I have a great classroom library!)

Between Tuesday morning and late this afternoon, I spent my days transforming last year’s room into Ms. Lawrence’s Grade 3/4 classroom. I now present you, one before picture and several after pictures.

The Before shot. It’s always hard to know where to start. I just stared at it for a while until the ideas started flowing.

And now for the after shots...

Aside from being an optical illusion, this board will serve many purposes; mainly used for assessment with exit passes, but it’s currently all set up for a fun first day back activity.

I’m always so obsessed with my bulletin boards. Once I apply my vision for those, everything else seems to come together.

 The blue and green buckets (which were purchased with the colour scheme in mind) will be used for guided reading groups. The rest is a small but great classroom library.

My guided reading area. This year we are trying the Daily Café literacy program. It’s been around for a while but I never used it in Grade One. Looking forward to trying it out this year.

Math Manipulative Mania!

It’s hard to see, but those posters are kid friendly posters about Multiple Intelligences. That’s how we’re starting off our year. Thanks, Susan Morrow for the free copy via Teachers Pay Teachers!

The window behind my desk looks into another small room (a pod) so I will have to cover it with something. Best to avoid the distractions before they happen.

I still have to do something about covering that cord because someone is going to trip over it and that someone will likely be me.

Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. For me, I found my bulletin board trim first and based my colours on that. It was funky and I thought I could do a lot with it. I ran out of it when I was 90% done my boards and I almost lost my mind. Thankfully, my darling man made the third trek to Barrie with me to get more from the only store that had it in stock.

And that’s what the new classroom looks like! Comparing it to my Grade One room last year, I think it looks fun and inviting, and geared towards an age group that is a little older and more mature.

Now, I'm off to enjoy a weekend spent with family and friends, and of course, planning because next week is the last week of summer vacation and I still have a TON to do!

Setting up the Classroom!

There are only four days until the first day of school and that meant that I had to dedicate this week to setting up my classroom. See, I spent eight weeks this summer working for Autism Ontario Kids Camp (the best camp EVER), so I wasn’t able to come into school any earlier. Boy oh boy, I had my work cut out for me! I had spent my entire summer daydreaming about how I would organize my room. Then I got there…and sat and stared at the mess in front of me for probably 15 minutes. Suddenly, my daydreams didn’t seem so helpful. When I say mess, I mean all the desks stacked one on another and all my bins, books, and toys stored on the shelf. It shouldn’t even classify as a mess. You know what does? The stuff in cupboards and drawers that had been there for ages. In fact, I found a document dated 1985, despite the fact that the school was built in 2001. So as you can imagine, it took me the ENTIRE week to get my classroom ready in Molly standards. Without the help of my friends and family who lent a helping hand, I’m not sure I could have done it all in five days. So without further ado, please enjoy the many progress photos I took at the end of each day. What a transformation!

Monday

This was my hallway the morning I left. One might have thought I was moving to university all over again. There was a lot to take with me to my second home!

This is the sight that had me pondering for 15 minutes. Where to start?!

By the end of the day on Monday, this was what I had accomplished. Doesn’t look like much, but it was a start. Lots of cleaning too, which meant lots of sneezing!

Tuesday

Bright orange pylons are great to use for washroom passes because they’re easy to see from far away. You’ll always know who’s in the washroom. I added some cute pictures to make them a little less boring and plain.

Looking much cleaner! That group of desks in the far corner was coined “stuff I don’t want in here”. Watch the collection grow!

I’m lucky because I have a very large classroom; however at one point, it seemed like I had too much open space within the centres. The caretakers were wonderful and brought down an extra table for me to divide my math centre from the rest of the room.

Wednesday

 On Wednesday, my friend, Steph came to help me decorate. We work together at camp, and she too is a certified teacher. With one of the most creative minds out there, I asked her if she’d like to help. I’m so glad we were able to spend the day together making this classroom look warm and welcoming. Goodbye ugly bulletin boards; hello fun, yet calming colour scheme! We went to Dollarama and bought green and yellow plastic tablecloths. We doubled them up, stapled them on, cut them to size, and tah dah! A beautiful start to the new bulletin boards. Why aren’t they finished, you ask? Well we ended up buying round tablecloths by accident so we couldn’t do the rest that day.

We got the number line up, and the caretaker was ever so kind to make a new drill hole so I could hang the clock a little lower.

Tablecloths around the desks at the centres allow me to store the rest of the toys and manipulatives without it being an eye-sore. And to top it off, it goes along nicely with my colour scheme.

The “stuff I don’t want in here” finally made its way out of the room. Yay!

Steph made me a nice little nook so that all my stuff could be pinned in one location, away from resources for the kids. We added the ribbon to tie in with the other colours in the room. What are those yellow things in the corner, you ask? Scroll down to Thursday to find out...

Thursday

Learning is Fun in Grade One! A little message for the kiddies on the hallway window.

I went to Michael’s for some odds and ends and stumbled across the scrap booking section where they just happened to sell scrapbook paper the exact same size as the cork board in my nook. It looks much better than the ribbons.

I forgot to mention my other very special helper I had this week. My mom! My wonderful momma took the day off work to come help me set up my classroom. We had tons of fun and got lots done. We finished the bulletin boards (because I went and bought more tablecloths) and added the borders.

Alas! The mystery is revealed. For those of you who know me, you know I LOVE ducks. I’m obsessed. We found these at Dollarama and I just had to have them.

All my supplies arrived at the end of the day. I left the mess on the art table to tackle on Friday.

Fancy, colourful stars with all our names on them. Welcome to Grade One!

Friday

On Friday morning, I was feeling a little overwhelmed because there was still so much to do! My friend Tara came in and helped me out (I told you I had awesome helpers). She did the little odds and ends jobs and completely organized my storage closet while I did some of my paperwork and planning. We concluded that maybe she should be a professional organizer. The place looks great!

I sent my calendar out to be laminated and it came back today. It really only fit nicely on this board so I rearranged the “carpet” area. I don’t actually have a carpet, but that’s what I call it anyways. I like this arrangement a lot better!

What’s with the pig? That’s how we will keep track of how many days we’ve been at school. Each day we will add a penny. When we get to 10 pennies, we will substitute it with a dime. This will help the kids understand place value, and it will also make them experts on money by the time I formally introduce it in January. And yes, I know…we don’t distribute pennies anymore, but they still need to know what they are.

Eventually, the middle board will be filled with their wonderful work.

The Guided Reading area is now complete. The rest of the board will be filled with reading strategies as I teach them. I know the bookcase is off-centre. I didn’t realize until I looked at this picture once I left. It will be fixed first thing Tuesday morning.

The finished product!

It’s a lot of time and money getting a classroom ready. Luckily for me, I work with a wonderful staff who I already know quite well from previous years. As they cleaned out and set up their rooms, they offered me a lot of furniture and resources to use in my classroom. Without them, I wouldn’t have half of the engaging activities in my room.

Just four more days until the first day of school, and although my classroom is ready, I still have a little bit of work to do at home this weekend. It never stops, but I love every second of it!