In about 11 hours I’ll be greeting my brand new class for my 5th first day of school as a teacher with my own class. Hard to believe this is my 5th year of teaching grade 5 already.
This past week I’ve been getting my classroom set up. I wrote here about some of the ideas I want to use this year from last year and posted a picture of what my classroom looked like at the start. I’m happy to say it looks much less bare now.
Table groups
First of all, I’ve opted to do groups again this year rather than starting off in rows like it was when I got the room. I’ve also put up some of my favourite fabrics to cover the bulletin boards. Each table group has a pencil holder and an “art basket” where they will keep their coloured pencils, markers, rulers and things. So far I have 20 students so I have 5 groups of four students which is a nice number.
Unfortunately, my classroom doesn’t have a whole lot of shelf space, so I went out and bought these lovely wire shelves and some cool baskets to put my french books in. I’ve also put my responsibilities and some of my daily routine words on the white boards because my chalk boards are not magnetic, making them mostly useless.
Book shelves
I was pleased at how easy it was to put the shelves together. I have an old set that I got when I was in university that was a huge pain to put together. Then I came in one morning and found out why the set that was harder to put together is better. So I set them back up and spent a long time getting them set up properly. Hopefully they will stay together better this time.
Why it’s not always good that it’s easy to put together
This morning I decided I needed to go in to school for a few more hours to get things more ready. I wanted to get all my photocopying and everything done so that the hour that I normally spend before my class comes in won’t feel rushed. I’m really glad I went in because I’m feeling a lot more calm about tomorrow now.
There are a few things that I’m happy about in my organization this year. Last year when I decided to not keep supplies in the students’ desks, I didn’t have a good system for where to keep everything. This year it’s all organized and labeled.
I’m also excited about these neat closets in my classroom. They’re all controlled by one door, the one with the door handle, and they all open and close at the same time. I’m planning to use the bulletin boards on them to display class work.
This is my reading corner and classroom meeting corner. I’m happy to have a good easel this year. The chalk board is going to be my “sound” wall and up above is going to be my word (sentence) wall. Just above on the blue bulletin board is my group responsibilities board.
Reading corner
And these are cushions I bought for the students to sit on when we meet in the reading/meeting corner. I’m hoping that they’ll work well.
Now to get ready for bed and hopefully sleep!
Mme Chiasson 