2gether We Are Better- Classroom Reveal

It's finally here!!! I have been waiting to reveal my classroom for some time now. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you have seen some sneak peaks, but here s the whole sha-bang!!! 

My theme changed from bright and black to bright, black and leadership. 

Love my door! 

To keep with the leadership theme, the front of my room has Hope King's Desire to Inspire quotes. 

I didn't have time to find and buy frames but I love how these black chalkboard place mats turned out. When I have time (bahahahaha) I plan to accent theme with colored chalk. For now, they are fine. 

We have uncovered August and written about it in our journals already. The students really enjoyed the  unveiling. I look forward to incorporating this all year. 

Under the first section is my writing wall, which has just begun to  take shape. 

Under the second section is where I am housing my brag tags.

The black box on the right is where my tags are stored. 

My goal is to keep this table clean each day. 

I don't have a desk, but these cubbies are awesome. They store all my stuff. It is keeping me super organized. The drawers are for my weekly papers. 

The bulletin board is part of the Desire to Inspire and these are my expectations. I didn't do rules with my kids this year, just expectations. 

Above this are the seven habits. Our school is a Leader in Me school and we focus on these a lot. 

This is my MUST have for teaching. If you have followed me, you know I love this timer. I can't teach without it. It's called a Time Timer and it keeps me on track. Under it is our daily schedule. 

I have two objective boards. I am teaching everything this year, It's my biggest challenge. 

I will be using these boards for the first time this week. 

This wall has a lot going on. 

At the top, I created this display for student work. I don't have a wall outside to do this, so I made inside.I love how it turned out. 

Students added their names last week and we even put up work. 

I know it's hard to see, but they were so excited when I climbed on my step stool and hung up their writing. Mission accomplished! 

This is my Daily 5 Chart. I accidentally printed it small, but decided to keep it. 

Since this picture I have separated them by tape to create columns. Just keeps the magnets where they should be. 

The magnets, I LOVE THEM!!! They are old bottle caps I spray painted, made numbers and my husband poured a clear glaze. We let them dry for about 3 days and they were exactly what I wanted, 

I glued heavy duty magnets on the back and they stick perfectly to my white board. 

Students will use these to choose their Daily 5 activity. 

Beside this is my calendar and how we show birthdays. I don't teach "calendar" in 5th grade, but its necessary to have one. 

Next is my sad library. It's a work in progress. 

The genre posters are from Brown Bag teacher. 

We created that anchor chart this past week. 

I know, there are no books. But there will  be. 

Luckily my students went to our school library the fourth day of school and were able to check out a book. I am disappointed that I didn't get it all done, but in reality it wasn't the end of the world, so I am over it. 

Love the place value chart. We have already used it with a task card activity and I have seen kids look back at it and use it on their own too! 

My "back" wall has a few windows, but I do plan on utilizing those for vocabulary. 

If you follow me on Instagram, you have seen my area and perimeter window. I absolutely adore it. 

I love the Astrobrights colors and even though I wish the word area could have been bigger, I am pleased with how it turned out. If I had done it any larger, it would not have fit in my school laminator. 

Then begins my Science focus. 

I have shared my Scientific plates I copied off of Alison at Rockin' Lovin' and Learnin'. 

The other Science stuff from Ari at Science Penguin. I pretty much bought all her stuff during the big back to school sale. Just a complete time saver! 

 Science Tools from Ari too! 

 I am blessed with tons of storage. 

These cabinets will house our Science Vocabulary. 

The trash cans have been great for foldable trash. But they play with the lids ALL THE TIME and I can't handle it, so they have to stay on the back counter when we aren't using them. 

The blue papers are job descriptions for Science experiments. (yes, from Science Penguin) 

And yes, I am somewhat obsessed with the tubs, 

This week we have also been creating our Daily 5 charts. 

More storage. The boxes on top are the school supplies students brought. 

Thankfully I am tall so I can access them easily. 

I have been receiving lots of textbook stuff.  Much of it is here. 

The middle is my student book boxes. 

Super cheap from Ikea and fun labels from Tara at 4th Grade Frolics.

This was actually the second bulletin board I created. 

It's my TEAM jobs. Gonna try something different. 

The purple letters above it is a school wide attendance incentive. 

We are trying to spell Go Wildcats. 

The red folder houses WOW stickers and Zoot Loots. 

Wow stickers are a school wide caught being good initiative. And Zoot Loots are a 5th grade positive behavior incentive. I just had to find a safe place to keep them. 

This is a shot of my work area. My goal is to keep it this clean at the end of every day. 

This is a shot of my entire room from the front door. 

Thanks for making it through all the pictures. I am sure I went overboard. 

I have really enjoyed sharing with you though. 

Be sure to check out all the other reveals 

Monday Made It- August 17th

I am officially back to work. I started Friday, then went on a mini vacation this weekend and now back for a full week of PD and kids next week! 

Yes,  you read that right. My husband decided we needed to leave down this weekend. Inside I was panicking. Seriously, I have so much to do. 

Family does come first though. We had this weekend planned for a long time. 

And of course, it was super fun! 

So, my Monday Made It's will be few this week. It's not that I didn't do a lot, I just don't have it ready for blogging. Much of it is my classroom anyway, which I am revealing in a different linky party coming up. 

But, here's what I do have to share with you. 

Last week, my buddy Alison from Rockin' and Lovin' and Learnin' shared her Scientific Method plates. 

Done and hanging my room already! 

SHE ROCKS BTW... 

I have decided to use brag  tags in my classroom this year. Obviously I am not finished, but I am working on my box holder. It's not bad, I just need more time! (don't we all?) 

Making labels for my book bins that I don't have. Nor do I have books for them yet. 

Time people, I need T-I-M-E!

 These are from The Brown Bag Teacher. 

 My school is a Leader in Me school and I am embracing it. 

I am using Hope King's Desire to Inspire quotes in my room. These are for Meet the Teacher Night this Thursday. It is our first quote we will study and focus on. I plan to wrote a note on the back of each for my students as a welcome. 

I am really excited about these quotes. It's a huge part of my classroom decor. I also can't wait to share how it looks in my classroom. That will have to wait for another day though.  

It's late and I am presenting tomorrow for our district PD. I have to get some sleep! 

Happy Monday everyone and hope you are enjoying either the last few weeks of your summer or the first few weeks of your new school year! 

Back to Basics- First Week of Middle School

When I started teaching middle school and had 7 to 8 classes a day, I learned very quickly that academics start right away. Our pacing calendars didn't give a lot of leeway for community building and expectations. Everything just felt like it moved so quickly. 

I wanted to teach routines though and figured I would do with content. I also wanted to get students back into mathematical thinking immediately. I was very curious what they remembered from the previous school year. My first year I gave a test. B-O-R-I-N-G! I regretted it right away. 

Solution: Create stations for my students with content they learned previously and need to just be reminded that they know.  I love math stations, even with middle school kids. I have done them in a rotation format and also using Daily 3 this past year. You can read about that here. This also gave me an opportunity to allow students to work together in a stress free environment from the very beginning. 

Enter:  Back to School Basics 

To use with your new 6th graders: 

I was shocked that this concept seemed like a second language to my sixth graders. 

Two options to use, with our without QR codes. 

 Another skill I felt really helped my students was to discuss divisibility rules. 

This is a fun game I used along with a flippable and another center game. 

 This game is available separately. 

Lastly, adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators was moved to 5th grade in Texas last year, so I really needed my new students to practice these skills. 

To use with your new 7th graders 

Sixth graders have spent a lot of the year working on fractions, decimals and percents. This is a great review using word problems. 

Most middle school teachers will tell you that ALL grade levels need practice with integer operations! I love this activity with a secret message because it is self checking! 

 Another new concept for our sixth graders in Texas was one step equations. 

This is a great matching activity to refresh your students. 

To use with your new 8th graders. 

Another integer practice, yep, ALL students need refreshers with this concept. 

This is a fun scavenger hunt activity. 

Students solve the equation on the bottom and search for the answer on the top of one of the other cards. Another self checking activity. 

Practicing two step equations now.

At first glance, you may be wondering why I choose this next skill for new 8th graders. 

Well, I had some pretty in depth conversations with my 8th grade teachers and this was a major pet peeve of theirs. They struggled with the fact that eighth graders couldn't plot points on a coordinate grid. Of course, slope is HUGE in 8th grade, so therefore, lets plot some points! 

And of course, I know that many middle school teachers teach all grade levels. 

At my school our resource teachers taught all three grades and our math labs (remedial math) could include all grade levels. 

So, here's a great way to save:

Another reason to bundle? At the end of the 6th grade, wouldn't the 7th grade Back to Basics be great review? And the 8th grade great for the end of 7th grade? There a lots of options. 

I hope you can find them useful. 

I know your students will enjoy NOT taking a 'back to school test" to show you what they do or do not remember. Take the pressure off by making it fun, interactive and teaching those expectations from the very beginning. Build your classroom communities by having students work cooperatively in small groups. 

It's a win-win!