Finally Finished!

I have finally finished my room...just in time for Meet the Teacher Tomorrow! I am looking forward to seeing my new bunch of kiddos!

Here are some tips for Meet the Teacher:

1. The first 7 seconds are the most important! Smile, shake hands, give a positive greeting and say something unique to that student! Don't say the same thing to everyone...they will catch on that you are being lazy.

2. Next, greet the parents! It is important to see the child first then the parents! This shows where your interest lies. Shake hands and smile!

3. Encourage the students to look around the room and explore their new classroom! I like to have something that they have to look for - give them a purpose - for example: I will say, "We have a special classmate. See if you can find our squeaky friend!" they will search for my class pet Rusty the Guinea Pig.

4. Sit the parents down and get them to sign EVERYTHING you can. Our school district is doing things really easy now. If you do NOT want your student to get on the internet, video, picture ect...they have to sign. So if they don't sign it is an automatic YES! Love it. However, we do have some iPad forms, Pet Permissions, and info cards that need to be filled out. Another teacher of mine, gives our brownies for "brownie points" for filling our paperwork! Very creative!

5. If supplies are brought, I wait till the first day of school and have the kiddos sort, so for today I just have them set it on the table.

6. I like to fill out the student's name tags as they come in. Often time students go by a nickname or middle name and I like to write what they like to be called. I make it out and then show them where I would like them to sit on the first day. This helps with jitters!

7. I try not to talk to one parent too much but encourage them to sign up for a conference. This way you can mingle and chat with more people. Sometimes it is hard to pull away from a "talker" but I always just say "I think we need more time to talk, so when are you free next week for a conference?" This shows you were listening to their concerns and want to have a more proper time with them.

8. Remember this is the first impression families have of you - Look Nice! Smile! Eye Contact!


Now for the fun part! Here is my classroom - finished!

My co-teacher and I's doors! They turned out great!

Welcome Sign - Thanks Marie and Kim!

My connecting door to my favorite grade level boss! His baseball theme is a hit!

My door ;)

My desk - nothing special but CLEAN!

Left Side

Middle

Right Side

Twitter Board on the back of door...that birdy was the inspiration to our theme! It hold the markers for the twitter board and our job sticks.

My writing work station

My fabulous Common Board - duct tape from Kmart!

My motto and rules board

My library with anchor chart tree, plus my Tale of Despereaux Poster and book - can you find it?

Portfolio wall  - hooks with key rings. Anything that the students are proud of will go on their key ring to celebrate! It doesn't have to be a test but whatever they would like to keep to show their parents at the end of they year. The blue says "Something to Tweet About"

My Pinterest Filing Cabinet and some awesome Sorting Mats! Thanks Cathy! You rock!

 

 

 

 

 Leave me your best tip for meet the teacher! I will add it to mine :)

Tiffany

Kagan Cooperative Learning

This summer I went to a Kagan Workshop and loved it. I learned a lot that I can add to my Whole Brain Toolbox. I started Whole brain about 4 years ago and really haven't had any behavior problems since. I do a lot of praying though. :) I really do feel blessed because I have loved all my students and never have had a year I regret. So back to Kagan...my principal asked myself and another teacher to give a little PD on this during preplanning. YIKES! So we busted our butts to make sure we knew a lot about Dr. Kagan Spencer and his structures. We were given an hour to unpack the basics and show off the great structures he has created. We had 4 sessions and they all went great, I thought! I hope the teachers and staff saw the benefit of cooperative learning and the difference from just "group work". One student usually gets stuck with the work while with Kagan it is all about PIES!

P - Positive interdependence
I - Individual accountibility
E - Equal participation
S - Simultaneous interaction

I did those from memory! My partner was absolutely wonderful and she helped me so much as I did the structures with the teachers. She is a Kagan pro now! We even did some Brain Breaks during our session and I snapped a few pictures. Even some grumps were smiling as we did Mirror Mirror!

One person is "it" the other is the mirror

I think the Backstreet Boys were on as we danced!

What great sports!

So overall a great success for us presenting some very new material. I am super excited about doing Kagan with my class this year. I also am dipping into Differentiated Instruction and hopefully will be apart of a Professional Learning Community at my school to help me out.

Some housekeeping news: I found out that I will have the ESE kids this year and am really excited. I love this group because they are so diverse! Perfect for my professional goals this year. Besides that we have a great ESE team at our school. I know that I will have lots of support. :)

My classroom is just waiting on some lamination that Ms. Bunny is going to do hopefully tomorrow!

This lady does it all!

Some of you may be wondering about my die cutting adventure. I went back to that machine and made peace. I apologized for doing anything to hurt its feelings and asked it to please cut my stuff with a funky font. It accepted and now I am left with these lovely words:

Here is the machine that worked perfectly today!

For my twitter exit ticket door :)

So all worked out well! Now just to put it all together.

Another fun surprise was from my hubby for my bird themed classroom! He got these for me at Ikea!

I am not sure you can read it but it says, "Put a Bird On it!" Portlandia reference for all those people! Thanks to each one of my friends who came out and helped. You guys are awesome!

Tomorrow I am determined to do the rest of my pinterest ideas! :) So many....

Tiff

Half Way There!

So I am in the midst of decorating my classroom and I am pleased so far. My co-teacher and I are doing a fatty bird theme- kinda like that fat twitter bird? Yeah, we are having a twitter exit ticket wall. Thank you Pinterest! So after cleaning my room from all the cockroaches and cockroach poo. Yea, nasty but just a part of life. Our main bulletin boards have a huge tree with branches reaching out over the edge of the board. And that looked cool. But then we decided to make it 3-D by scrunching our butcher paper up and gluing it on top of the tree! This was a great idea! Noris (my amazing co-teacher) scrunched two humongous trees and made our bulletin boards absolutely "Twitterific!" The birds that Ashely helped me make at the Pinterest Party are up and looking adorable. Check out our board so far!

Slight change - the apples got thrown out for bark border! Yay!

Now for the bad news. Like many schools we have lots and lots of die cuts and it takes FOREVER to cut out a simple phrase. So last year our principal order a laser cutter that will cut out letters, numbers, and symbols. I used it all last year and had great success. Big time saver. So this year I padded in my fuzzy slippers (shhhhh don't tell!) to the media center with my paper in tow. Started that baby up and put the paper in flat and smooth. I type in my words and press GO. I hear it cutting and humming and happily turn around to tear some butcher paper for my boards. Then I hear it. Crunching and ripping. The tiny little laser knife thingy is ripping and tearing my paper up! I run over and frantically press stop twice. I remove the paper and think "it must not have been smooth enough and the laser thingy snagged it. So I reset and try it again. And again. And again and yes 5 more times. Failure. I was so aggravated. I did not want to die cut all those letters! I do not have time. I do not want to do it! So what is a girl to do? I want the cool fonts and not old nasty block letters!

Ok. My tantrum is over. So the question is should I use the block letters from the die cuts, hand write out my phrase and then cut, or print out the phrase and then cut?

Lemme know your thoughts on my problem!

The best invention ever! Ok. Well. The best invention I found today!

I am freaking out. So I saw all these apps and programs for scanning in my library books and then checking them out through my phone. Let me just tell you. Classroom Organizer online is rocking my world right now and they have an app! It lets you set up a class and scan all of your books plus it gives you the AR level, AR points, Lexile, Author, Illustrator, blah blah and many more!

This means that when a student needs to know the AR level or if you wanna check out literature circle book to keep track of them or if a student wants to know other books by the same author. YOU JUST SCAN THE ISBN. Done. 2 seconds.

Oh, how I love techonology, technology, techonology.
Oh, how I love technology, it's you so easy you see!

This is my phone...her name is Snowflake.

Ok. Done singing. But please, if you are a teacher you MUST check this out.

classroom.booksource.com

Tomorrow I hope to finish setting my classroom up. It has a long way to go. But I did kill several humongous cockroaches today. Oh the joys. Pictures of the finished classroom will be up soon!

Tiffany