Prepping for the Year!

I have finally started to slow down on designing and creating my classroom and sat down to plan.  I have until after Labor Day until I meet my new kiddos.  I sat down and started to plan.  I wanted to start doing a calendar math, daily number beginning to math class each day and do not have the wall space or bulletin board to do that.

The other night I had an epiphany and created a different way to do the same thing.  I created a sheet that I plan on putting on an overhead projector.  I wish I had more technology and could have put it on a SMARTboard.

I am so excited by this enlightenment.  I can change it as the year progresses and I get to do what I wanted to do.  I am so excited about it right now! 

Here is what I created.

And the summer fades...

This week I have spent the last two days in my classroom, getting the last things hung and organized.  The majority of my Monday was sitting in my classroom staring around the room trying to decide where to begin.  I have so many things I want to change and new things that I want to try for this year that I was unsure where to start.  I finally got a to do list together and organized all of my thoughts, so I could begin methodically going through and making all of the changes that I wanted to make. 

This brings me to today. I am almost there; the classroom is almost where I want it.  By Thursday I should be ready to go and get the school year started.  I still have plenty of time for the more important things like creating lessons for September.  I realized today that I have totally been obsessing on my classroom that I haven’t begun writing out my lesson plans.  Though through my planning I did sit down and create a lesson plan template that I think will really work for me this year.  You can check it out below.

This template is for when I teach a whole group lesson in reading.

This one is for when we do centers during reading.

Investigation is what my school calls our science and social studies.

Newbie Bloggers Blog Hop

I have been running into my classroom throughout the summer, preparing for the school year, but I haven’t been a good blogger.  My goals for blogging this year, is to blog every other day and learn more about the blogging community.  I really want to find out how to do giveaways and all the other fun stuff that many of my favorite bloggers do well.  I found this blog hop and thought it was a good way of getting back into blogging for the new year. 

The rules are to answer these questions.

1.       What state are you teaching in: Pennsylvania

2.         Your current teaching position: Third grade

3.        What is your teaching experience: 8 years

4.        When did you start blogging: I started blogging in February of this year.

5.        Share a blogging tip: Include lots of pictures and how-tos. This is a Blog Hop!

Check out all the other blogs