Too Late?… I Hope Not!

Well what can I say…this school year start up has been hectic. I am not sure if you remember but I was hoping for a job teaching Gr 4/5 back at the school I have been at for the past two years. I didn’t get the job 🙁 I had to pull my big girl panties up and be thankful that I had already secured a full time position teaching Gr 2/3 at a great school. The crazy part come in the fact that our school district waited until the last week of summer to post the Gr 4/5 job I wanted and it wasn’t until the Friday before school started that I found out I didn’t get the job. This left me with Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to move all my stuff from one school to another and get set up for the arrival of my new littles. YIKES!!!

Needless to say my classroom wasn’t exactly (not even close) to how I would have liked it but that is life. I had desks, and some pretty bulletin boards, and plans for the first day.

I contemplated whether or not to post pictures of my half finished room but I thought…hey I cannot have my perfect classroom every year 🙂 So I decided to share. Here goes nothing….

This is what I saw when I walked into the classroom. Hmmm… nothing fancy. First step remove all the paper that was left on the bulletin boards from the previous teacher and then get rid of the extra teacher desk and filing cabinet.

Oh yeah I almost forgot to mention… buying fly tape was a priority for the morning as there were SO many flies in the room.

Now time to make the room pretty and inviting !

I didn’t have any educational stuff on the side bulleting boards but they were covered in bright fabric and fun borders!

The black one use to be a chalkboard but I covered it up and will use magnets to hang stuff there. The turquoise one will be my Daily 5/ CAFE board and the green one will be the learning outcomes for Math.

 Here is the back of the room bulletin boards. IF you remember from last year the We Will Rock This Year board was outside the classroom but I needed something quick to put up here. My students love it and want it to stay up all year but of course I will change it up.

I was going to hang my Welcome sign with ribbon on the door but it wasn’t working quick enough for me so I taped it to the cupboards above my sink. It is the first thing people see when they walk in the room.

My classroom jobs chart from Little Lovely Leaders. I love it and it is super easy to change jobs each week. I now have clothes pins with all my students names on them and the rotation is going tickety boo. The washroom sign out is no longer there as it kept falling off the wall. In its place I have my Behaviour Management Clip Chart (pictures will come soon).

Here is my classroom library which I love, love, love. The bright colors are always a hit with the students. This picture only shows a few of my books. There are way more in it now that I have had time to organize them.

 Another view of my library. This one show my READ sign and my bins students will use as book bins. They are from Really Good Stuff and are perfect !

A close up of my back bulletin board and a mess of a shelf 🙂

A view of my desk area. I love my teacher tool box and daily organizing folders (free here) on the shelf!!

 This is a view of my classroom facing away from my classroom library and towards the door……BLAND and in serious need of color.

 I have coat hooks and student shelves in my room and above them are sliding door storage for me. They lend to the bland color of my room and I wasn’t sure what to put here. I decided that because of the length of them it would be a perfect spot for my word wall.

I originally had some fun flower shaped alphabet cards for the labels but I wasn’t feeling it so I made some new ones in bright blue and green, with a clean line look. They work with the blue paint trim. If you want them they are free here.

As you can see there is more work to do but my students were happy to see the color. I even had one student say to me on the first day of school that she loved the bulletin boards. She said she was in this classroom last year and it was so boring because the teacher only put school stuff on the boards…”You know stuff we learn with.” I had to laugh and tell her that I too would be putting school stuff on the boards!

Cheers,