Friday, August 2, 2013

Back to School!!!

Today was the first day I could get in my classroom to start getting things ready for the new year. Since Trevor was off work today, he was so sweet and came up to the school to help. I really need to talk him into helping me more often because everything he worked on looked awesome!! School officially starts the 19th...and here is a sneak peek into my classroom!
My desk area...I love my big orange bulletin board! 

The back of my room that has motivational posters, my Words of Wisdom, and the Vocabulary throughout the year.

Windows with my cute curtains from college and some math posters.

The board and SMARTboard...I added the baskets this year. This way, if the students don't have homework, they can leave their spirals in my room. I also added the little cork boards above the smartboard...keep reading to see what I did with those.

Calendar and student area. - this will eventually have the student staplers/tape/agenda from week...

I read a book called Minds on Math (yes, it's the one I did the book study on in July) and these were listed as class expectations/Norms and I loved them. They also have definitions and examples to go along with each one...see this post to check that out!

So I put those on each of the cork boards above the SMARTboard!


I got a little creative with my seating arrangement...I'm excited for it to look a little different.



My red pens...I have my helper pass out red pens each day and then collect them at the end of the hour. This year I decided to put some zebra duck tape on all of mine so HOPEFULLY the students won't take them. I lost a LOT of red pens last year!

I also decided to do it with my pencils. I'm tired of fighting the pencil battle, so I am just going to have them available to the students if they need them, but they must return them before they leave. How am I going to monitor that? Well, I only put 10 pencils in the bucket and I'm going to have my helper/leader of the week count them at the end of the hour and if there is not 10, no one leaves the room...we'll see how it goes. He/She will also be counting to make sure there are 30 red pens too!
 Last but not least, I created a new bulletin board this year...
It's an iPhone! All the apps are things that they will learn this year (ratios, percents, pi, decimals, fractions...)


Trevor even got creative and put the full bars/Union/100% battery on there!
I just LOVE my room and I am getting excited for the new school year to start. Welcome to Mrs. Morris' 6th Grade Math Class!!!

6 comments:

  1. I love it!! Your students will too. How nice you're already gussied up and ready.

    Please go to my 8/1 blog post. I'd love to have you participate. Bring your scissors and 1 or more of your math activities we can include in the materials we're making for the Moore teachers. We'll need some from your level.

    Jill
    a-little-red-wagon

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    1. Jill, that sounds great! And what an awesome way to help! I'm going to be out of town on the 6th...is here some way I could submit some things??

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  2. Don't know if this would work for your big kids, but check it out. http://www.ladybugsteacherfiles.com/2013/04/the-great-pencil-challenge-managing.html

    Jill
    a-little-red-wagon

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    1. She has such a cute blog!! Thanks for sharing...I will probably have to try this next year!

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  3. Jillian!

    I read on a post somewhere that this teacher made it a competition between his students to see who could hang on to one single pencil for the longest time. It was a competition, but when students saw pencils laying around, they would make an effort to find the owner so that they wouldn't have to start over and lose out on a reward at the end of the year, semester, or quarter. This teacher said the competition/accountability concept worked really well!

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    1. That sounds like a great idea!! Competition is always good with 6th graders!! Thanks for the idea!!

      -Jillian

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