Classroom Digs

The front entrance & only entrance in. 

View from slightly inside the door. Yes I have awesome and wonderful windows. I love them. 

Lockers along the wall, these are the bane of my existence. 

We have zero built in storage compared to our other classrooms, we are in portables. 

What will hopefully be a small group table, or quiet space.  

The white pieces stuck to the door will be moved to lockers for vertical space and group problem solving. While the lined piece stays where it is and is either a draft space when we get going with writing, or vertical space for math and other subjects. It is a huge magnet which is shaped like loose leaf. I use it to model organization and writing throughout the year. 

The back of the classroom is for literacy. We have a in progress CAFE board along the top. 

Writing VOICES, word wall, and under it will be content vocabulary words. The door eventually gets covered with prompts and cues for the writing process. 5-1 is for a anxiety/stress scale (we are big on self control and mental health in my room.) Then we have my bookshelf. 

It's small! It is also more than I had last year! Books, stuffies, some pillows, I'm hoping to get awesome and make some bean bag chairs. We shall see. I have a sentsy, plant, and globe along the top. Ideally there will be more green living things (lavender) and a lamp in the future. 

The posters are literary based and meaningful OR intended to support diversity and mental health. 

Behind the shelf we have a listening station. We are a BYOD school, so I try and emphasize appropriate tech use whenever I can in my room. I have a single shared class computer next to the listening station. 

This is my only full sized bulletin board, it is for displaying student work!

My teacher desk eats space!!!! As you can see from this photo, it honestly consumes an entire corner.

 The start of it. 

Middle portion

It's quite sincerely not that messy :)

The rest of the beast. 

I do have storage, it is just either not functional, nor enough... I'm planning on organizing into tubs, I just haven't gotten there yet. 

The students have magazine files to keep their desks slightly less full. 

My small group table. 

Front and centre in the room. I love reading from that school. 

Yes I have a smart board, and a document camera! The wind chimes are for grabbing focus. 

Last space. Calendar, outcomes and exit slips!

New Beginnings

      We start back to school in a weeks time, and after one year in the classroom - time which flew by in the blink of an eye. I am relieved to not be AS new, and AS entirely clueless about what being a teacher actually means, and requires of you. My university courses and practicum experiences never mentioned the insanity actually required to do this job! :)

      I am looking forward to going back to my classroom, meeting new students, and facing the new challenges that the year will bring. I love the idea of getting a fresh start, and the benefit of teaching is that a fresh start exists with every new class you receive. We have built in opportunity to change, and grow, and experiment, with the methodologies and practices that we utilize within the classroom, & the opportunities for growth excite me.

      In my reflections back on the year prior, I am dissatisfied with the amount of professional reflecting I did on the classroom, my experiences, and general pedagogy contemplation. I spent the summer entirely redoing my Language Arts year plan as I finished the year feeling so inadequate about myself in regards to writing instruction and small group management. As well as modifying and adjusting all of my plans for the other subjects I teach as well, and changing the functional layout of my classroom.

      I've maintained a personal blog before, as well as a classroom blog for my students and parents. However a blog focused entirely on the profession of teaching, mainly for my own reflective practices seems like a wise idea. I especially like the idea due to the seemingly sparse amount of middle school blogs I've been able to find on the internet.

     With the idea of reflective practices in mind, I am setting some goals for myself on here.

• Post at the very minimum - once weekly. I'd ideally like to post more frequently, but I am also aware of just how busy life gets when you are occupied with school & maintaining a life outside the classroom.

• Positivity, my posts should be realistic and reflective changes and areas of growth in a positive manner.

• Assessment, I need to reflect on my assessment practices more frequently as well.