Classroom Pictures

So I finished my classroom. Yay! It's definitely not perfect, but it's pretty good for what I've got. I started teaching last year in October, so I didn't have a lot of time to go through everything in my room that I had acquired from previous teachers. This year I got in there nice and early, and went through every single nook and cranny. I found a lot of junk, but I also found some good stuff. And I arranged it all. Woot! So here are some pictures:

This is the view from my door into the classroom. I have my teacher station up near the board where I keep my laptop, seating charts, and any other materials I need for the lesson.

Here is my recorder center that I have set up. I have all of the recorders labeled for each of the 4 classes. On the bulletin board I am going to have class lists where the kids can keep track of what belts they have earned. I hope this will make it somewhat of a competition between the students and classes to earn more belts! Also my desk is tucked behind the bookcase.

This is the majority of my instrument storage. I have all of these mismatched containers and boxes to hold my instruments, and I would love to have a beautiful matching set, but that costs money so... It's not happening!!! This looks a little hectic, but it's definitely better than it was! I also have all of my personal books, and other random stuff on here (red solo cups, scarves, parachute, etc.)

Sorry for the sideways picture! These are my rules, which I borrowed from Mrs. Dennis. I don't use the same rewards system as her, but I really like these rules and posters, so I brought them into my room.

Sideways again! Here are my magnetic hand signs which I also borrowed from Mrs. Dennis (can you tell that I'm a little bit in love?). I had a ton of fun getting to use the super fancy laminater at my school. I'm going to start laminating everything!

Here's my piano corner. The box is full of my ukuleles (I really need a better storage system for them). I'm thinking about moving my bookshelf over to the other wall closer to the door, but I was far too lazy to unload everything and drag it across the room. Maybe I'll find some inspiration to do that if I get some student helpers to move the books.

This is just on the other side of the piano. I had 4 risers set up last year, but I rarely used them, and they took up a ton of room! I decided to try it with only 2 for a while and see how it goes. If I ever get a choir going, I'll have to set some more up again, but for now this should be okay. I also have my cabinet with hand drums and my boomwhackers on top. I'm going to try and get some bins for my boomwhackers to live in, but that is a future project.

And here is the view of my room from my desk. I'm never at my desk when I'm teaching, but it's nice to have for going through emails and storing junk. I think the room is looking pretty good, and I am ready to get teaching on Tuesday. Yay!!!

I'm going to spend this weekend reviewing my lesson plans for the week, and then trying to write up a few more weeks worth. I would ideally like to have all of September planned out, but we'll see if that happens. I'm also trying to rework some things because we now have 4 combo classes, K-1, 1-2, 2-3, and 4-5, and I don't get to separate them. Last year we had a 2-3 and a 4-5, and I just taught the upper grade lesson, but I feel like it's going to be tougher with these younger combo classes. We'll see how it goes!

TIMBER!!!

Have you ever fallen at school? I don't mean trip and stumble a little, I mean a full on nose dive. Well now I can say that I have! Woo hoo!!!

So I'm not teaching yet, I don't start until next week, but I have hours to use for the first week of school. I figured, rather than let them go to waste, I can use them for a good cause, like helping out in the office. And it never hurts to make the school secretaries love you. ;)

Anyways, there I was, being an awesome helper, and I was helping put together all of the parent homework that needs to go home on the first day (free/reduced lunch applications, lunch menu, emergency contact cards, etc.). The secretaries asked if I could deliver these bundles of joy to the teachers rather than just putting them in their mailboxes because then they'd be more inclined to send them home, so I said "Sure!" That was the first mistake...

I got all set up with my library rolly cart (which is a little lower than chest high on me), with my 24 sets of paperwork all ready to tromp around campus and deliver everything. (We have a large, park-like, beautiful outdoor campus. This is very nice except when you have to tromp all over it with a bunch of stuff. Then it's a pain.)

As I was making my way through the campus, I found that my papers were flying all over the place. And the last thing that I wanted to do was loose all my papers and have to remake all my beautiful stacks of 35, so I was doing my best to hold them down with my arms, while still propelling forward. This was the second mistake...

I came upon the first graders as they were lining up to go to their behavior assembly before their first recess, so I waited for them to get going, then was pushing my cart behind them. The teacher had just stopped and was facing backwards towards me (with the class all facing forward looking at her) when my cart caught a bad crack in the sidewalk, and it was obvious to me that I was going down.

I was pressed right up against my cart, and when it started to tip over, there was no bailing. Plus, I would have lost my stacks of papers!!! So I tipped right over with the cart, and landed laying on top of it. The first grade teacher yelled to her class to stop right where they were and came running to help me, but I was fine! I have to say it was one of the more graceful things I've ever done. Granted I had 33 first graders all staring at me like they thought I was going to die, but it was graceful none-the-less.

And the best part....

I managed to save my stacks of papers!!!

Huzzah!!!

Later assessment of the damage shows that I have a bruised shin (from pressing against the cart), a sore neck (from bracing for impact), and a bruised ego (from being gawked at by 6 year olds). Overall, not too bad.

I'm sure that there as a third mistake somewhere in my process, but I can't pinpoint it. I will say that I managed to make the rest of my deliveries without any other incidents. And then I finished labeling my recorders, cleaned up all the trash around my room, and figured out the last few things I need to do before Tuesday. Yay!

First week of school!

Whelp. It's here. We have our first staff meeting tomorrow. Aaaahhh!!!

I'm hopeful that this wont be like normal staff meetings. At an average staff meeting, about 1% of the information is important for the entire staff to know, and the other 99% is about testing strategies and the like. Being a teacher of a subject that isn't tested, (both awesome and frustrating, don't have to teach to the test, but music also isn't given the validity of a tested subject) I don't have any need or desire to go to staff meetings. And... Because I only get paid for my time with the kids, I'm not required to go to staff meetings.

But, I get to go to our pre-school staff meeting. I'm pretty sure that we're actually going to be getting information about important dates, any new policies or procedures (we have a new principal), or class lists. That's right, I said class lists. School starts on Wednesday, and none of the teachers have any idea yet who is going to be in their classes. I can't imagine! I know that I'm seeing everyone, so that's easy, but I can't imagine trying to get ready for a specific set of kids, and have no idea even how many kids are going to be in my class. Oh well, I'm sure their doing fine. I'm just super excited to get started tomorrow and really get things rolling.

I have been doing a lot of prep to get ready for the year. Including moving my classroom all around, but that's definitely not done yet. I put up my first bulletin board, but there's nothing on it yet. I am going to use and abuse my school's die-cutting and laminating machine tomorrow to fix that! It's going to be for my 4th graders to keep track of their Recorder Karate progress. Pictures once I get it all together. But in the mean time, speaking of recorders:

Oh yeah. Those are a bunch of recorders. In my dishwasher. I am awesome!

The 4th graders last year were horrified by the idea that other kids were going to use the same recorders as them. I have enough for each kid to get their own for the year, but I am definitely reusing!!! Rather than trying to clean each of the recorders with alcohol wipes or something, I just ran them all through the dishwasher. I figure it's the same as forks or plates, and I'm hoping the kids don't give me too much hassle about it. If they do, I'll just tell them that they can buy their own darn recorders!

Another project that I put together with the help of my dad is:

Hula Hoops!!!!! I'm going to use them for some "conducting" games where each hoop will represent a different instrument group, rhythm, or maybe even melody. Anyways, I discovered that hula hoops are really expensive! And because I'm not going to be using them for actually hooping, I looked up if I could make my own. It turns out I can! Luckily my dad had some extra irrigation piping laying around, so I just had to buy the connectors and some electrical tape. We cut the pipe, linked it together, cleaned it up, and I put different colored tape around each one. I think they turned out pretty good. They are all about the same size, not perfect, but I'll live with it.

I also printed a bunch of stuff out, and I am planning on laminating it and hanging it all up tomorrow or Tuesday. Really really I'll take pictures to preserve the posterity of my classroom at some point this week! Yay!

Decoding the Star Spangled Banner

Okay, it's getting serious. School is starting in 1 week! Aaaaahhhhhhh!!! I am super not ready, I have so much that I want to do to set up my classroom still. I'm planning on doing some major printing on Saturday, so that will be a lot of what is on my to-do list. Tomorrow I'm going in to make some new bulletin boards. I'll try and post some pictures of them once they're done, but it's my first time making boards so they're definitely not going to be perfect.

In putting together my first few weeks of lesson plans, I realized that my second week of teaching starts with September 11th. I'm pretty sure that most of the classroom teachers will be doing some sort of activity in their class, so I thought it would be good to incorporate it into music class too. I don't have any real desire to broach the subject of what occurred on September 11th (it's pretty heavy for music class) but I thought that we could work on patriotic songs.

I'm going to be doing "Yankee Doodle" with some of the younger grades, having them sing and do some movement, but I'm going more in depth with grades 4 and 5. I find that whenever we sing "The Star Spangled Banner" during the morning announcements, the kids are super disconnected from what they're doing. Granted, that might partially be because they've sung this song approximately 1,000,000 times before, but I also think it's because they have no idea what they're saying! The language of this song is just old-fashioned enough, that the kids don't really understand what they're talking about, and therefore have no context to sing the song appropriately or enthusiastically.

So we're going to change that! We are going to decode the national anthem, and the students are going to write their own translation of the lyrics. Here's the what I typed up for them to use:

It's nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. If I was truly a good elementary music teacher, I would have some sort of adorable clip art and fancy fonts, but alas. The kids will live. :)

Anyways, we're going to sing the song, and then see if anyone know what it's about. I'm going to tell them the story of how the lyrics were written, and then we're going to break it down! The kids will each have their own lyrics sheet, and they'll write their own modern version of the lyrics. I have re-written my own version, which I will share with the kids, and I'm hoping to get some of the students to read their versions to the class as well.

The one thing I'm still debating about with this project, is what to do about the kids working in groups. I think that they will definitely get a deeper understanding of the lyrics if they're able to hash out the details with other students, but I'm worried that they'll all end up writing the same thing as their group members. I know that all of the translations are going to be similar, but I really want them to come up with the words on their own. Maybe I'll have them discuss in groups first, and then hand out the papers and have them write on their own. Yeah... That's what I'll do!

Tomorrow will be an adventure, I'm doing my bulletin boards (including Recorder Karate tracking, music class rewards chart, and composer of the month), then all of the music teachers in my district are getting together for a "meeting" aka a party where we complain about all of the time sheet madness coming up for the school year. Then Disneyland on Thursday. OMG! Yay! Piano Teacher conference on Friday, and then it's all down hill school year from there! :)

Back to School Shopping!

Oh how I love back to school shopping!

When I was in school (as a student), I used to very carefully choose all of my supplies, and then spend the 2 or 3 days before school started packing and re-packing my backpack. I had to make sure that all of my pens were lined up just right, that my highlighters were in rainbow order, and that my binder was sufficiently decorated. I definitely did not keep it so organized throughout the year, but by god, on the first day of school everything was perfect!

Maybe that's why I decided to go into teaching, so I could keep having a first day of school every year for the rest of my life!

I have been doing some hardcore back to school shopping, and I am loving it! I really need to get a folder to keep track of all of my receipts in so I can claim this all on my taxes. It's like I'm getting all of this stuff for free! Right? Well that's how I'm justifying it!

One thing that I'm really excited for is this:

 

Woot! Easel! The other side is a white board, and there is a bar at the bottom where I can keep a roll of paper that I can drape over the top if I need to. And it's from Ikea! So it was only $15 dollars!!!

Compare that to this:

From Lakeshore (a super favorite of mine) which is $129!!!!! WHAT?!?!?!?! And they have easels that range up to $269!!! DOUBLE WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

If there's anything I love better then getting awesome school supplies, it's getting awesome school supplies on the cheap!

I have actually been eying this easel for quite some time, but Ikea doesn't sell it on their website, and last time I looked for it in my nearby store, they told me that they weren't producing it anymore. I basically cried. :'( So when I went to Ikea to show it off to my Wyoming in-laws, and I saw this easel again, I think I peed myself jumped with excitement! It was immediately mine!!!!

And I found another item from Ikea that I want to get for my classroom:

 
The Expedit series of shelves. I have some serious storage issues in my class, and I really need a better system to store all of my instruments. This would be perfect, especially with a whole set of these:

 
The Lekman box! It's a little bigger than a cubic foot, and it fits right into each of those little cubbies. I could fit a whole boat load of maracas, or rhythm sticks, or guiros, or whatever in there! And then I could make cute labels ala Mrs. Dennis

 
Of course it wouldn't be in gorgeous wooden cabinets, but it's a lot better than what I have going on right now, which is not a lot. The teacher that I took over for was not a music teacher, but rather a theatre teacher. She spent all of her time putting on mini-musicals with the kids, which I think is really cool, but they didn't learn any music! And she did not treat all of the instruments with any respect at all! A lot of them were just dumped into baskets and cupboards, and most of them are a little worse for the wear. My favorite story (or least favorite) is when I went to set out the Orff xylophones on the first day of school. They were looking a little dusty, so I started taking off the keys to get it all out of there. When I opened them up, I found a bunch of old stale popcorn laying in the bottom of the majority of them!!! Apparently when she ran out of musicals to teach them, she used to have movie and popcorn parties (the classroom teachers tell me this used to happen at least once a month). And because she didn't respect the instruments, the kids had no need to respect them either. Oy. The kids were very cranky with me last year when I informed them that there would not be movies or popcorn in music. Fighting an uphill battle there.

Anyways, I'm really ramped up for this year. I'm getting back into my classroom tomorrow, and I am so ready! I'm really going to try to go through all of the mystery cupboards and get rid of all of the junk that is left over. Including the huge collection of records and the record player taking up space. Or maybe I'll keep that. I don't know. What I really need is unlimited space to keep all the junk just in case I ever want to use it. :)

And... I think I've figured out what I'm going to use as far as a lesson planner/schedule organizer. Something I've cobbled together, but I think it'll work well. I'll post it once I've got it put together, probably next week. 

Planner Wars

Oh Mike Holmes... I want you to come to my house and re-do everything. That would make my life so happy!!!

And now for something completely different, a girl with 3 planners!

I am constantly looking for a better way to organize my lesson plans and keep track of each class from week to week. The big problem that I run in to is that there are all of these fabulous and cute teacher planners, but they are for regular classroom teachers. I really want to be able to come up with a way to adapt these to use for my class, but I haven't figured out the perfect solution yet.

I have a planner that I got from Lakeshore a few years ago that looks like this:

 

But it has 7 spaces across instead of 6.

And I wanted to make it look like this:
via: http://wisewittyteacher.blogspot.com

SSSSOOOOOOO PRETTY!!!!

So anyways, the grand idea was that I would have 1 color sticky note for each grade level (eg. Kinder=blue, 1st=purple, 2nd=pink etc.) (Another note, I would probably want to be super crazy and ROYGBIV the grade levels. That would make me feel better then it being random) And then line them up in the order that I have them on each day. I never have more than seven classes in a day, so it would fit perfectly. That way I would be able to write down what we're doing each week, and keep notes on each classes' progress with the activities to make sure that I keep everyone on track. It's really hard to remember which class it was that was acting rowdy so I wasn't able to make it through the lesson, and which class was full on angels last week so they got an extra activity.

I thought it was brilliant! I decorated the monthly section of my planner with the year's holidays! I was looking for millions of mini sticky notes! But then I thought...

"Am I really going to have the dedication and patience to put 24 sticky notes out in order each week, and update the class status during every lesson?"

And the answer is......

Drum roll please..................

No. :(

I know for a fact that on Tuesdays, when I teach 5th-5th-4th-4th-5th(25 minute lunch)3rd-2nd, I am not going to have the wherewithal to write anything down in the 0 minutes I have between classes. And by the end of the day I can't remember where I left my laptop charger, none the less what each class did! I need a better plan! So I stole my friend Amber's planning idea:





So I basically have my lesson plan typed out, with any music that I need (if it's from online) and then the teacher's names at the bottom. This obviously doesn't have all of my teaching methods on it, but it gives me a general idea of where we're going with the lesson. Then next to the teacher's names, I can quickly jot down any important notes about each class, and I'll know how to proceed for the next week.

While this is very functional, and is a lot more organized then I was last year, I want more from my system. First of all, I don't want to have to print out 6 pages each week (I like the sticky notes because they're very compact). Secondly, if I do print out each of these sets of lesson plans each week, how am I going to store them? I could put them into a 3 ring binder, but that would get a little crazy by the end of the year, unless I took out all my old lesson plans and replaced them, but I like the idea of having a whole year of ideas stored in one book. And lastly and probably most importantly, it's not cute looking! I really love the cutesy aspect of teaching at an elementary school, and it makes me sad that I don't get to do all of the cute art projects, so I'm trying to bring more cute stuff into my classroom. Including in my personal planner!

I'm probably going to stick with the boring printed lesson plan system for the first few weeks of school, but I think I'm going to try and customize a planner for myself. I know there are some websites out there where you can print your own planning pages, so I might have to do that, and build myself a binder that incorporates all the elements I want. If I manage to put something good together, I'll definitely post it up on here. I'm also hoping this week to make it part-way through my planning for the 3rd week of school. I have everything done for the 2nd week besides Kinder! Woot! Props for me. :)