Holy Guacamole!

Wow!

After day 2 of teacher in-service, I am so amazed at how well the school district wastes our time! We have a new appraisal and development system (created by the district) and they sent our principal an 8 hour presentation for us to watch! 8 freaking hours! When we need to be creating lesson plans, and preparing our rooms, and creating pre-tests so that we can live up to this new appraisal system, they are having us sit through a presentation that we already worked through twice last year! Luckily, our principal is AWESOME and worked with us to cut the presentation short and only hit the parts that were absolutely necessary! It was still sooooooooo dull.

I am really stressed out, and really want to be working on preparing things for my class. I hope that we actually get classroom time tomorrow. By the time I get home, I am too tired to work. And I am just watching my time float away...

Les Cauchemars

Hello all!

As school is fast approaching, I have been experiencing a phenomenon that I think many other teachers experience as well - back to school nightmares! At least every other night, sometimes every night, I have a horrible dream about back to school. Though others might laugh at the fact that being in a room with uncontrollable students or forgetting to make copies could be a nightmare, this is a very real problem for many of us, especially at this time of year.

Teacher in service starts tomorrow for me. I had TLAC (Teach Like a Champion) training to be a teacher leader last week. Thank god my room is ready, but I still need to plan. And ahhh.. I'm just starting to kind of freak out. Last night my dream included me getting fired because I had created something that broke copyright laws and I was being arrested or sued or something. My principal was disappointed in me; it was awful.

My most frequent is one where I haven't made the copies that I need for the day. I also often have one where I have like 250 students and I am trying to get them to quiet down, but they are too loud, and I can't get loud enough for them to hear me. Then I lose my voice. I really hate that one.

My department head mentioned last week that she had been having nightmares as well. What about you? Do you have nightmares about back to school? Please share!

Holy Cow!

Hello!

Sorry it has been so long since I posted. I have been busy and exhausted!

Friday I was delegated the task of running a meeting with all of our new staff (I am the only one who is not new) since our actual Department Chair isn't teaching anymore, she has a whole other job. It was great to meet the new people, and we are going to have an amazing team this year! I am excited!

I didn't get much done myself on Friday. But I do have the pictures of my completed room! (mostly)

 

This will have a how to on the Ideas page - its a great way to make sure students know the basic directions when working on an activity!

Cool owl shaped chalk board from the Dollar Spot at Target!

 _________________________________________________________________________________

So there you have it! Tell me what you think! I am having some formatting issues, so if you have any questions and don't find more detail on the Ideas or Freebies page, just ask!

Saturday we went to go see a house that my mom is interested in buying to open up a B & B, and we stopped at an antique store on our way out of town. Keep a look out for info from me on that if it goes through! And here are some cool plates I found at the antique store. I am unsure what they are, but they were neat, French, and cheap so I got them! Let me know if you are familiar with them! My husband looked it up and thinks they are from the 30's (if they are legit and such, hehe). I sure do like 'em though!

February

Jume

September

November

To those of you getting back to school soon, good luck! Please share ideas and stay chill! I have training on Thursday and Friday. Then next week we start back with teacher in service days! Then kids come on the 27th! Whew! Its coming fast!

Now that my room is organized, I will be putting up more management and lesson ideas and "how to's"  - if I can find time! I hope to post as regularly as possible! At least once a week once school starts.

Wouldn't That be Harassment?

Salut!

Ok, so today = more decorating. I got the sides of the room decorated yesterday, and today I did the front and back. I also had the guy in to put up the mount for my Smartboard! Yayah! Now all I have to do is figure out which one is mine so he can hang it, which he said would take 5 - 10 minutes! Wow. But, I called the technology persons cell yesterday and it was off so I left a message and it was the same today. So I went to bug the secretary, who has everyone's summer contact info. She first read off the number I already had. I told her I already had that one, so she asked if I wanted the home phone. I said: "Wouldn't that be harassment??" "Nah..." is what she said, so I called it. No answer - guess they are on vacation. Boo. But really it doesn't matter. Anyways, here are the pictures from today. I pulled down my projector screen to play the part of "Smartboard" in today's shoot.

My back bulletin board, which you can now actually see!

My new favorite thing! Velcro sticky things. These are great to use for boards you might change often (no staple holes!) and for standardized testing - you won't have to cover everything up! Just pull the posters off and re-velcro them once testing is over! 

Here is a great example of how to use the velcro stickies for something you might change often - Interactive Boards. I have two spaces - one for 7th grade and one for 8th grade. The white dots are one part of velcro. I can interchange challenge questions without messing with staples and they will stay reusable for longer!

I had never bought these before but I LOVE having punch out letters. My handwriting is awful, and printing everything out is tedious. It makes things look so put together!

My student work board. Chouette means "owl" and also it means "GREAT!" or "AWESOME!" I use these as incentives. I will do a whole blog on this before school starts, promise!

These I am gonna re-do because you cant see them well, but they are different basic instructions you can place for activities. The first checked one is "Turn it in" - versus "Take it home" - kids won't have to ask these simple questions because the answers are up there! 

The big bright posters are my question words. I keep them in the front of the room, that way when I am asking students questions they know what I am asking - This is a technique used by TPRS. Its ok for them to have to look up to remember the question words. 

What to do if you are done early!

Front of the room from my desk

This was the list I made last night of everything I need to do... I got 4 things done. AH!!! 

Miraculously, I got home and actually cooked a really home cooked from scratch meal: homemade chicken nuggets! I even made the bread crumbs! Grating stale, baked bread was the highlight of my day. Delicious!

So, the agenda for tomorrow is to clean up and organize my room . I think I will be able to work better with everything put away, now that my walls have been decorated. There will probably be more stuff that goes up as I go, but for now, I am done with my big decor projects. Whew!

Finally some progress

Whew!

I worked really hard today and actually got some stuff done! Yay! I got all the junk out of my classroom, so now the only things in there are things that I want in there. And I got started on decor! (that's the fun part!)

Last night I went to bed worrying about my seating arrangements: would the kids be able to enter and exit the rows easily? would I be able to get to every desk?

That was the first thing I checked today, and yes! As long as the student isn't sitting very far from their desk, we will be able to move around with ease! Woohoo! I am so pleased and relieved to not have to figure something else out.

So, here is what I have done so far:

** Note: I linked several things that I mentioned so you could check them out! **

I put "Bordette" on the cork top part of my white boards

I bought fabric from Hobby Lobby to cover the table and then used removable colored tape to hold it down. I am getting my Smartboard mounted in the place of that screen soon!

Pretty table

First bulletin board - fabric (again from Hobby Lobby) and "Bordette"

Cute "chouettes" that I bought

Word Wall - Le Mur de Mots: this works great for any class! I can put relevant vocabulary, or random fun words, anything I want! 

These are the things I used to make my Objectives board. I'm lucky that I have a Smarboard because that just makes my white boards extra space! magnetic tape is AWESOME, removable tape, colors paper strips and scissors to cut all of this stuff.  - You can buy all of this at Teacher Heaven! It really is heaven in there (and you can shop online)

Tada! - One section for each grade I teach ! (and yes, thats 3 separate preps... )

Section title, Objectices, Agenda (l'ordre du jour), Homework ( les devoirs)

My favorite part! Got some great vintage poster prints off Amazon.com! This one is my favorite. It is bordered by this great "frame" border I bought at Teacher Heaven. 

Cool border!

Final product of my 3 fabulous posters! You like?

Don't you LOVE the spots on my wall? They were supposed to paint, but they didn't - of course! 

Ah.... So that, on top of chatting with the new teacher next door, moving materials to another hallway, and eating lunch is what I got done today. More to come tomorrow! Man am I exhausted though! I will give you one tip though - if you look at a picture that has desks in it, you can see that I have stuff spread out everywhere. Having things in piles and boxes is overwhelming. I took all of my decor and spread it out among the desks so that I could see what all I had and get to everything easier. I did the same with my "storage supplies which I will be dealing with tomorrow on top of more decorating!

Floor Wax

BONJOUR MES AMIS!

First, a funny thing I found on Pintrest!(if you don't use it - you should!) My husband thinks I have a weird since of humor since I laugh out loud at the simplest things, but I am seriously considering putting this in my classroom!

Well, I got back to my classroom today! But man does floor wax stink! They had just finished the upstairs (where my room is) when I showed up. Unfortunately (kinda) it was wet, so I had to leave and go to Hobby Lobby to shop (so sad) and then go back!

My room wasn't that bad, and I have a LOVELY husband who helped me drag stuff from the car to my room (hellacious in Texas heat) and get the furniture moved around. I forgot to take a pre-moving furniture picture, but here is what it looks like with bare walls and the old Spanish teachers stuff hogging my counter space. Luckily, tomorrow I will be able to get the stuff moved to the new Spanish teacher's room so that I only have my mounds of crap to deal with!

view from my door. (don't you love the boxes piled up back there?) 

not totally sure about the desk set up yet. What do you think?

this is where my smartboard will end up. 

sad empty bulletin board

cabinet that I am afraid to open! too much stuff in there!

My desk area... kinda... such a mess right now!

I am HOPING that this transformation will go as my brain is imagining it (which rarely happens) and I can show you what an awesome room decorator I am and show you all my ideas and such as I go along this week and next (may or may not take that long). It will also be interesting to see how long it takes me to get all of this ready. Am I starting too soon? Or too late? Dun Dun DUNNN!!! On verra...