Chapter 6+ My New Room!

This weeks hostesses are:

Looking in from a door at the south east corer

looking from the north east corner

It was an amazing week for me! I finally got to see my room. I am in a portable building, That’s great for me I love not having the distraction of the hallway. I was right next to the office last year and I had visitors and interruptions all the time.  Previous to that I was in a portable and loved it.  Seeing my room was like going to Disney World I was so excited to see where I am going to spend my next school year with my students! I can see it is going to be challenging place. There is no water, sink, drink, and toilet. There is no continues awning from building to portables, there are tons of steps, steps up to the building steps down to playground.  The portable itself is smaller than the other two classrooms I have had, but I can deal with that. I am going to have to be really selective on what and who things are put away. Storage is going to be an issue as well. I was told starting 8/1 teachers can come and work in their rooms and I cannot waste any time. I have to get in there roll up my sleeves and get started. I have had the D5 centers on my mind so I am going to talk about all three…

Classroom Storage

One of the reasons I started off with my new classroom is how concerned I am about having a listening center.(I know last week’s chapter right) I am hoping I will get listening center items checked out to me as there was not one listening center activity or piece of equipment in the classroom.  I am not going to have tons of money to sink into my classroom as my former district was on a year round schedule and my last pay check and first pay check is two months apart.. However, if there is no listening center things to be had it is an opportunity for me to seek out new and innovative listening center items for the students.  One of the problems I had in kindergarten was that books were never long enough for me to get through the guided reading rotations we were doing and the kids would need something else to do. With older children they can listen to chapter books, hopefully we won’t have the same problem. I also reread Diller’s Spaces and Places this summer and she had a box of things she called the “instead” box. If technology is not functioning, if you are done early do something from the instead box! That would have solved my problems in kindergarten.  

This week’s chapters were work on writing and word work. I like that the writing center is suppose to foster a love for writing I think all too often we expect children to love out lessons and our lessons should foster a love for something… I think the human brain loves to be creative; stifling this need to create makes things less enjoyable. I know it works that way for me now. For example, at my last school we had very little freedom in anything even our bulletin boards were cookie cutter! I never looked forward to putting together bulletin boards, lesson plans, and other forced or coerced activities thrust upon me in a dictated way. I know children feel the same way.  

Word work is going to be more challenging. I really need to dig into the reading curriculum at the school to wrap my head around what we are going to be doing. I know I can come up with games and other word projects that are appropriate to what we are learning even if I have to spend some money (I don’t have) for my word work center. Some of my kindergarten things will likely still work like my spill and spell game I found at a thrift store. I have an up words game also found at a thrift store. I guess this will be a wait till 8/1 and see when I start arranging my room and start the fun task of unloading all my school stuff in my tiny room with no storage J think positive thoughts Gebhart, you got this!