Beginning of school!!!!

Wow! We have been super duper busy these past two days! I always forget how much first graders need at the beginning of the year! It's such a huge transition. The biggest change is "no rest time"! Every year I have students ask, "Mrs. Ruff, when are we having rest time?". They all have the glazed-over eyes in the afternoon.
I love whole-brain teaching, so it's so much fun teaching the class rules and the scoreboard. This year, I decided to use the "David Goes to School" book to introduce school rules. Then, we made a "David" and attached our rules to it. Of course, I got this idea off of Pinterest! Here's how they looked! They crack me up!

After photos!

Here are some photos of the classroom after painting, arranging, and decorating! The first photo is a door that I used for my whole-brain teaching "super improvers" wall. Of course this came from Pinterest! Tara West gets the credit for creating these. They are on the Teachers Pay Teachers site - a freebie! I can't wait to see how they work this year! To the right is my birthday wall. My main theme is "Clifford".

More "after" photos

This is my listening center area. I use the large pocket chart to hold the leveled readers that are on CD. I attached it to the side of my ugly filing cabinet with heavy-duty magnet hooks. This is the first time I've tried it like this. I hope it works!

This is my new library! I bought the two shelves and red bins from Target. Each bin is labeled with AR levels. I arranged my shelves to form a sectioned off library. My classroom is very tiny, so it's difficult to work this in. I made the curtains over the weekend. They match the crate seats that I made for my reading table.

Here is a close-up of the red book bins, the reading table, and crate seats. There are lots of crate seats on Pinterest.

My desk is super ugly and bulky. I decided to cover it with my students Clifford name tags and use it for my leader board. To the right is my behavior board. I purchased this vinyl hanger from Dollar Tree. The students will decorate a wooden character to represent themselves on the first day. I get these from Hobby Lobby. Everyone's stick character will go into the bottom "green" area. Girls go on one side and boys will go on the other.
There is also a yellow and red area. If a student gets to the red area because of misbehavior, the student's parents will be contacted and depending on the severity, the student might be sent to the office. If a student is moved to yellow, he/she will lose recess time. This worked out very well last year, so I'm using it again.

This is my Clifford calendar wall. My word wall is going to be below my dry erase board this year. I saw this on Pinterest too. Hopefully, this will work out!

This is where the kids will hang their coats and backpacks. Each paw print has the student's name on it. My picture is not very good!

This is my computer area. Above is my whole brain teaching rules. I got these off of Pinterest, too. They were freebies. I can't find the name of the person who created them. All I could find was "a Teacher on a mission".

Here's the front wall.

This is where I store all of my leveled readers.

My first post!!!!

This is my first blog post! I am so blessed to have my entire family at my house tonight! My daughter, Emily, who lives in Tennessee, is trying to help me figure out this "blog" thing. I'm so excited! I've been working in my classroom a lot this summer. I painted my walls with the help of the 2nd grade teacher's son, (thanks, Austin!) and my carpet has finally been cleaned! It's just about ready to go! I have "before" pictures. I'll get the "after" pictures posted tomorrow. I've copied so many ideas from Pinterest and other great teachers. (I'm totally addicted). God is so good!