5 Days of Classroom Set Up!

hello there I'm here in my classroom this is the second day that I've come I got things a little bit organised last time only a little bit organized just kind of like the tables and I'm going through things and getting rid of a lot and really just thinking about what I want to do on the first couple days of school I was looking on teachers connect and my friend Brandon had posted about just the things that different teachers do on the first day and there were a bunch of really creative responses and it's teachers of like all different grades you know so they they kind of do different things but someone had their kids make like a t-shirt that represented them and just fun ideas like that so I'm gonna start thinking a little bit more about that today and kind of writing some things down in my planner I brought a bunch of stuff with me today that I need to unpack I guess these are all things left besides this this is all stuff from the ubii party that I went to yesterday I've got a bunch of fun supplies these are think some things from Staples and then this is more from UB look at all this fun stuff I'm so excited to start messing with this here's my stuff in staples I just got a little magazine rack for my desk these are two trays that I'm actually I'm gonna put these over there for my two different classes I'll just kind of put like extra worksheets and stuff in here for people that were absent I actually just needed some hangers because I have a little space in my closet over there where I can hang up my purse and my coat and stuff and then I just got some washi tape because I tend to use this on my whiteboards and I'll just delineate like different sections of the whiteboard or whatever I need to write up there I don't know if I'm really gonna do it over there as much this is just kind of the empty space where I can just write anything I need so I got those and then I saw these and I just thought they were so cute these are rulers these are the two sides I thought this went with my classroom pretty well so a lot of this stuff and this stuff is just like prize box things so I'm going to go through that as well and then I need to go through everything over here this is all the stuff that I got out yesterday first time back in my classroom I just went to the office to get my keys and I was like just kind of feels like I was gone for like a long weekend and now we're back that seemed real quick but it's okay this is the fun part although I see that they moved a lot of my things things are not really the way I've left them but goodness yeah okay let me tell you the thing I'm most excited about though if you have seen my other classroom vlogs you will know that right there used to be like this hideous metal arm thing sticking out of the wall and it has been removed at my request so I'm very excited this is like prime real estate you know for the wall I got all kinds of stuff up there so alrighty see where the chair the chairs are right here okay everything is kind of in a different spot than it was before but let's get to work man let's get to work let me just show you real quick how well Walmart book shelves hold up so here's a shelf it is just completely falling apart I think I'm gonna have to throw this thing away I had to take all these books off of this bookshelf so I could move it I need to rearrange this bookshelf I have a lot of things in like binders that are now on like Google classroom and stuff you know so I don't really need so much paper I don't think it's looking over here and all this stuff I actually have way more to do than I was thinking and then I just realized that they um raised all of our boards so that people in the back will be able to see better so that's good but yeah I just have so much to do this is like now I'm starting to get overwhelmed first day back and I'm already getting food from the Thai place across the street got some drunken noodle I haven't gotten very much work done but um time for a lunch break okay I'm gonna get kicked out soon and I haven't really done a lot what was I just doing okay I need to find scissors to figure out what's in here oh wow these are my cupboards okay and then you know what else I was thinking I have all these sixth grade ela standards which are pretty close to the 8th grade ela standards but um I'm not teaching 6th grade ela any more so I should probably update those I'm just looking for some scissors where would scissors be what what did I do with them I don't know I don't know I need to move this I just was thinking I would put this up I don't really know where to put it and I could do like headphones and chargers and stuff in here okay I'm gonna move my little like document camera station and stuff because I kind of like it just being one giant teacher desk rather than being like in between me and my students so let's see how this goes I really need to like dust everything but my main question right now is where is my laptop that used to be on that thing I need to find like my scissors and staplers and stuff I know I put them somewhere safe and now I can't remember where that was but I want to put up my light pay attention with your face and everything so uh I am just not in like worker mode can take a while to transition over that's why I came Monday you know what let's do something else for a minute here real quick let's look at some of the things that I brought in in my bag Oh for one I almost forgot about this this is my wireless doorbell let's hook this up in just a second these are oh yeah table card holder things I haven't open those I need scissors in order to do it oh yeah this is a book that I got um just for my classroom library called front desk by Kelly yang I saw it a lot on instagram haven't read yet but it looked good okay this is my last year's planner that I like to refer to so I just wanted to have it here in my classroom this one is by purple trail planners this is the planner I'm using this year by for the love of Pi so I'm just gonna have both of these nearby I need to start getting first day of school stuff ready to go okay and this is my third planner that I'm gonna make a separate video about but this is my plan book for social justice teachers and I'll talk more about it when I do everything all together with this one but I'm also gonna keep this one you know what I need like more shelves these are just two really cool books that I got at a fair trade store the food chain Avengers and I thought maybe I could work this into some kind of a unit I haven't read all the way through these yet there but definitely something I just wanted to bring into my room found it I put everything in this bag and then I put it in the cupboard found my laptop also I was the one that one that put that away I just keep forgetting I just keep checking everything out okay well I didn't get a ton accomplished to be perfectly honest um but it was nice just to kind of like get back into the swing of things really the issue is that I'm just not a good worker anymore I've just gotten lazy been on summer break and I'm not used to doing any labor so what did what did I get done I laid out all this stuff for my cupboards because like if I can't find a place for it a good place for it then I don't need to have it I did move a little bookshelf over here for myself this is kind of my station I put up my pay attention with your face because it just doesn't feel like my classroom without that oh here's my doorbell so I can push this get everybody's attention here's my timer also so I thought I put these things over here this is all stuff that I'm getting rid of I don't want all this like plastic storage anymore because it just causes me to hoard it's really not easy to find things in here anyway just you know stuff gets lost in there put my headphones and chargers I don't have one charger because they all got stolen because I didn't have anything like this last year I need to go through all these supply boxes and kind of refresh them and I'm gonna read you these guys I was just saying on Instagram though I just found this book and I remember really liking it and feeling like it helped me to understand my students with autism and ADHD and dyslexia and those kind of neurological differences and it's just so well written so well researched really helped me to become a better teacher so I recommend that found all kinds of old stuff I guess I just brought this to my classroom from eighth grade doing my brother Sam is dead okay they're about to kick me out I'm gonna go to Michael's these are all of the common core standards for like history and social studies and science and all that I mean you can just look these up online as well but it's nice to have this is what I used to do this was like my first year teaching I printed out all of the standards and then I would just put these up on the board each day like depending on which standard we were doing all so cute that I did that I think each chapter was like a different color I spent so much time on these but hey I don't teach us history right now and I guess this isn't all that useful anymore this was like my pacing guide I guess oh I should do this again actually I kind of like this kind of a pacing guide that I typed up just like the different weeks of school and like the different topics this is especially helpful for history a little bit harder for English although I don't know okay so I'm gonna keep this to look at this is another really great book that I found I've been just so many awesome trainings I'm realizing as I like look back through all the stuff that I have I feel like this is kind of only helpful for u.s. history but I do like this planning your essay thing I think I'm gonna keep this and maybe use this for English when we do crossover stuff with history you okay I'm really tired now I'm not like a very efficient worker you'd kind of think that I would be but I'm not like I've kind of taken care of of some of these piles found another box and unpacked that everywhere still got more stuff to go through it's not that I've really been like setting up for students I've just been getting rid of junk that is cluttering up my life in my space so I still have a ton of work to do for my kids but while I'm taking a break let's talk about some of the things that I'm planning for the beginning of the year so we start on a Thursday and I think it's like a short day and we have seven period days so I'm not gonna get much time with every class so what I did last year is I just pushed all of my tables to the side I started with community circle and everybody came in and they were just allowed to sit wherever they wanted which was kind of weird for them like it you know sort of threw them off and I just got to know them a little bit we just went around and said our names and answered some questions about our lives and that was kind of fun so I think I'll do that again this year and then Friday I think we have a little bit longer and usually on that day I will go over the syllabus just because on the syllabus it has like the list of things that I need for them to have and I'm not picky about what supplies that they have I just want them to have a binder or a folder of some sort that they can keep supplies in I want them to have paper in some form when they come to class and writing utensils of some kind so I don't have anything specific that they need to buy it can be left over from last year I just I don't care I just want them to have things that will keep them organized in whatever way that is for them especially since I'll have so many eighth graders this year so you know some classes they need to go by really specific things but I'm not too worried about that but I have a feeling that a lot of parents like that first weekend after the Thursday and Friday are gonna go look for school supplies so they'd probably appreciate having that list or just at least knowing from every teacher what kind of stuff they're gonna need so I don't want to like withhold that information from them any longer than one day and we'll talk about behavior expectations and what they're gonna be doing in this class this year and how to find information and how I grade things and stuff so it's not the most exciting day but those are things that I think like kids have anxiety about until they know so I think they they want to find out that information as soon as possible and what I also usually do over the weekend is give them a syllabus scavenger hunt and that's their first homework assignment and so they have their syllabus they have their scavenger hunt and I have both the parents and the students sign it and say that they have found the answers to all of the questions like what if I'm absent what do I do how much is late work worth what is mrs. Forbes email address just things like that common questions that tend to come up and then I keep that signed syllabus scavenger hunt throughout the school year in case any parent or kid says that they didn't know something because I have them write it out like in their own handwriting so it's not even like a multiple-choice answer thing they they'll physically write it out so that's usually my first homework assignment and then when they come back for the first full week I'll do a lot of team building things this year I really want to focus on identity and kind of intersectional identities and so on the facing history website there's something called an identity map it's very easy I'm just gonna give them a blank piece of paper and they write their name in the center and before we get started we'll make kind of an example identity map and just write down topic so what are things that contribute to someone's identity maybe their gender or their race or their talents or where they are in their family their age their all kinds of things like that so this will set a good foundation for my history students who are sixth graders and then for my eighth grade students who will be taking my English class and the first unit that we do is called something like culture and belonging I think and it has a lot to do with identity so it's gonna be a good foundation for both of those classes I also like to spend the first week or two getting them set up on different websites that will be using frequently like vocabulary and newsela common lit I think I'm gonna use brain pop quite a bit this year so just anything like that where they're going to need to have that login like saved in their computer I try to do like one maybe two of those sites per day and kind of let them get familiar with it if they haven't used it before so that's something that we'll do throughout the week yeah so Oh another thing that I do is if students bring back their signed and completed syllabus scavenger hunt on that first Monday back then they get a raffle ticket to win prizes and I have a bunch of prizes and I think I'll do like a hoot or something that goes over the syllabus just because I don't want to just spend one day on it when there's so much information there that they're going to need but I don't wanna like keep harping on it either I want them to kind of take some ownership over it so yeah well I think I'm gonna continue to organize my room a little bit it's still pretty much a disaster there's only my seventh year teaching but I already have accumulated so much stuff and I really I don't I don't need a lot of it so I'm gonna continue to work on that hmm maybe go get some coffee and continue working on my syllabus because I am tired need some caffeine hello I hadn't planned on coming back today but I did there was like parents in here like move stuff around and I wanted to come see how about all worked out so what I'm focusing on today is my cupboard right behind my desk so my desk is right there and then this is all like really really useful space and I had this so poorly organized the last two years so really what I'm doing like this summer is just organizing things for myself so that my space is more functional like this was just not functional at all and it would be nice to just be able to turn around and have things that I need right here like at arm's length so I'm gonna work on this cupboard space a little bit today and then I still have quite a few things just like laid out right here like I just wanted everything out of the cupboards over here that's all stuff that I'm getting rid of I'm just gonna get rid of all that storage stuff cuz I don't need it and it just encourages me to hoard and then I've been organizing this closet a little bit too and they're still you know stuff in there probably don't really need but at least I can see it better now and it's kind of more organized still working on my little area over here too because this is my document camera and I just put a piece of scrapbook paper over it so that it wasn't so ugly it's kind of ugly before and I just want to be able to like grab things from right here like a text book or whatever to have like one copy for myself and be able to put things right there so I'm going to store some things for myself here I've got some posters to deal with oh and let me show you how this turned out haven't totally figured out what I'm gonna do on this door yet but I really really love this poster so I put that one up and then I have a Turtles all the way down and then some things that Jensen made so I know this isn't like Pinterest cute but I just like all these things so I wanted them behind me alright so I'm gonna keep working on this space right here and see what I can get done today I'll just show you these guys that I got here last year I have these everywhere and I bought quite a few because I was thinking there could be a time when I need extra so they're pretty easy to put together they just come flat and then you assemble them like this there we go I'm just a little magazine rack and then it's got like a little label that you can put on these just help me keep things kind of separated and organized so I love having just like cheap magazine racks for paper storage so that things are kind of facing up and I can see them a little bit better okay I'm still far from done but I got this table cleared off pretty well I'm gonna work on boxes tomorrow I want to do something with these put them up somewhere and then I also found these maps that I had cut out from a magazine or a calendar a calendar like my first year of teaching and I laminated them and cut them out and they're really pretty something I might do something with these two and these trays from Staples are like my favorite thing but they're gonna go over there on that hideous table which I have these are my table cloths is this so extra I'm thinking about bringing my iron and ironing them because they're so creased I have one more coming I have a purple one coming I might even do table cloths right here I usually do one right here so I know I'm just getting ridiculous at this point but it's coming together it's feeling more organized I'm gonna go get some work done at home I did a lot last night with my like Google classroom and I made Google Sites for each of my courses so I'll have to go over that also but I don't have internet here so we'll do it later but yes all the little things starting to come together I usually do the little things before the big things but it's fine we'll be fine I need boba let's go get boba hi guys it's been quite a few days since I checked in I worked on my room go a little bit last week and then they were like using it for different things and I couldn't really come in and we had a training yesterday I had five meetings back to back today like grade level meetings team meetings department meetings just all kinds of stuff and our regular you know just teacher meeting for back to school I've got this afternoon and then tomorrow I have a couple more meetings but I will have some of the day to work on my room they're also doing a bit of an orientation in my classroom they had used it for registration so the days leading up to back-to-school are always really full and just take a lot of like compromise and just like figuring out times to do things so really it doesn't make sense that I'm sitting here doing nametags for every single one of my students but I do type out a name tag for every single student and for me it's just kind of fun because even just like the process of typing them out this is just like a name tag product that I got on Teachers Pay Teachers just kind of cute so for each period there's like a different graphic on it so this kind of helps me just in my mind like get used to names and get used to who is in which class looks like I have about 210 students this year I have six different class periods so I've printed all of them already and then I just send them through the laminator and there are two name tags on on each page and then I cut them out I don't want to show them the other way because they're our first and last names on here but they just look like this and I have little stands that I'll have on the desks and students will just put them in there and then I just like for them to put it out on their desk at the beginning of the year for I don't know like the first two weeks so that I can start to memorize their names and then they can keep them or do whatever they want with them but usually they kind of like them because they're kind of cute and you know it's just a fun thing to have so even though it's a lot of work and I like laminate them all and cut them all out I feel like it also kind of shows them right at the beginning of the year like I care about who you are I care about making things nice for you I want to give you something right away some of them decide to go by a different name like a nickname or something and so if it's something where they'd like me to make them a new name tag I will just go ahead and do that because it's not everybody but they can put a sticky note on it and give it back to me with the name that they would prefer and I'll make them a new one so I don't really mind this process like just you know the laminating and the cutting it does take about an hour per class set of nametags but really I just sit here and watch Call the Midwife that's the show that I'm on right now last year I think I watched crazy ex-girlfriend that show is so funny and West Covina is right down the street whoo one more period done let me grab another stack all right this is the watermelon class I guess the thing for me is that I go to the sixth grade meetings the eighth grade meetings the history meetings the English meetings I'm on the like leader and me lighthouse team those meetings I'm a coach so any of the sports meetings we're gonna have coming up so there's just always like a lot to figure out at the beginning of the year for me I need to like hook up my Chromebook to the projector so a few tech things that that I need to do and like truly if it doesn't get done a student will be able to figure it out like we'll be fine we're good so anyway oh my battery's dying so I will charge my camera and see you later right now I'm working on a bulletin board for the hallway we're doing the seven Habits from leader in me which I have over here but I'm trying to make something look cooler and kind of like be in our school colors so I'm using this border that I just already had I save all my borders in this box so I use this on the bulletin board and then I just have these colors that kind of correspond and I'm gonna print out big letters on these pieces of paper so I'm going to go through this right now and figure out how to do that so here are all the colors they match pretty well with the border I'm just gonna print big giant letters out and I'm getting these ready to put in my printer in the order that I want them so oh then I gotta cut them all out it's gonna take a little while okay let me show you the next step in how I do this I have a huge bulletin board to cover so I need some pretty big letters and it actually needs to say seven Habits of Highly Effective Spartans so we've got a lot of letters so I love to use lucidpress it's just like an online design program it's really easy to use you can put your own fonts in there so it looks like this so I just did one letter per page and I made them like nine hundred and ninety-nine point font and this font is P be blonde roast and let's see if I go to the top here okay so this says seven Habits of Highly Effective Spartans so I downloaded that so that they are each on a page like this printed them all out let's see hopefully they worked oh this one seemed to have fallen out alright well let's look at the rest of them okay so these look pretty good now I have to cut them all out I know I could use like a cricket or something but we're not there yet as soon as I get want to figure out how to use it we will do that the next step to find something interesting to watch on Netflix while I sit here and cut all of these out so the letters turn out like this they're pretty big and you know it looks like something that you know maybe you would buy this way I think they end up looking pretty professional I like our little color scheme these are our school colors so now I'm gonna go put these up on our bulletin board okay this is what it looks like and it's huge it's gigantic but that font is literally nine hundred and ninety nine point font so now I'm gonna fill in the seven Habits down here okay this is the last stuff I'm going to put up and here is my tip when you have giant boards like this is I always start from the middle like I count how many letters I have and how many spaces figure out kind of where the middle is and I work out so that it ends up fairly centered okay here is the next step oh they're not like completely even okay I don't like this space right here so I might scoot these over a bit but I started with the think win-win and then I moved that way I'm gonna move this way I think I'm gonna scoot those out a little bit before I add the numbers okay here's what we ended up with we've got all seven habits I have like a tiny bit of space here and here where I might have like an interactive section like the habit of the week or something like that so we'll see let's took forever I need didn't happen okay this is where I'm at now I am actually gonna move all of my desks out of the way I'll have my tables out of the way and put all the chairs in the middle because we're starting tomorrow with a community circle so yeah everything is a little bit out of place like halfway there well I think I need to move this bookshelf just over next to the other one just have a bookshelf area so I need to take all the books off it move it move that stuff by the way blue yeah so left more to do okay it's 7 p.m. on the night before the day before school starts so I'm gonna go home I didn't finish everything I thought about decorating my door it's blank I have roll blank bulletin boards I didn't make copies of my syllabus I didn't finish doing my supply boxes I actually wanted to work on this section behind me I'm just about to put on those doors didn't do that but it really doesn't matter like I said we're gonna do circles on the first day so I don't pass out any papers or anything like that so and then I actually have a prep period right at the beginning of the day tomorrow too so I have a little bit of time and then I will just finish getting things ready tomorrow after school and I'll go over our syllabus on Friday and then Monday there are still more things to go over probably also Tuesday you really can't overload them too much with information right at the beginning so all the things that I don't have done yet I'll just you know cover them later so it's fine but it was nice to be here you know for quite a while today and just get a few things done my desk is already a mess but it's fine we will we will survive so I want to go home and see my husband didn't see Jensen I want to do my nails - I chipped a nail when I was getting things ready so do my nails pick out my outfit I guess I'll wash my hair pack a lunch set out some things for breakfast all that fun stuff to do for the first day so thanks for coming along with me these past couple of days and setting up my classroom with me and I will see you in the 2018-2019 school year

Channel: too cool for middle school

Views: 25,669

Rating: 4.9164925 out of 5

Keywords: ethical fashion, sustainable style, fair trade fashion, baby boy, multicultural, us history, virgin islands, middle school, teaching, teacher, classroom, english, history, english teacher, history teacher, sixth grade, eighth grade, junior high, high school, education, classroom organization, vlogger, mommy vlogger, teacher vlogger, bulletin boards, classroom ideas, goals, teacher goals, mom style

Id: um6Sw2dMCgw

Length: 32min 12sec (1932 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 19 2018