CLASSROOM SETUP - Part 1 | Pocketful of Primary

[Music] hello friends welcome back to my channel if you are new here my name is Michele 4a and I'm a fourth grade teacher in Maryland that today was my official first day back at school I'm literally so ecstatic to be here I have been itching to give my classroom all summer but unfortunately we are not allowed in until our official start date now I kind of had good news and bad news good news is it is my first official day back bad news is the day is pretty much already over I have actually been in meetings all day that's pretty typical for the first day back or at least at my school it is however I have to say that I absolutely love my school and the way that they conduct these meetings because we were doing super fun things first we started off by making vision boards for ourselves so mine is all complete I absolutely love the way that it turned out I feel like it represents me just really really well I think I'm going to frame it and hang it up right outside of my classroom door for all my students to see then we went out on buses and we actually kind of toured our community and we got a little bit more like background information on our community we also got to see a lot of the construction that is taking place there is a lot of new construction that is happening near our school and all of those students are going to be coming to us and we are already pretty overcrowded so it means our class sizes just keep going up and up but you know you can look at that one of two ways I look at it as a way to just influence more students and be able to teach more students and to me that's a beautiful thing now it is a 4:30 in the afternoon and I'm just now actually getting in my classroom to start working and we have to be out of the building by 5:30 however good news is that tomorrow Monday and Wednesday of next week I will be able to work in my classroom all day so I know I will have plenty of time to get it done I'm gonna go ahead and just start moving things around I kind of want to get the hard stuff out of the way today so that I can do more of the fun stuff tomorrow I wanted to do a voiceover for this vlog that way I could go into a little bit more detail explain to you what I'm doing and why I'm doing it so if you enjoy this format please let me know down in the comments that way I will continue doing it for future vlogs now when I'm setting up my classroom one of the first things I like to do is put down my carpet partially because I want to get it off my countertop but mostly because I want to get it in place before I start moving desks and other furniture now one tip I do have for you is to put a underneath of the carpet that will help keep it in place so that it does not move around as you and your students walk on it I got this one from Amazon so I will link it down in the description one of the next things that I do is bring in all of this stuff from my car I don't know about you but personally I buy a lot of stuff for my classroom over the summer and I pack it all into my car which means eventually I have to bring it into my classroom and I like to get that done and over with at the beginning so I just stuck it all on top of my counter then I went ahead and put down the carpet in my library area this is a smaller rug that I got from I don't know I think Walmart or something I do not put a grip under this one but it's because I have a table on top and that helps to hold it in place then what I started doing is getting things out of my cabinets so unfortunately at the end of the school year I have to put things away which means I end up just shoving them into cabinets basically I played Tetris and I just put it anywhere that I can find room plus I needed to get those things out because in those cabinets were a lot of my library bins where I put my picture books so once I took those out I started setting up those bins on top of my library area and then I started going through my boxes of all of my picture books and I sorted them into my library bins because I have a label on each book with a symbol and that matches the library label that's on the front of the bins it's actually really really easy for me to put the books back in the correct bins then I started setting up the area kind of behind my desk so I put a microwave back there this year that's one of my purchases from over the summer I really wanted a microwave then I went ahead and put my daily bins on top of that counter top because I had those there last year and I really really liked them and that's another tip that I have for you put out the things that you know you want in the same place as last year first and then you can figure the rest of it out so then I went ahead and started putting my math bins on the shelf because I really really liked where those were last year and I knew that I wanted to keep them there and then I had to go through my math manipulative closet and start turning all those bins around because again I played Tetris at the end of the year and I had to turn them all kinds of weird ways to get them all to fit in there plus other stuff so I started just taking out the other sub and turning those bins around so when they work they seen the front the way that I like them life update first of all if you know that I am wearing a different shirt and you think that it is the next day you would be right here's kind of what happened yesterday because I only had like an hour to work in my room and it was the first day back so I was trying to catch up with other teachers I just frankly did not get a hug done I'll be completely honest a couple of things I did get done I got my rug put out in the front of my room I also moved my computer tables because one of the computer tables has two computers and then I have another single computer table and I wanted them all to be together so I moved them so they were all on one side I do have to get an Ethernet splitter because I only have two ethernet jacks on the wall so I need to get another one but it's no big deal I can get that from Amazon I also took down the alphabet cards that were up on the wall and I had covered them for PARCC testing at the end of the year and I never took it down because I could not reach it and thankfully my team teacher is really tall so she helped me and I'm super grateful for that now today I got here around 7:30 this morning and I plan on staying here obviously I have to stay until 4:00 because that's contract hours but I plan on saying all the way until 5:30 when they kick me out because I just want to get as much done at the beginning as I can because goodness knows next week things start coming up and you don't have as much time in your room as you think you do so you all saw a couple of things I've just been like getting things out of my car bringing them and I've been kind of organizing some my cabinets kind of setting some of my things out but I'm at the point where my room has kind of gotten very messy because I'm constantly like pulling things out of cabinets and I'm not putting them all away so what I'm gonna do so I'm gonna set up my desk because that always makes me really happy and then once my desk is set up I feel like the rest of the room kind of looks good I've been putting stuff on my desk so I want to clear those off and go ahead and set up my desk so that that's done and I feel like things are more like put together and then I'm just gonna kind of work on like putting things away and getting them off of the countertops so I can just keep things more organized but that just kind of brings me to my next point please do you when you're setting up your classroom a lot of times people will say like oh you need to do this first and then you need to do that no just set up your classroom however you want and if organizing things makes you happy do that part first or setting up your desk makes you happy do that part you don't have to do it in any specific order and don't let anyone tell you that you need to do that honestly it's all personal preference when it comes to setting up my desk I'm trying to keep it very simple this year because in the past I've had so much stuff on my desk and it was hard for me to work there because it was very overwhelming so this year I'm really just putting out the essentials I have my rainbow drawers in the corner because I do like those there and they're easy to access and I put out my black and white striped caddy that has all of my pens and markers and then my tape dispenser and stapler and there's other essential items that I do use all the time one of the next things that I did is started putting new lights around my smart board you may remember last year I had these twinkly lights around my smart board and I did really like them however they were battery powered which was very frustrating because they went through batteries very quickly and even though I used rechargeable batteries it was very inconvenient because I was changing the batteries like every 2 or 3 days so this summer I found these rope lights on Amazon and what I really liked about them is they actually light up different colors and I just thought that that was awesome you can pick the color you can have it fade from one color to another there's just so many options now one of the main reasons I got these is because these actually plug in so I don't have to worry about batteries anymore and I feel like this is going to work a lot better now in terms of how I am attaching these I actually use some hook and loop fasteners if you don't know what those are just google it it's basically velcro but I can't say velcro because they were not the velcro brand so they're just little you know circles that are adhesive so I peel them off the paper I stuck one of them on the light and then one of them on the smart board I don't know if this is going to hold up long-term I'm just trying it so you'll have to stay tuned in my future classroom vlogs that way you know if it's holding up or not I just thought this was a good solution set if for some reason I needed to take them down I could but then I could easily put them back up because of the hook and loop fasteners then I went ahead and started setting up my schedule cards now these are available in my TPT store so I will link them for you down in the description box they are editable they come in different colors and options so just check out the description in the product preview on TPT and that will help you out I attach mine with magnets that way I can change it out very easily if our schedule changes and you may notice the date up in the corner of the board in years past you may remember I had cards that I would flip through with the date I'm trying something different this year these are actually magnetic numbers that I got on Amazon so I will link those in the description box as well but that way it's super easy to just change out the number at the end of the day and actually I will have a student doing that for me next is my cabinet that has my indoor recess stuff at the bottom and then I was using the rest of it for my storage I think I decided that this cabinet is going to be basically an all student cabinet so you will notice that I'm clearing off two of the shelves and I'm gonna use those to store my flexible seating materials I actually ended up taking out that middle shelf and moving it over to my math manipulative closet so I ended up moving down all of these shelves in my math manipulative closet to make room for that new shelf because I'm really trying to maximize that space because I have so many different math manipulatives and so many different bins and I want to fit them all in that one single cabinet so giving myself one more shelf worked out perfectly alright I'm totally just gonna pull up this big bag and sit in it while I talk to you all because I am exhausted it is almost the end of the day so let me just kind of give you an overview the last time that I talked to you I told you I was going to clean up and put stuff away did not happen I also told you I was gonna get my desk put together I got some of that done but not all of it and then I started putting up the lights around my board but I really like how they turned out however they were not quite long enough to go all the way around the board so it just kind of stops on the sides and it's uneven but you know what in the grand scheme of things I don't think it really matters after that I did get well and grabbed lunch I just got some chick-fil-a brought it back here and ate and then this afternoon I have been working on kind of reorganizing some of my cabinet I'm liking how they're turning out I'm taking the one cabinet that had my indoor recess stuff at the bottom and I'm making that like an all student cabinet so now above that I'm actually going to store some of my flexible seating inside of the cabinet because I don't have a lot of floor space in my classroom and there were so many times that I'm just running out of floor space and I'm tripping over stuff and I just don't like having it all out so what I will do is have my students get it out use it and then put it back in the cabinet that way it just kind of stores it away and it's out of the way and I don't have to worry about tripping over it then in my neck cabinet where I keep all of my math manipulatives because I took a shelf out of the other cabinet I was able to put it into the math cabinet and give myself another shelf of math manipulatives and I put those black bins in there that I got this summer I do need to make labels for those but overall I'm happy with how that's happening my project that I'm kind of in the middle of right now is organizing my big cabinet that one is just gonna have all of my stuff and my students aren't really going to go in there but that's still a work in progress so in my next classroom setup vlog I will keep you updated with that so I'm gonna quickly just kind of show you how I am leaving the room before I head out of here it is definitely not perfect it is not even very clean but hopefully this will at least make you feel better and not make you feel as bad if you're leaving your classroom like this while you're setting it up we will start by the door I do not have a bookcase here which I really really love but I haven't really fully decided what I'm gonna put on there so stay tuned my countertop is just a hot mess I have stuff all over the place and I'm leaving it like this because you know why I can work on this next week and I'm not gonna stay super late today trying to put it all together this cabinet is now empty I haven't really decided what's going to go up there yet this one is a hot mess I kind of showed you these cabinets already this one is my work in progress currently so I'm still trying to decide exactly how I want to organize stuff in here I still have things I've got to put up on this white board but I do really really like my lights around my board I will link them in the description if you aren't interested I got my schedule cards put up which is awesome and cut some stuff put here on my little like math bookshelf thing my desk area is kind of put together in the back like this part doesn't look so so bad I still have to work on that shelf up top but the actual like desk top area is really really bad right now I just have stuff skewed about these are some extra desks but they're probably not going to be extra desks as of right now I have 32 desks laid out this is the same layout that I used last year and you can see all the stuff staying on the desks but I could have up to 35 students so I may have to put some more desks out so I'm just kind of holding on and waiting to see haven't really decided where I'm gonna put this table yet those are all books that either need to get labeled or need a bin these are back here for now on not sure if I'm gonna leave them there or not however I will say my library area is looking pretty good this is going to be my like small group table I'm gonna try it back here in my library I'm not sure if I'm gonna keep it this way but I at least will try it my library is all organized and ready to go I may change out some of the bin labels though this area will kind of be for me for math small group and I'll go into more detail on that later scoop rockers these have like math stuff and they're organized by unit I have this bulletin board but I'm gonna change out the title this one's going to be my math one and then this area back here isn't too too bad but I still have a lot of work left to do so we're just gonna ignore the hot mess that is my hair right now I'm very hot very sweaty because my room it has air conditioning but it's not cold it's just kind of air and it's very stale and hot and humid in here but overall I think I feel good I did get a lot done today I still have a lot left to do but it's ok I'm not gonna sit here and stress about it because no one can put together their classroom in a single day and anyone who thinks they can is very sadly mistaken at least in elementary school now this is only my first classroom setup vlog I'm gonna have another classroom set up vlog next week Monday I'm in my classroom Tuesday I have PD and then Wednesday I'm in my classroom so next week's vlog will focus on my setup Monday and Wednesday and then I will also do a separate blog for meet the teacher which is on Thursday and then Friday we are technically off but I will probably come into my classroom so I'm a blog that I don't know but I do really hope that you all enjoyed this vlog I know it's not like super detailed yet but you all know I am gonna have a classroom tour and I always go into great detail in those so this is really just kind of showing you all the process and trying to give you a little bit of insight into my mind and like why I'm doing what I'm doing but if you enjoyed this vlog please go ahead and give it a thumbs up it really helps me out also go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notification bells that you are notified every time I post a new video as always thank you so much for watching I love you so much don't forget to think positive and I'll catch the next one thank you so much for watching all the way to the end of this video and for supporting my YouTube channel if you want to check out any of my older videos you can use the two links right down here and if you want to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any future videos you can use like right up here the links to all of my social media sites my teachers pay teacher's store my merchandise store and my Amazon store are in the description box and I'll catch you guys in the next one

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 883,881

Rating: 4.8998618 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, tpt, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, classroom tour, a day in the life of a teacher, a week in the life of a teacher, teaching, lifestyle, classroom setup, classroom set up, classroom decoration, classroom decor, setting up a classroom

Id: zZm-HixQaw0

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 26 2018