Classroom Setup Vlog | Day 3 | Bulletin Boards and Classroom Decor

today is day three of working inside of my classroom getting it ready for the beginning of the school year and today is also the day where i am going to leave it completely finished hey everyone for those of you who do not know me my name is bridget spacman i'm a multi-age teacher in central pennsylvania so i teach fourth fifth and sixth grade learners inside of this classroom and i've been working for now this is my third day as i mentioned to get my classroom completely ready so i have two other classroom videos if you want to go and check those out you can just look down in the description box and it'll tell you exactly where you can find those videos but today's focus is going to be all about doing the finishing touches i may not be able to get to putting my students and names on everything which i'm not going to stress out about but i do want my classroom to be completely ready to go it is thursday the week before we start school so teachers start back on monday we have monday tuesday as meetings and prepping and planning time and then wednesday students come wow less than a week to go so there are still a lot of things that i need to be able to get done i want to have this place completely ready i told trent who is my husband i want to have this place ready to go today so that when i show up on monday i'm not coming tomorrow it's not happening but when i do show up on monday i just want to spend the time sitting at my desk being able to plan prep get all of the materials ready that i need to get ready um for the first day of school so that's kind of my game plan i gotta be honest with you guys if you were watching the last two videos you would have noticed i had my desks in groups that is no longer a reality things are constantly changing as so many of you know and are dealing with in your own schools um we are going to be in rows just to help with mitigation and um ensuring the safety of our students so we're going to be placing them in rows this is how we're going to start off at the beginning of the year and then if we have the flexibility to be able to put them in groups we can do that but luckily i will still be able to pull kids from my small group table we'll still be able to do some fun activities but for the most time we don't want them sitting in groups where they're facing each other or they're right like touching beside one another so i have already switched out my tables i actually had to get um four more desks that i was able to snag from my teacher partner's room because she had too many and now i have 24 desks ready to go for the first day i only have 23 students but i do have 24 just in case um so i did that a little bit today this morning i've been working on that i've been talking with other teachers that have been in the building because a lot of people are here as you would imagine seeing as how we have less than a week to go and then i worked on this a little bit so this is my little kitchenette area it's in the back of my classroom i needed to get it just clean and functioning and one of the things that i always felt like i did not have last year was a drying mat so i did end up getting a dry mat i got some dish soap i also got some hand soap because i just like things that are a little bit different got a sponge and i cleaned all of this so i have this nice and neatly organized ready to go and then i have this a little bit more organized where it was a little bit of a mess but i do need to get some utensils paper plates that kind of thing to put in here and have it ready but this is my little kitchenette area and i'm feeling really really good about it so one of the things that i really strive for when it comes to creating a space is the way it makes me feel and it makes my students feel and so a lot of people who will come into my classroom even if my desks aren't in rows which to me always gives like a very cold feeling in a classroom but even if my desks are in rows i have always still gotten the compliments of how homey and cozy my classroom feels and one of the ways that i do this is by ensuring that i have the right lights so utilizing lamps inside of my classroom and also having hanging lights is really nice now what's great about the hanging legs that i have is that they are plastic so if we're playing a game we have a ball and the ball knocks one of the lights off it's not going to break so that is really important to find lights that you can ensure that you know they're not going to hurt any students if something was to happen um and even though it is such a pain in the butt to have to like move my desks around and to stand on top of them which probably is not the best thing it's still like at the very end of the day even though it takes so long it's one of the best feelings in the world to have my my lights up um so that is going to be a really great tip that if you are looking for kind of creating that warmth inside of your classroom where it might feel a little bit cold and just not cozy i highly recommend using any form of just lamps or other lights so i have a couple of lamps up in the front of my classroom this is one that i've had for multiple years and i had to replant replace the the shade because the student broke it a while back um but now i have that one i also just recently got this one in here which is a standing lamp but again it just adds to that warmth and feeling there and then i have other ones that are just kind of placed throughout the room and every morning guys i swear like between these lamps and the ones that are over here underneath my cabinets i will spend i just walk around and we'll turn on all of the lamps inside of my classroom it's one of the first things that i do so i have this one that's here back in this spot and then i have a few others but it does give you such a homey feeling so i was able to get my curtains up fairly quickly and in the process of getting my curtains up i ended up dropping my little stop my red yellow and green light it's fine it's not broken i think it's fallen actually a good five or six times inside of this classroom already um then i started working on getting the wires put away over there by my little math area so that was for the extension cord that goes to the refrigerator ended up cutting myself in the process guys it's just not going great for me right now um but i did get it done it doesn't look the best of the best i swear the last time that i did this it looked really really good this go around it's looking a little rough um but you know what sometimes good enough is good enough and today good enough is good enough so um now i think i just gotta take a minute i'm gonna eat a little snack that i have and then just try to reevaluate what else that i want to try to accomplish so one of the things that i do every single year is going to be to have a like an emergency station i think that's the best word i can call it and basically it's a little area in my classroom it's inside of a closet that i have emergency things that i feel like i could need at any point because for all the teachers who have been teaching for quite some time you live here it seems like so i went to target to be able to replenish because i know like medicine other things some stuff was expired um and now i'm just going to replenish my little basket here and walk you through some of the items that you have to have now if you're a woman i mean if you're not i'm sorry but you got you have to have that so that's going to be one i always carry ibuprofen here and i always have dry shampoo because there have been days where i wake up late and i need to look a little bit fresher um i also have deodorant i keep um contact solution just in case i also have um some old glasses which this came in handy this year because my eye started acting up really bad so i always keep one of these in here as well just in case uh extra toothbrush you never know when you're gonna need it allergy medicine super duper important i did get smelly stuff by the way um eucalyptus leaf oh oh oh smells so good in my classroom right now guys um scope gotta have that don't want stinky breath chapstick gotta have that i also have a little mini razor same situation like let's say i forget to shave something you just never know when you're gonna need it and i have used it before but i got a new one although this packaging is a little difficult i'll come back to that i also have some tums some vaseline airborne essential um and then i like sudafed so keep that and then we have other things dental floss i also have some wrinkle releaser the only thing that i did forget that i need to go back and get more of is going to be static spray for my clothes when i have really bad clingy static i need to redo that but we got chewing gum also have um lint roller which is important and then i have lotion also need swabs ear swabs and [Music] digestive relief um so a lot of these things and of course like things are like a brush other items that are just like that that i feel like you have to have just in case because you never know what happens i also keep some pair spare shoes here with an extra outfit just in case that i rotate out as the seasons are kind of changing so i will end up just bringing something that's fairly old that instead of me taking it to like a you know um where i typically would go and donate my clothes like give them all my old clothing i'm simply just gonna bring an outfit here and keep it inside of my closet because again you just really never know when you're gonna need it so now i'm gonna go and put this stuff away my belly is feeling a little bit better i think i started was starting to get a little hangry so back to work and getting the classroom finished so if you guys have been following me for a while then you know that this is the mirror where i normally take my outfit images and post on instagram now not that i'm a fashionista but this is the mirror and behind the mirror is going to be where i keep all of my little emergency items so i have this one drawer and there you go i was able to get this out by the way um a lot of these things i just end up finding in the little travel section where you can find all the little pieces um but obviously the medicine i did end up going and getting but it's just nice to have that just so that i can ensure that i have everything that i need so i've been eating a snack and i've been chit chatting on the phone while i've been doing a few things um so let me show you what i've been able to get done first and foremost all the trash has left my room which is a great feeling because it was clogging up this entire space over here um so a few different things that i have been able to get done one i put up my march madness which i know it's not march i kind of want to paint that or either put duct tape or something over it just so that it doesn't say march madness because i like using that but i've done that the other thing that i was able to do is put all of the books away that i had stored up here they were all of my um they were all of my series so i had roald dahl i had some of the magic tree house and then i had um the narnia series and then the goosebumps as well so i ended up just sticking it down here because i'm honestly not going to be using this space for anything else that i can think of other than just storing some of my electronics up at the very top so i felt like that was a good space there so that's all nice and cleaned off the other thing that i was able to do is up here i have a ratio self um honestly i don't remember the person that i ended up getting these from but i like them it's a one two three four just as far as reading your your knowledge on the topic that we've been learning so we use that quite a bit in my classroom i also have the remember understood apply analyze evaluate create posters i like to keep that there for my students to be able to see what level of thinking we're using but also as a really great reference for myself and then i put up my read aloud tracker which this is a bulletin board that i created um last year for our interactive read-alouds and so the bulletin board itself was done but i had all of the different types of conflict that i needed to post up so we have character versus self we have character versus technology uh character versus supernatural character versus nature character versus society and then character versus character so um all of those posters are officially up the lighting is horrible when i'm facing the window the other thing that i feel as though i was able to get done is i placed at each of the desks a whiteboard gotta love the bell um i do need to go through and clean them so they're just sitting in there for the time being when i sit down to go through each of the desks and really kind of do the final touches i'm just gonna go around and start cleaning some of those but those are not completely cleared up i just wanted to make sure that i had the right amount and i do so there's one in each of the desks now if you've been with me since these days you'll know exactly what this is um i made these back when i was in kindergarten i think it was like either my second or third year of teaching and these are for name tags so i'm gonna be using name tags this year and so i'm placing one on each of the desks so they're all set out there and the reason for using these instead of just posting them on the desks is that students are not actually going to keep their private materials inside of the desk because we are going to be switching that's still the plan here so as a mac team the kids will be going to their specific block teacher now we try to minimize the movement as much as possible um so this year i'm actually only going to be teaching ela i'm not going to be teaching math so i'm going to teach 5th grade and 6th grade ela one of our teachers is going to be doing 4th grade math and ela so she's going to keep the cohort of 4th graders together to kind of transition them into the new building and the year and then my other teacher is going to do a 5th grade and 6th grade math but then we will all do content so that will still be mixed it will still be multi-age so the students will be mixed as far as their grade levels goes so we have essentially you know two blocks other than our home room that we will have to switch for so the desks are not gonna be their private desks for students so i will be sanitizing in between we're going to be doing all of the things that we have to do just to ensure everything is okay but to keep students at a desk and to have them in assigned seating so that we can trace students i'm gonna use these and so there's gonna be about three maybe i'm gonna have three different names on this little name tag and then i'm just gonna train my kids to switch it for the next class so i'm gonna have i haven't quite figured it out either a letter or symbol or something to help note okay this is the next class this is coming in and then those students will change over the name and then they will end up leaving and lining up and i can sanitize from there so it sounds very confusing in my head it all makes sense let's cross our fingers and hope that it ends up working out um but i got those out which makes me feel really good and i had a little bit of my desk cleared up and then there's this mess oh slowly but surely i am doing it guys slowly but surely all right that's it the classroom is officially almost done you like how i almost said that it was done but it's really not let's just be honest but i am really proud of the progress that i was able to make today basically this classroom is ready to open up two students the only thing that i really need to finish up is one put my schedule up on the board two is get all the name stuff done which i am definitely going to focus on doing that when i get back to school on monday i don't want to stay any longer it's already a little bit after five o'clock and i've been here pretty much all day long so i'm gonna go ahead and wrap this up i want to show you guys the bit of the progress that i was able to make today all right so this is gonna be my space over here in the back i do have a few items that i still need to sort through um but i can hold off on that for a little bit so i'm just gonna leave it and pretend like i actually have it done um so this is gonna be my space it is pretty much finished to where i need it to just be i do have a ton of sticky notes of all the list of items that i need to be able to work on but i feel pretty good about it overall and then over here we have the student area where they're going to gather all of their items up at the very top i did end up posting up some um sentence stems for how we can have discussions and be able to agree and disagree politely and how do we go about doing that so those are going to be there over here i have my board so we have the jobs we have the schedule we have the date we have the specials all of those items along with the classroom library so all of this is looking pretty good posters are finally up and the lighting is going to get a little crazy so we have read aloud tracker and then in the back we have the little kitchen area and all of the student desks so i feel really good about it i am i feel good it's not totally finished but i do feel much better i feel like i can go home spend the weekend at home like friday saturday sunday come to school on monday and not feel as overwhelmed as i thought i was going to be so i'm going to go ahead and leave this vlog here i will end up doing another vlog next week for the first week of school so that i can just kind of catch you guys up on you know what's happening so stay tuned for that video that's going to be coming up on the next sunday um but go ahead and give this video a thumbs up it really does help to ensure that the video promotes and does well and that helps me to continue doing the things that i'm doing here on youtube also subscribe if you are new to this channel we're gonna talk a lot of things literacy with upper elementary i would love to have you and have a really great discussion when it comes to literacy instruction and really building independent and critical thinkers in the classroom and then finally don't forget to hit that notification bell so you guys can get notified every time i go live or i upload a new video so thank you all so much for watching this i'm feeling good about my classroom um and if you are in school i hope that it's going great if you're about to start don't stress it will get done i promise you that and i'll see you all next time bye

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 7,194

Rating: 4.9401498 out of 5

Keywords: teacher tips, The Lettered Classroom, classroom decor, first year teacher, classroom setup, classroom organization, a day in the life of a teacher, elementary teacher, middle school teacher, education, how to be a teacher, how to teach, new teacher, teacher youtuber, teacher vlog, weekly teacher vlog, classroom ideas, elementary teacher, classroom inspirations, teacher organization, upper elementary teacher, teacher life

Id: g67zYqck6YU

Length: 20min 56sec (1256 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021