Monday Made It- July 13th

I'm linking up today with Tara over at 4th Grade Frolics to share some past projects I have made for my classroom.  Last week was very busy and my weekend was even busier so I did not have a chance to finish begin any new projects.  My goal is to blog every day in July so I thought it would be fun to highlight some past projects of mine and link to previous blog posts.  

I think a classroom door is equivalent to the first impression you give everyone of yourself as a teacher.  I want my door to not only look exciting and inviting, but also to be a mix of fun and educational.  My classroom door has evolved through the years, but I really love what you see below.  I was thrilled to not have to take down my door decoration at the end of the school year.  I'm praying nothing fell off over the summer.  We shall see.

Welcome to Room 407

Calvin and Hobbes have been my favorite since before I started teaching

A few years ago I decided to make a math focus wall for my classroom.  It has evolved a bit through the years and this coming year I am thinking of changing it up a bit.  You can click to see all posts on my Math Focus Wall.  This year I mainly focused on having the CCSS posters up so I could refer to them as we worked through different units in math.  I promise to do a post in Aug or Sept about how I change it this year.

Math Focus Wall

This blog post explains my Daily and Class Files.  These are two or my best organizational tips I have for any new teacher starting out.  The class files are great to have if you teach middle school and have multiple classes you teach throughout the day.  

Daily Files

Class Files

This is the corner of my room where I have my Learning Stations/Games bookcase.  The bottom two shelves are filled with math games, puzzles, cards, etc.  Students are allowed to use them during Homebase or if they have time in math class.  The top shelf has math manipulatives and the middle two shelves hold buckets I use for learning stations throughout the year.  I love the way this little corner turned out.

I decorated my teacher desk like you see below, but now I do not use my desk (it sits against the wall), but I loved the decor so I changed it to my file cabinet.  So much cuter than a plain black cabinet.  You can see this photo was taken in October.  I change out the decor on this for different holidays/seasons.

The side of my 4 drawer file cabinet

Hope you enjoyed seeing some of my past projects that I use on a daily basis in my classroom.

Monday Made It- July 6th

I had such a fun filled 4th of July weekend and I cannot believe it's Monday.  The good news is that my husband has the day off today.  My youngest starts basketball camp today and Friday is my birthday so it will be a busy week for us. I'm linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for her Monday Made It link up.

This year I revamped my CCSS posters that I display on my math focus wall because they added a letter after the domain letter.  This was an easy project other than a few laminating mishaps here and there.

New CCSS posters

On the back of each poster I wrote the lessons it corresponds with

I'm a very goal oriented person and find I tend to accomplish more when I have my goals written down.  It has been several months since I formally wrote down my goals, so I decided to spend some time yesterday thinking of what I would like to accomplish this month.  

July Goals

This morning I made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, per my sons' requests.  I am sharing my recipe for extra fluffy pancakes using Bisquick.  I usually double the recipe so we have some leftovers that I can either leave in the fridge or freeze for later.  If I leave them in the fridge they will be gone in a matter of days.  I add chocolate chips to the pancakes (no measuring).  These are great pancakes and you may want to use 1/3 c. measure for slightly bigger pancakes.

My recipe

Breakfast

That's it for this week.  I was really busy with all of the 4th of July festivities this past weekend so I really did not have any time to work on school projects.  Hopefully I will have time this week to create some fun things for next week's Monday Made It.  Have a great week everyone!

Math Focus Wall Photos-Updated

I wanted to share some recent photos I took of my Math Focus Wall.  I apologize for not posting these photos sooner as I feel I have been promising to post them since school started, but it really has been a busy year thus far.  Thank goodness for break and some time for me to blog!

The evolution of my Math Focus Wall has been a work in progress from my creative thought process and planning last school year to the background design seen in this post:  The First Sneak Peek  and the original design seen here: Take 1.

TA DA!  I think I am finally happy with it

After a few months of school and actually using the wall with my students I realized that I needed to have two separate sides to reflect the two different courses I teach.  On the left is the board for my accelerated math 7 class and the right side is for the three sections of math 7 I teach.  

Accelerated Math 7

Math 7

I also changed up some things to make the board work for our class needs.  It specifies the CC 

standards, lesson, topic, and student objectives for each day, as well as, the Mathia pacing expectation for that week (that is what unit students should be on in our computer program).  The poster on the top left of the board is the Mathematical Practice Standards and as you can see I still need to get my Problem Solving Strategies Posters on the top right.

You can see Math Vocabulary to the left of the Focus Wall

Creating a Math Focus Wall was a major goal of mine for the 2012-2013 school year and I am very happy with and proud of how it turned out.  It was a lot of working putting the wall up this summer.  I am also finding it very time consuming to have to create all the posters that go up and can change daily.  I use sentence strips for the goals and lesson topics, but it is easier to print out the common core standards and lesson information.  

Of course this will all be done for next year, but this year it is a ton of work.  I try to create everything in advance for the chapter so it is all ready to go.  I like to make sure the focus wall is done for the next day so I don't have to worry about it in the morning when I get to school.  I did not realize how labor intensive this all would be because we can do three to five different lessons per week and when the lesson changes so does the focus wall.  I do feel it is worth the effort to have this information prominently displayed for students around the SMARTBoard which we use daily.

What it looked like on a different day

I would be happy to answer any questions you may have about the math focus wall.  #made4math

#Made4Math A few random things

This will be a quick post to share a few things I made today.  I realized that I have had a to do list of things I have been wanting to make on the computer since school started.  As is always the case, once school starts the things I want to do/make get replaced by the day to day minutiae of keeping a classroom running:  the planning, teaching, grading, reteaching, retaking, lather, rinse, repeat.

Seating charts/class lists binder

Vocabulary for word wall and CCSS posters

Math Focus Wall Labels

I finally was able to print out some new labels for my math focus wall.  I will be posting photos of the new and improved focus wall soon.  I have changed up what it looks like from what I had at the beginning of the year as I have seen what works and what could be improved.

After school I finished up my CC standards posters for The Number System domain (we are currently working on).  I also finished writing up the vocabulary words and will laminate them and the posters tomorrow.

Classroom Photos-Part II

I finally got around to taking some photos of my classroom a week ago (and it was a dark rainy night at 7 PM so the photos are a bit dark).  I posted my Classroom Photos-Part I.  Those photos really just gave a 360 view of my classroom.

Today I am posting some more close-up photos for you to see.  The focal point of my classroom this year is definitely my Math Focus Wall surrounding my SMARTBoard.  I have to say I love it and promise that I will dedicate an entire post just to that once I get it completely finished.  It continues to be a work in progress.

My favorite addition to my classroom.

Another area that I love is the corner where I keep my Learning Stations/Math Manipulatives.  I moved my Desktop computer over there and the "Be a Star" bulletin board which is still under construction.

Do you love the zebra border?  It's magnetic!

Still under construction

These are a couple posters I have on the back of my classroom door, so when the door is closed students can see them.  I designed them on Vista Print and you may have seen them before on Pinterest.    I have seen others that have used my idea to make their own version.  Now that we are doing Carnegie Learning I would like to make some new posters that fit our delivery model a bit better, but these definitely work for now.

First Five Minutes Poster

Two Minute Countdown Poster

One of my favorite areas is my teacher corner.  I have a pentagonal shaped room that has a very small back corner area that is pretty useless, but it ends up being perfect for my desk and file cabinets.  Several years ago the custodians put up the shelves on the back wall which made the space much more useful.  This year I really pushed things back because of creating the focus wall and to give as much space for student desks as possible.  It is very crowded cozy in my classroom!  I love how my back corner is organized and this year it's even better than ever with the filetastics I purchased this summer.

One of my favorite purchases of the summer!

My desk.  You can see my hour files on the right.

The full view.

My no sew banner.  Those strips are where I pin all important information so it's right at my fingertips.

Back shelves.  Need to make labels for everything.

My paper sorters.  Don't you LOVE the zebra file folders?  And my fave the wall of artwork from my sons.

This still needs to be organized, but it is neat for the most part.

Love my lanterns.  I spy another filetastic.  I have four total.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my classroom.  I am hoping to get back to posting more regularly on my blog.  The first couple weeks really kicked my butt with all the technology integration (well that part was easy, it was when the technology didn't work that was tough).  It has been a huge learning curve this year with a new curriculum (Carnegie and I LOVE it!) and the technology shift (not used to PCs at all).  The good news is that other 7th grade math teachers and I are all muddling through it together.  We have PLC time three days a week for content so it has been a blessing to be able to work together and troubleshoot together.

My students have been great and my class sizes are 26, 27, 28, and 28.  The poor 8th grade teachers have classes of 30+.  Fortunately for them they have much bigger rooms than ours.  I do not know where I would put too many more bodies in our tiny rooms.  I actually have 29 desks in my room so I am waiting for a little bit to make sure none of my classes go above 28 before I get rid of the extra desk.  That will give a little more space for walking between those two groups of desks.

Goals for 2012-2013

I really need to stop this late night blogging pattern of the past couple nights.  The past two days have been jam packed with school related projects, back to school outlet mall shopping, fall baseball games, and a wonderful dinner with my parents.  Tomorrow I am heading into school to spend the day working on my classroom, as my boys are with my parents.  I am hoping to finish up my Math Focus Wall I have been busy working on and get some other things set up in my room.

This coming year is going to be a wild and crazy ride for me with implementing a new curriculum, Carnegie Learning, and a new personalized learning delivery model.  Can you say overwhelming and beyond exciting and innovative?  I am so energized for this coming school year, but will feel better once I feel I have a handle on how this will all work.

This year my classroom goals will really be driven by the initiatives that my district has chosen to undertake, including Personalized Learning Model with Carnegie Learning Curriculum, Standards Based Grading District Committee and Lesson Study Facilitation.

Stop:

• Spending so many late evenings at school.  Last year I felt that I was NEVER home to help my two younger sons with their homework  due to all the after school meetings I had and trying to keep up with everything in my classroom.   I really need to change this year.  My goal is to pick one night a week to stay late at school, two max.  I need to make sure I remember that my own kids need to come first and they need guidance on their own homework.  Trying to keep working mommy guilt at bay as many of you know all too well.
• Wasting time an energy on things I cannot control.  I must repeat the Serenity Prayer to myself on a daily basis and really remember why it is I chose to be a teacher.  I also need to keep in mind that everything I do needs to be for and about my students.
• Spending time on things that do not directly impact my goal achievement.  It is so easy to get sidetracked on the day to day classroom minutiae and lose sight of what is really important.

Continue:

• Co-teaching.  Last year the sped teacher and I really became more effective working together after taking a co-teaching class together, but due to my having a student teacher 4th quarter things we weren't really co-teaching at the end of the year.  I am really excited because we will be co-teaching both afternoon math classes this year.  Looking forward to taking our co-teaching to the next level!
• Using learning stations for review and differentiation in the classroom.  Also using them more in my Core Plus class.
• Working with my 7th grade math team during PLC time to implement our new program to fidelity and working together on compacting and assessment.

Start:

• Researching and figuring out the best way to do conferencing with my students.  This will be an integral part of our personalized learning model.
• Consistently doing some form of daily review with my students.  I started off strong with warm-ups last year, but then kind of fizzled out at the end of the year.
• Really focusing on some of the things I learned during my Guided Math Book Study this summer.  I am really excited about my Math Focus Wall and really making my classroom a numeracy rich environment for my students this year.
• Implementing Carnegie with fidelity and really focusing on the Common Core and Standards for Mathematical Practice.  I am so lucky to have a great curriculum to help me implement common core the way it is meant to be.

Sneak Peek of My Math Focus Wall

Here is a little teaser photo of my Math Focus Wall.  It is obviously still under construction, but believe me the most difficult part is over.  This past Monday I went into school to see if I could get started on the wall so I don't have to worry about it during my first days back, (as luck would have it our school has Open House the first day back this year).   I can obsess about the most frivolous things, like what color paper should I use for the background and what color should the borders be.  I mean life altering decisions for a somewhat compulsive classroom decorator as I can be.  Well as luck would have it when I went into the staff lounge for the paper roll my choices were lime green, light pink, (too light), two different shades of light blue (and neither of them worked), or white (that would have been too much white), and other random colors that do not mesh with the lime, pink, blue color scheme I've got going on.  Fortunately there was no black paper to paralyze me with indecision, so lime green it was!  Sometimes the Gods of fate smile down on me.

The background of my Math Focus Wall

I am so thrilled with how it turned out and want to tell you that it only took 1.5 days of blood, sweat, and tears.  OK there was no blood, but I did fall off the wobbly ladder that I spent WAY too much time standing on and there was a bruised left buttcheek as well as ego (although if a teacher falls off a ladder, and there is no one in the classroom to witness it, did she really fall and why would her ego be bruised if no one saw said fall?).  Let me just add that I was holding a stapler in my right hand as I fell and all I was worried about was not hitting the SMARTBoard with the stapler.  Like a mother who would take a bullet for her child, I took the fall for the safety of my SMARTBoard.  There were also no tears, but plenty of sweat and I do believe I deserve a massage after this project as my back and shoulder muscles were overused in the making of this focus wall.

The evil ladder lurking on the left.

I also spent WAY too much time cutting out laminate borders.  Why oh why did I decide to do a triple border?    I guess I just like to torture myself.  I went with pink, zebra, black.  As I was finishing this up under the gun Friday (the custodians kindly asked me to be sure to be out by 4 PM), I wanted to get the Vista Print poster and banner up so I do not have to spend more time on the dreaded ladder.  I put the banner up and then at about 3:52 had the brilliant idea to put the letters on the banner.  That was a complete last minute thought.  I am not thrilled with letters themselves and they are not even laminated, but I put them up to get a feel for it and they most likely will stay.  Someday when I have some free time I may fancy up the letters and change them, but at this point I think they will probably do.  My phone rang at 3:55 while I was up on the ladder and I did not recognize the number.  It was my aunt calling and I had to explain that I would call her back in five minutes, because I always have a fear that I will leave too late and set off the alarm.  Nothing like pressure to motivate!

I started planning the idea of a math focus wall at the end of the last school year.  I have thought long and hard about all the components I want to include.  I was not sure where to put the focus wall because my classroom really has minimal bulletin board space.  I decided to frame the SMARTBoard because we use it all the time and it really is the focal point of everything we do. 

My plan is to finish up the wall next week.  I am hoping to get myself into school Monday to continue on it, but first I have make some the needed items and laminate them.  It will be a busy Sunday for me.  Hope you enjoyed the sneak peek and hopefully you will see the finished product soon!