i went to school today to begin setting up my classroom for the upcoming year.  i will have my own classroom and will be teaching 3rd grade (YAY!)  this past year i taught 2 different things and shared my materials between 2 rooms… a big pain!  with just a week before school started for students i had to set up my room last year in quite a hurry.  this year, i am not going to do that!  i had to purchase a few things for my classroom and am beginning to get excited about rearranging my room and making it feel more like a home.

i’ve moved my desk from one side of the room to the other and have placed the computer in a better place for myself.  i’ll need to acquire at least one, maybe two if possible, more computer for my students to use in the classroom.  i now have a “teacher space” and feel that my materials and “teacher books” are no longer in the way of my students.  i am combining bookshelves and plan on going through my books and putting them in appropriate genres for easier student access.  i have made a few lists (no surprise there) of things that need to be done, bulletin board ideas, miscellaneous things to take care of, classroom procedures, things to make, etc.

i am excited about getting textbooks!  that may sound strange to some of you but there is something about getting a class set of books to assign to students that makes me smile.  i picked up a copy of the school supply list for K-4th grade and began to get excited about my students filing in on the first day with book bags full of brand-new pencils and notebook paper.  i had a difficult time keeping up with pencils last year.  everyday a student, or two, or three would come in without a pencil.  rather than wasting time allowing the student to go get a pencil from their class i would “loan” them one.  however, the pencils weren’t always returned.  i read an idea online about having a basket at the front of the room for sharpened pencils and one for unsharpened/broken pencils.  students can borrow a pencil as long as they put it back in the unsharpened/broken basket.  if a student’s pencil breaks during class or badly needs to be sharpened they can place it in the unsharpened/broken basket and pick up a sharpened pencil.  this will result in little time being taken away from work and getting rid of the distracting pencil sharpener noise that, no doubt, takes at least 5 minutes because each student has to have the pencil with the sharpest point.

i plan on going back to school tomorrow to continue working.  it’s hard to believe there are just 3 weeks until school starts!  i have so much to do and i am so excited to get it done!