New Year, New School, New Blog

Woohoo! First blog post.  As you can read on the side, I am a 7th grade language arts teacher.  This is my second year teaching, but I am at a new school this year.  I loved my school last year, and I learned so much in my first year of teaching, but last year I drove 45 minutes to work every day.  That got old pretty fast.  In the Spring, a position opened up at the school I graduated from, and it's only about 8 minutes away.  I applied, had an interview, and was offered the job the following day.  I was ecstatic about going home, and about the large amount I'll be saving on gas this year.  However, this meant that to reset myself in a way.  Sometimes, I feel like I'm a first year teacher all over again.  Again, I had to completely redecorate a classroom.  Again, I had to read new books I would be teaching this year.  Again, I had to meet (or meet in a new way for the teachers I had in school) and create relationships with my new colleagues.  It was a lot of hard work, and I'm not sure I feel like I had much of a summer vacation, but classes start in less than a week, and I'm proud to say I feel prepared.

Although there have been many times this summer I have stressed about what was to come this year, one thing I actually had a lot of fun with is decorating my classroom.  See, last summer, when I got the key to my first ever classroom, I was fresh from college, and completely broke! I had no money to buy all of the fun classroom decorating supplies I had always seen adorn my teachers' walls.  I was sad to see my room be so drab.  Slowly, throughout the year, I added little by little, but it was never truly what I wanted it to be.  This summer, however, my husband and I are living much more comfortably, and I was pumped to finally put all of my Pinterest finds to use. When my wonderful husband's help, we transformed my classroom in an inviting learning environment.  Check out some of my favorite parts.

This is a pretty blurry picture, but this bulletin board encourages students to read the books many of their favorite movies are based on.  Above the bulletin, the paint can posters provided exciting synonyms to some of our most overused and boring words (good, bad, hungry, scared, etc.).

I love the way this one turned out.  I've seen this quote on several school posters, but I love the idea of applying it to social media.  Computers are heavily used in my classroom, and I'm very passionate about teaching proper digital citizenship.  Sometimes it scares me how much kids will be willing to say to someone when they're hiding behind a computer.  I truly hope my students take this message to heart. 

This one looks pretty blank right now, huh?  Well, that's because I'm going to let my students fill it up.  I chose four of my favorite quotes, and turned them into Tweets.  I even gave them hashtags.  I'm going to let my students choose their favorite quotes, and we will fill up this board with some inspiration to get us through the year. 

The picture really doesn't do this board justice.  Underneath the top phrase, "This book is so...", I handwrote several adjectives one might use to describe books (action-packed, dramatic, inspirational, etc.). Then, I split the bottom into sections for fiction and non-fiction.  Throughout the year, I'm going to let student write their own book recommendations down on sticky notes and place them on this board for their classmates to see. 

This is another one of my favorites.  I've seen about a hundred of these on Pinterest, so it's obviously not original, but I just think it's so fun.  

I hope to use this blog to discuss my unique lesson plans and teaching philosophies, while also discussing technology in the classroom, something I'm becoming wildly passionate about.  School starts on Friday; stay tuned for updates!