So thankful

Have I said already how thankful I am to have a chance to teach 2nd grade again? After I got that phone call from my principal that he "had to move me back" to my 2nd grade team, my whole demeanor changed. I suddenly had ideas flowing all through my head and felt so much enthusiasm to get back to school this year.

All those ideas I'd "tucked away for next year" came out, and I'm really very excited to start this year.

Yes, I went back to school the very day we got the okay that the building was clear (well, okay, so maybe a day BEFORE we got that clear), and my teammate and I have been working hard every single day in our rooms.

Here are a few pics of what I've gotten set up so far.

My Dual Language wall

(We change languages every day for certain things, so everything is color coded in blue for English and red for Spanish)

 A new concept I'm excited to implement in my room for Reading stations. We've always done a Daily 5 rotation with five different stations, so I merged the concept with the five points of a star. Each station involves a different aspect of reading, and when they incorporate all five aspects together, it makes them a STAR reader. I'm hoping they will see how each aspect is equally important to their Reading proficiency. 

 My new calendar that I found at Big Lots. The kids always struggle with the words before and after, so I am hoping that this linear type of calendar system will help them see what day/month/number came before and what comes after. They also really struggled last year to remember the difference in how to write the date in Spanish and in English, so I added a hanging date that they can flip back and forth from English to Spanish. 

 My table all set up to work with my small groups, with my English and Spanish word walls behind it and a new little Reading cart (to keep me organized) that my teammate didn't want. I finally organized and labeled all my cubbies, too, so I'm feeling pretty good about the start of the year. 

 I had a really cool center system years ago to give my kids more use of all the manipulatives in the room, plus it kept kids fully engaged at all times and kept them from fighting over who got to use what manipulative. I didn't implement the system last year because I'd been out of second grade for so long, and I regretted it. So I'm super excited to use it again this year, and I'm super happy about adding more pink to my decor (all the pink tubs I found at the Dollar Tree).

 My nephew made this lego table for David when he was little with the lego roads that we had growing up. I have no place in my house for the lego table now that David's outgrown it, but I've used it in my classroom for years, and it's always one of the kids' favorite centers. This year I'm calling it the Engineering center, which actually fits well with several of our Science units. 

 The red bin is another favorite center with magnets that they can build things with. The pink basket is where I toss all the graded papers and notes that the kids will file in the cubbies for me, and the blue basket is for my Math bags that I learned about in a training years ago that completely revolutionized how I taught Math. Last year I didn't have a chance to make them up, and I completely regretted that, too. So this year, we're making them the first week. 

 The back is coming along slowly. I'm doing more community supplies this year because last year was chaos with all their little school boxes--too easy to sneak stuff from home that they shouldn't have at school, so I'm still trying to plan out how to store everything and still make the room work efficiently. 

 When our school was under construction last year, they removed all of our carpets. I am very sensitive to certain sounds, though, and I cringed every time I heard a desk move--which was all day long. So I read on a teacher group to put heavy duty felt on the bottom of the desk legs and wrap it with a rubberband. Several suggested that they use their Reading group colors, so I did that. It adds a little color to the room, and I can already tell a difference in the amount of noise the desk makes when it moves. Yay!!!!

I can't believe that my next 22 little ones (thankfully not the little little ones) will be coming through my doors with their school supplies before the end of next week. I'm ready for them. :)

I'm so thankful for the extra time my teammate and I have been able to work at the school while it's empty and quiet, and I'm so very thankful to be her 2nd grade teammate again.