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Wednesday, August 8, 2012

"I See You" Greeting Apron

One of the most influential people in my collegiate career told a story about how important it is that every child feels like you "see" them everyday. Sometimes the students who are following directions and are always on task, on level and engaged feel like they are overlooked because many teacher's focus ALOT of class attention on the students who are disruptive. 
As a teacher my main goal is to not do this, ever. I want every student in my classroom to know that they are important, that their idea's, stories and thoughts matter to me. 

How am I going to do this? Well I am going to begin by using a greeting apron in my classroom. This is an idea adopted from conscious discipline, which you can learn more about herehttp://consciousdiscipline.com/resources/ and I adapted to fit my own needs. 
Basically I made an apron that looks like this,

Each day students will be able to choose a greeting. By doing this I make sure to have a personal moment with every student everyday just to let them know that "I see you"! 

My greetings are ....
Blow a kiss, goldfish! 
Put your hands together and "swim" like a fish, then open your fingers to "kiss" the students fish hands. 
Bye, Bye Butterfly! 
You interlock thumbs with the student to make a "butterfly"
SSSSee ya later! 
Use your pointer finger to make a swirling motion and meet the students pointer finger  saying, Sssss ya later!
The hand is a "Hi-Five"
and the ladybug says "Give a hug, ladybug"
Those are pretty self-explanatory! 


I choose these greetings because it gives each student a choice, it allows them to choose the amount of interaction with the teacher and once again it is an easy way to be sure that you've acknowledged each student everyday!

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Take a peek at my new classroom!

Hi there and welcome to my new blog "Buzzing into Kindergarten" and my first blog post ever! I am a brand new first year kinder teacher and I'm so blessed and excited to be starting this new chapter!

The very first thing you should know about my blog is that I will be teaching  in an open concept classroom! What is that exactly? Well, basically my room has no doors and no inside walls. It is connected to 3 other kinder rooms and together our rooms form a pod! I've never been in a classroom without doors before, so this is a whole new adventure for me! 

I've finally been able to check out my new classroom! I'm so excited to share these first pictures of my room and hopefully they will give you a better idea of just what an open concept classroom looks like, so here it goes!

This is the "back" wall of my room, taken from the front left corner. As you can see I have LOTS and LOTS of cabinet space, and a sink!


This is another view from the same front left corner as above. This shows my only real wall, and also shows the whiteboard that runs along the "front" wall. Straight ahead are my 2 projection screens, the custodian informed me that it is possible to move those so I am not sure if they will be staying there yet, we will have to see.


This is the view from the back right corner looking towards the front of my room at the whiteboard. You can start to tell in this picture that the wall is not a full wall and is connected to neighboring classrooms on either side! Where the tree is on the right is a walkway to the class next door, it is also near the opening of the main doors to the pod.


This is another view from the back corner of my classroom showing the tiled walkway that goes in front of the sink/cabinets. Are you noticing the large amount of bookcases and shelving in my room, I'm not sure I'll ever have enough things to put in all my shelves and cabinets!


My favorite part...PLAY CENTER FURNITURE!! If you know me, then you know how much I believe in play centers! I am so excited to have this little furniture collection in my kinder classroom!


This is the conglomeration of bookshelves/tables in my room. There is a display book shelf, a big book storage bin, a sand and water table (SO EXCITED), a 25 cubby shelf and a mirror for a dress up center!! There are also two computers hiding back there that look like this....


Yay! Computer center!

Now that I've been able to give you a brief tour of my room, I guess I need to start trying to figure out how I'm going to arrange all of this furniture and get this classroom functional!
 I hope to post photos/updates on how it looks when it all starts coming together, so check back soon!