My First Bulletin Boards!

These past few weeks have been CRAZY! I have been working at high speed to get my classroom cleared out, set up, decorated, and ready for students, and it has been quite the task. I never realized how much work teachers put in to set up their rooms! I have a new level of respect for those veteran teachers who have been doing this for all those years. 

From what I heard around my school, my classroom had previously been used as storage for roughly two years. I kick myself now for not taking a photo when I first walked in; the room was halfway full with boxes, old teachers' (broken) desks, full sets of old curriculum from most grade levels, 9 filing cabinets, 8 metal bookshelves, a counter that had been taken off of a wall... and so on and so forth. You get the picture right? I think I was so overwhelmed when I walked in that I couldn't even consider grabbing that camera. Here are a few pictures from after I had cleaned out over half of what was in there:

I couldn't even walk to this side of the room when I first got there!

I can't express how huge of an improvement this was from when I first walked in. Thankfully, my strong and amazing husband came in just to help me move things out. There was WAY too much for me to do by myself. Once those boxes in the pictures got moved out by the custodial staff, I got started on organizing, setting up the furniture where I wanted it, and getting stuff up on the walls. Here are a few after pictures:

Big change, right? Since I run a Resource room, I will have different groups of students coming and going through the day. Setting up so that I have four different areas for groups with different set ups, I felt I could meet my students' needs. Once I got this layout figured out, I was able to decide where I could put "bulletin boards." I say "bulletin boards" with quotes because there aren't actually any bulletin boards in my room. I ended up using paper stapled to a wall with borders stapled around it. Each classroom on my campus has adopted a university to represent, and I was lucky enough to be able to choose my alma mater, CSU Sacramento. The colors are green and gold/yellow. Can you tell?

I really wanted my bulletin boards to be as interactive as possible. What's the point of having the boards if they will just hang on the wall and the kids never have any reason to go to them regularly? Some boards, such as my No Excuses University board, don't meet this standard for me. I couldn't figure out a way to make this one work, but most others do. 

My Classroom Classifieds board. The kids can apply for jobs in my classroom and earn a salary of King's Gold. King's Gold is my classroom incentive system that kids can use to buy vouchers. I'll be creating a post about that later. :-) Anyway, the kids fill out an application that describes why they are the best for the job. I just did this for the first time this past Friday, and the kids were SO EXCITED to apply for a job! I think I will have to add more jobs!

My Student Spotlight board. I was so happy to find a title for this board that goes with my polka dot decorations! I can't wait to start hanging up student work and building more confidence in my room!

My Class Policies! I definitely borrowed the acronym from Pinterest! The kids come in and read it chorally with me at the beginning of the day, and we refer to it when issues arise in the room. It's nice because most issues in the classroom can fall into one of these categories.

Another interactive board! There is so much velcro on this board, it's crazy! Each polka dot can be moved to the black square, where we highlight the character trait of the month. We will work on a class definition to post in the big yellow box. We have lessons that revolve around character traits, and the kids refer back to the board regularly. The borders are made out of plastic tablecloths from the Dollar Tree. $4 for this board!

My school is in the No Excuses University (NEU) network, so each classroom has an NEU board. With my time crunch, I couldn't really figure out a way to make this board interactive. You win some you lose some, right? I was at least able to incorporate my university, Sac State!

My Sac State board. The university board is another requirement of NEU, and I was happy to make it! I love this one because it's right by my door. When I have the kids line up to leave, they all end up standing there looking up at the pictures and brochures. I love spreading the word of what a great school Sac State is!

There's a mini tour of my (unfinished) classroom. Thankfully, it's functioning now that I have students coming in to attend class periods. I will post more as a update more in my room! I am just so grateful and excited to be in this school, classroom, and with these students!