Thursday, July 24, 2014
Getting Ready for Fall
My name is Gina. I previously taught first grade for eight years. This fall, I will be teaching sixth grade in a different building in my district. I am excited and nervous at the same time. There are some really great things starting in my district, including a 1:1 Computing initiative. I will be one of the teachers that begins the implementation. My students will all have Chromebooks that they will be able to take to and from school. The district set up an Edmodo network for teachers in our district and I will be using Edmodo with my students. I will also be using Google Drive and all that it entails for students to work collaboratively in Literature Circles and other projects.
One thing that I am looking forward to for the beginning of the school year is having students give input for setting up the classroom. I will be setting up the room initially but to build our classroom community, I will be turning over some of the control to my students. I am currently looking at some classroom layout tools that can be accessed online. One of the tools is http://classroom.4teachers.org/ This site allows a basic outline of the classroom and has basic classroom items that you can add to the floor plan. It is simple and includes most classroom type furniture that you would need to put in the room plan. Another site that I am considering is Floorplanner. I like that I can place windows and doors on this one but the furniture tools are a little bit lacking. It is a floor planner for more than just classrooms so you have to sift through all of the home or outdoor objects to find the pieces you need for a classroom. Lakeshore also has a classroom planner. It is very basic but also has the option to include items that they sell in their catalog and then order the entire classroom. Scholastic also offers a simple classroom layout maker. Right now I'm planning to use the classroom.4teachers site but I still need to do some preliminary work to see if it will be easy for students to use.
I went to visit my new classroom today and drop off a few things that I had in my house that needed to be in the classroom. I took a couple of pictures to show what it looks like before I start unpacking and setting up for the start of the year.
I am going on vacation with my family before the year begins so I will set up when we get back. We aren't allowed in the building to work until August 6th anyway. I am looking forward to getting started on this adventure in sixth grade after one last family adventure for the summer.
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