tour de first

Tomorrow's the big day. I've made a list of about 25-30 things we can do that take anywhere from 10-30+ minutes. From what I hear, first graders have really short attention spans so I'm trying to be prepared. Hopefully this will be enough. If not, I see an extra afternoon recess in our future.

Welcome to first grade. Here's what you see when you walk in the door. (Keep in mind that the flag on the top left is really in the 2/3 room, we just happened to have the partition open for chatting purposes.)

My office with the smallest desk I think I've ever used in 11 1/2 years of teaching. At least I won't have as much room for piles. The checkerboard was giving me a headache, so I covered it up with a pocket chart.

The unfinished writing center (I need to get a tri-fold board because you really can't hang things on the curtain) and my trusty Highlights map. That was the best free thing I ever got from Highlights. Little bitty desks.

Moving on over to the reading corner.

Then we have our little meeting area with the big white carpet. Lots of supplies, baskets of games, poetry notebooks, and manipulatives nearby. I've got more pocket charts than I can count and I'm putting them to good use this year with literacy centers.

The calendar board and listening center.
Closer view of the calendar and math boards as well as the word wall train.

And I just realized there is more that I didn't take pictures of, but it's mostly white board and bulletin board space that's empty waiting to be filled with stuff the kids make. I've kind of changed how I do my boards since my early years of teaching. I kind of pitched the cutsie pre-fab stuff to leave room for student work and I like it a whole lot better.

Now on to those last minute preparations. . .