T minus one week until students

One more week and our empty halls will fill up with the sound of excited students finding their classrooms. I'm very excited to meet my new classes. We managed to fix up the schedule today. It took a very long time but it seems to work now. Along with teaching Intensive French to my own class, I'm also teaching Pre-Intensive French to the grade 4 and 3/4 split classes, IF continuation to the other grade 5 and I'll also be teaching them art. It's a pretty full schedule but we've worked it out pretty well I think.

My room is coming together. The other grade 5 teacher found an amazing drawing done by a former TA to put in my classroom. It looks amazing. I've also created my reading corner and arranged my desks. I think I may have to change the formation though as my numbers will probably go up from what I've heard. This is what it looks like so far.

I still need to put up my board for my sound and word wall. I think I will buy some fabric to cover the bulletin boards for that, and I will put up a few posters and I need to finish my Schedule and Responsibilities board I started today.

Tomorrow we are in a Professional Development about 21C learning in the morning and back at school in the afternoon for more meetings and working in our classrooms.

For teachers and students, what do you like to do to get ready for the first day of school? 

Readying my classroom

I had a busy day at my new school today. I met two teachers I'll be working with, the 3/4 teacher and the other new Grade 5 teachers. Both seem great and I know that all that I've heard about how supportive this staff is will turn out to be true. I also had a great conversation with our principal. Turns out he grew up in the same area as my dad and probably knows some relatives. My preliminary class list and schedule look great. Getting very excited to meet my new class.

A new classroom is like a blank slate; it's very difficult at first to decide where to start and what to do with it. In Intensive French we are encouraged to populate our walls with student work, more than store bought posters so I resisted the urge to buy a lot of posters. I found a few I wanted though, one of the Canadian anthem in French that I thought was important to have for instance.

I also set up my Birthday bulletin board with stuff I found at a dollar store in Tracadie-Sheila.

What took me the longest was the bulletin board out in the hallway. I decided to use my new die cut letters to write a message. I forgot how hard die cut letters were to get out of the sheets. I'm planning to add some pictures to the the board. Now it looks a little... menacing with the black on red? Or maybe that's just me. Any ideas for what sorts of pictures I could put around?

Next week we're back to school all week. Some days we have professional development meetings but we'll also get more time to work in our classrooms so I can get everything more organized before my students come. 

*update* One of my friends pointed out that I left an 'e' out of 'bienvenue'. That explains why I had an 'e' left over when I was done.

Bonjour et bienvenue!

Welcome to our classroom blog! Here you will be able to see some of what we are doing in our classroom including updates on projects that we are working on and events in our school. I hope that eventually most of the blogging will come from the students both in French and English. I am very excited to start sharing our work on-line.