(Warning: There are five small images that will load. Patience is a virtue! Thanks. ;-))
The first week of school is officially over. It was a whirlwind three days. It seemed like such a long week, though! I was successful in getting the room all ready by the time that I had the little munchkins marching in.
I take that back: I was almost ready for them!
 After the first day of school, I was anticipating the next two days to really get to know the kids better. I was not disappointed. Within the next two days, I read with each student, gauging his/her reading ability, and did some math with them to see what their calculation abilities were. I was also able to just observe each student as they worked, making mental notes about who was and who was not going to be sitting next to one another! As any teacher can attest, it doesn’t take long to figure that one out. Heh!
Thursday was my first day with my SED students on a “full-time” basis, meaning that they were in there until the time that they would normally leave. They are with me for much of the day, leaving after lunch. It was . . . interesting. I have two aides that come in with them, so the distraction is quite extreme. Not only are most of the boys (yes, they all happen to be boys) disruptive by talking loudly and declaring their disgust at any bit of work that is put in front of them, but they also talk with the aides as they try to help. Oh yeah, it’s a joy. I knew it was going to be loud; I just wasn’t ready for the degree of noise that was going to be emanating from my classroom. The wall between my room and the next is a folding one, so I told Katy (who teaches next door) to not expect a quiet room this year. (Usually hers is the noisier of the two!)
 With each passing hour, I grew more and more tired. I am really going to try to NOT complain about this class because they all seem to be very nice kids! However, I am used to a certain amount of control (what teacher isn’t?), and I know already that I’m going to be doing some major revamping of my classroom management techniques. Oh yeah.
Some pictures of the classroom:
 Yeah yeah yeah. You can see that I have a couple of things that need to find a home. One of my former student’s parent last year donated a huge box of books to my class. Unfortunately, most of the books were 5th – 9th grade reading level. That’s why they are still in the box and not on the shelves. Unfortunately, the picture doesn’t allow the clarity to be able to see that all the books have little color stickers on them. Yellow, blue, green, pink, and red stickers all indicate what reading level the books are. I have a library helper that makes sure that the books stay in order. Yay!
 We call this the reading pit. It’s another view of the classroom library. See the poster on the left? It says (in big letters), “I HATE TO READ” and in smaller letters down below “because it makes me friendly.” Yeah, I think that’s funny. It’s more funny when the kids look at it for the first time and exclaim, “Miss H!” And then they finish reading it and chuckle. Hey, anything to make the kids smile, right?
 Here you can see another view of the room (from the reading pit, actually). The bulletin board is over a whiteboard. I don’t have much wall space, so I have to utilize the whiteboard in a manner that it was not intended. The thing that I have to remember when I am putting up things on the bulletin board is to NOT use the stapler. ;-) One of our back-to-school activities will fill the board. It won’t stay blank, I promise!
Well, that is a little tour of the classroom. I hope that you enjoyed. It’s a full room, but hopefully the fullness will be in learning and fun! (Cheesy, I know!)
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