Although I can't get into my classroom to post real pictures of all of these in action yet, I just wanted to share some things that might help make the transition back to school a bit easier for you!
The biggest things that I think about when setting up my classroom is what I want on my whiteboard and how I want to use it.
I always include a daily schedule, an "I'm finished" board, and lots of blank space.
Last year I also included space for our daily agenda messages, but this year we won't have agendas! If you do use agendas, you can check out this freebie that will hopefully help you train your little ones to find the correct box in their agendas! The freebie includes a set in English too, so your English partner can use the same system for consistency!
When I was a new teacher, I had a hard time finding a French alphabet line. I made my own, and you can check it out here!
I use these birthday cupcakes every year for my birthday wall. I use the space that is blocked by my door (when the door is open) because the birthday wall is something they will hunt for! It seemed like a good way to use that otherwise wasted wall real estate. Every year I write their birthdays on with wet erase markers, and wipe them off in June.
I've done my calendar many different ways, depending on where I put my carpet each year. I like changing things a LOT (even throughout the year) so I have photos of two different ways you can try it.
The first is simple - I bought a calendar from a teacher supply store, laminated it, and stapled it to my cork board. I wanted to get more vocabulary out of it each month, so I made calendar squares that change pictures for each month. We use the pictures on each square to practice vocabulary, colours, and question skills. There are so many different ways you can use them!
Which number has a school on it?
What colours are the books?
Do you take a bus to school?
What is the girl holding?
When the layout didn't work in my new room to have the calendar on a board, I moved it to a pocket chart. The calendar squares fit, and I updated my calendar pack to include headers for days and months. We use the bottom of the pocket chart for weather, words of the week, and verbs of the week.
To help my grade 1s with our routines, I also made a "J'ai fini" board. There are two ways you can use this, too. In the first way, you can sort classroom activities between things they CAN do, and things they can NOT do when they are done their work.
With this other set up, you can use steps. First, check your unfinished folder. THEN choose an activity. The activity choices are all of our centre games! PS I use electrical tape from Dollarama to make sections on my whiteboard - it peels of WAY better than the 3M tapes!
Since I teach grade 1, I always have the colours posted underneath my whiteboard.
If you're lucky enough to have enough French books that you can sort them, I have French book bin labels that you can now EDIT (yay!)
If you like to label your classroom with your students, you can check out these labels:
If you want to browse even more products that might help you set up your classroom, you can check them out here.
Hope your august days aren't going by too fast! It certainly feels like mine are!
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