Thief!

Apologies for it being so long since I last posted! Summer turned out to be very busy and I've hardly had a moment to think about school. My headteacher let everyone know last week that she was opening the school up for a few days, which thankfully kicked me back into gear soon enough J 

First things first, I made some little desk caddies to keep the children’s pens and pencils tidy: 

Superglue – Can’t remember where I got it from!

Small baskets – £2 for five at The Original Factory Shop

Plastic cups – 89p for twelve at B&M

Clip stands – £3 for four from eBay

Basically I just superglued the cups and clip stands to the bottom of each basket and waited for them to dry...

...then attached the table signs I had printed and laminated in the morning. I used these Polka Dot Classroom Labels from Teachers Pay Teachers to make the table signs, and used various free fonts I downloaded recently to write the table numbers. If you would like to know the name of a particular font, leave me a comment and I can hunt it out. Because the table signs looked really cute, I made a little one for my desk too!

The classroom labels turned out to be useful for lots of different things, meaning that my classroom now has a subtle polka dot theme. From the behaviour chart....

Inspired by this clip chart (amongst others! There are loads of clip charts floating about. I decided it was easier to use my whiteboard and Blu Tack than wooden clips.)

...to the chairs...

...the trays...

...and my pencil baskets.

I really take umbrage to children standing sharpening pencils when they should be working. It seems they’ll happily sharpen for hours if you let them, so I've employed this system in the hope it will cut down on time wasting!

I got the inspiration for my door sign from an amazing blog post about classroom set-up, but obviously didn't favourite the page at the time and now feel bad I can’t give credit where it’s due L Although my school isn't huge, I still like the idea that people will know immediately where to find us if we are needed. The plan is that my line leader will change the sign to the correct place whilst I am getting everyone else lined up and ready to move to a different part of the building.

 

 I honestly can’t remember where I pinched this idea from either, but I like the very visual toileting system, especially for my little Primary Twos:

The idea is that the red sign will be facing the class whilst I am explaining a task, and then I will flip it round to the green side once I'm sure everyone has settled into the task. I really don’t like having to explain myself numerous times because children were busy traipsing to the toilet when they should be listening to instructions. You can download my PDF for the toilet passes and the Wait/Go sign here. I cut out the two signs and laminated them back to back. 

This is (yet another) stolen idea:

I spotted a picture of wooden pegs with drawing pins glued onto them on Pinterest and decided I would try and use the idea in my class. I have a huge notice board at the back of my classroom, so I am going to attach one peg per child, and get them to choose their favourite piece of work over the past week to be displayed for the next week. I got my superglue out again and stuck name labels onto each peg. 

When I was first accepted onto my teaching course, my secondary school English teacher told me that teaching mostly involves stealing other people’s good ideas. It seems I took that piece of advice and ran with it! So none of this is very original I'm afraid, but I'm pleased with how my wee classroom is starting to look and hope some of this post might prove useful for others to steal from in turn!