The Destitute Teacher

Specifically, 10 things I wish I knew about setting up a classroom as a beginning teacher. 1. It will take far longer than you think. You may have it all mapped out in your head, but you will need a large amount of time to put it into action. If you can, get into the classroom at the end of the previous school year. Map it out in your head. Take the staples out of the wall if you can, and hang backing material. Trust me, it is far cooler (and easier) in December, rather than sweating it out late January. 2. Bring a bucket of hot, soapy water and cloths. Chances are those tote trays, maths equipment and book boxes are going to need a really good wash out. They are disgusting, and if you don't want to touch them, then neither will your students. 3. Bring needle nose pliers, music and something nice to drink. There is likely to be many, many staples in the walls. Even if you hang backing fabric, you will need to take them out so they don't ruin the effect of your display. 4. Don...

I can't claim the credit for this post. The idea came from this pin (see more of my school based Pintrest board here ). I bought my plastic containers from my local Countdown, and I think it was around $3 for five. I also discovered that margarine containers fit borders too (just), however they are not clear and make it harder to see what is inside. If you are going to go to the expense and bother of using borders in your classroom, then I thoroughly recommend spending a little extra and protecting them while in storage. Some might say it is a little over the top in organisation. I say its a beautiful thing.

I love a good display, and this one lingered in the back of my mind before becoming an actuality. Black fabric $4.99 p/m @ Spotlight Star borders from an old display (or roughly $9.99 a pack) Clear A4 display pockets part of student stationery pack (or $3 for 10 @ KMart) Letters from an old display Laminated stars from an ex Book Fair display Paper clips Sellotape I popped a strip of sellotape along the bottom of each clear pocket and on the top corner of each back page. This stopped them from splitting and cracking when stapled to the wall. A paper clip on each pocket stops the front page from sagging. The idea is that during the year each new piece of published writing will be added to the front of the folder, creating some lovely displays. At the end of the year I will pull them down and the children will have a collection of their writing to take home. Note: absolutely in love with the crochet cushion cover I made (on the couch) to cover a cushion I purchased from the loca...

This year my school has purchased the LetterLand programme to improve our phonological knowledge and awareness. We are still at the very beginning of the programme, but I am hoping to feature a few ideas on here over the next little while, to help someone else kick start their programme if needed. This first tidbit is something that arose from our discussions before beginning the programme. We noticed that the train frieze does not have character names... and we wanted something to refer to on the walls of the classroom. I photocopied one of the BLMS from the Teachers Book, and blew it up to A3 size then laminated it. Each name tag was then cut out, and as we introduce each character the children take turns to blu-tack the name tag to the train. A simple idea that has been really effective. They love to have the privilege of tacking up the name tag, and love being introduced to new characters. Success.

This term our focus for Te Reo is Greetings. So I just had to share a set of basic greetings posters that I made for my classroom. There is a huge deficit of free Maori printables out there... so hopefully this is one step in the right direction! You can access the documents from my Google Drive here .

So, so happy with the final results of our beginning of the year, class collaborative art projects! Clap along if you feel that this is a craft for you. Day one we began to create some class bunting. I already had crochet bunting hanging in the classroom, so we have a bit of a theme going on. I made a triangle template and traced out 24 triangles onto fabric. These were roughly cut out, so that I could name them on the outside of the triangle and be able to read it clearly. We put the traced side down on the table (so that I had clear cutting lines later) and we talked about not mixing colours, background/foreground and bright/interesting colours. The children painted self portraits in any old colours they choose. I limited their colour palettes to bright tones. Day One we painted basic shapes- head, shoulders, background. Day Two we added detail. Day Three we added further detail if needed. I took the triangles home to cut and assemble. Each 'flag' was cut out and re-na...

Here in NZ we tend to cover The Treaty of Waitangi each year as we work together to establish our classroom rules. Invariably, we end up coming to an agreement and each child 'signs' it to show that they will support and uphold what they have discussed. Each year, I inwardly groan at how boring my class treaty always ends up looking. That is, until I came across this .jpg on Pintrest. It got me thinking... perhaps we could create a set of 'golden' rules.... rules that are displayed around a sun... and the rays of the sun were our handprints... and our handprints were our pledge to uphold the rules. I pitched the idea to the kids and they LOVED it. Each day we painted large sheets of newsprint in a messy, Eric Carle kind of way. Just pour the paint straight on the paper and get the kids to go mad. Geez, it was fun! I have since learned a good lesson: don't use newsprint. It's too flimsy. Go for something a little thicker. With a little help I got the bac...

It is the start of a brand new school year in lil ol' NZ, and for the next few posts I am going to give you the grand tour of my classroom. I am beginning the round with my new school hat storage system... it has made my life so much easier, and was quick and simple to make. I bought two over-the-door-shoe-organizers from K-Mart for $8.00 each (just in case you are wondering, there is 16 pockets in each organizer). These were stapled to the back of my class library shelves. Top tip- use the staple gun at an angle. It makes it way easier to get the staples out later if there is a little gap at one end. I chopped off the bottom rows, as they were not needed, and ran a quick strip of patterned duct tape across the top and bottom (before running out). I then added laminated name labels (stapled on) and a sign. Quick, cheap, and easy (wink wink). I love it because I can see at a glance who doesn't have their hat at school today, and their hats are no longer scattered around my...

This post has been a long time coming... Last year our school had an art exhibition, where each child needed to produce an artwork to show. My class of seven year olds was eternally optimistic and wanted to produce FOUR smaller artworks, in a mixed media study of owls. We didn't quite make it to four, but gave it a good shot. Our first project was to produce a salt dough owl. Each child got a handful of dough (I think I used about 3kg of flour in total) and we followed the tutorial here Be warned- it took two days to bake 21 A5 sized dough owls enough. And baking salt dough smells kinda funny. Once baked, we looked at the process of painting our owls. We under-coated them with white, and slowly layered our paint. I wanted to emphasise the importance of getting the maximum effect- waiting to dry between each layer meant that we didn't end up with a horrible mess of brown paint. This process took a long time. In the end, to get it done I would have a painting table set ...

I have craft envy. I troll Pintrest and other blogs looking for sweet ideas for my own classroom, but as I do I am hit by the availability and affordability of crafting supplies in America and the UK. We often get supplies in NZ after a long delay, and it takes even longer for the supplies to become cheap. Of note I have noticed that more and more dollar shops are beginning to stock teacher specific supplies- borders, certificates etc. Have a look around as there is some pretty neat stuff out there. Spotlight has a range of affordable classroom decoratives in some stores. A hunt through Geoffs Emporium on Dominion Road in Auckland resulted in a roll of patterned duct tape for $3. Major score! Not in love with the pattern, but excited by the possibilities I chucked it in the basket and trundled home with it. I inherited some dilipdated A3 clearfiles at the end of last year... perfect beginners project! These folders needed some love, as they were scuffed and torn, but not ready to be...

As mentioned in the post before, this term we have an Arts focus. So I inquired of my students... what area/media would you like to focus on? 21 lovely littlies all put their hands up and said... knitting. Now I love crochet, do knit some times and am an avid crafter. I must admit I was thrilled that they want to tackle knitting, and immediately began to plan the unit. I plan to integrate content on primary/ secondary colors, brights v.s. pastels, and how our color choices suit our purpose. I hope that we will get to start off with making some small finger puppets as a learn to knit project. Teaching 21 six and seven year olds to knit is quite daunting, but i'm hoping that we will get to the dizzying heights of yarn-bombing before the term is through. Perhaps a little too ambitious. I decided that inspiration was key, and so have set about yarn bombing our own classroom with hand-crocheted items.  Rainbow bunting now hangs along our back wall. The wall is divi...

This term we have an arts focus, and I am almost beside myself with excitement. I have such large ambition for our artwork, and so little time... we need to get started! Last week we were lucky to begin our art unit with a trip to the local art gallery. This was a truly fantastic visit. We we guided around the gallery by the world's most amazing educator (I spent my time rhapsodising over her behaviour management and questioning skills), and then got to make our own artwork. The gallery provided some lovely heavy-weight watercolour paper. We did a very quick and simple line drawing of a local mountain/ocean scene. The painting was then completed with a lovely set of watercolours.... you know the kind that are a dry block on the palette and then you add water and it works? They came out just gorgeous. I love the way the watercolours have those swishes of colour through them... even the least artistic of us all had spectacular results! I mounted them on black paper a...

I luuuuuuurve dangling displays from the ceiling. If you don't need to duck as you walk through a classroom, then there is something wrong with the classroom- or you are really short. Hanging displays maximizes the space that you have- because lets face it- the wall space in classrooms is pitiful. I have a series of writing exemplars hanging in the classroom, and have just finished a set of 'childrens rights and responsibilities' mini posters to hang along the window. I'm sure there is many other uses, and we could all have dangly bits everywhere very soon! So here we go- easy peasy hanging displays :) These work best with firm materials- laminated paper or cardboard is perfect. Just punch a holes top and tail of each step of your hanging displays. Attach to each other with paper clips. Plastic coated ones paper clips are great- they don't scratch your hard work and they look better :). Paper clips mean that they swing in the breeze, and hang nicely. They...

I am an avid lover of the "free" concept. If not free, then it must be as close to free as possible in order to warm my heart completely. If I can find something that is 'free' AND 'pretty' then I am on cloud nine for several days. These tins really tick my boxes. They are recycled tin cans donated by a commercial kitchen (thank you mummy), covered in the prettiest paper that I can possibly find and then coated in decoupage finish. Marae kitchens are also a great source of the big tins. First, find yourself a collection of empty, clean tin cans. The ones that I use were once 2kg tins of fruit, so there is no staining on the inside.  The 2kg cans are ideal for class or group sets of equipment. However the average family does not eat 2kgs of tinned fruit very often, so also try to collect other sizes- kidney beans, pineapple, condensed milk, and single serve beetroot also make great tins for covering and give a variety of sizes. The labels remove really easi...