Back to School Night: How to Be Prepared

Back to School night is a very exciting time! You finally get to meet your students and show off the room that you have been working so hard on.

At my school, Back to School nights feel like a blur. The parents and students come in and want to meet you. You greet them as quickly as possible so you can meet the next student. While trying to remember your new students names, you're also having to remember to remind parents to pick up the important paper work. And then it starts all over again with a new student. It's very exciting, but VERY busy!

Since Back to School night is so busy, it's important to make it very easy for parents to understand what they need and what they can do around the class.

1.  Set up your sign-in area so you can look back over to see how many students visited. 

Sign-In Sheet Download

2. Set up a place in the room where parents can pick up important documents. Make sure that you label each page as "Take One". If you want to be on the ball, you can go ahead and make a packet for the parents.

3.  Make sure to have a parent/student inventory for your parents to take home. This helps you learn a lot about the student in a quick amount of time. I have used the same inventory for the past couple of years, and it is very helpful. Marsha McGuire did a great job creating the inventory. 

Click here for Parent Inventory. 

4. Have a few activities around you room that the students can do if they would like. I would suggest setting out books, a sight word center, and math manipulative. This lets the students become comfortable and excited to be in your class room with their parents.

5. Lastly, I love giving my students a "Night Before Kindergarten" poem. They love being able to leave the classroom with something, and I am sure the night before school, they are excited to open the poem. Class of Kinder has made a cute poem that I know they would love. You can find her poem here. 

Good luck with your Back to School Night! It will go by so quickly! Enjoy every moment. 

If you have any questions, please comment below. Don't forget to Follow Mrs. Peay's Kindergarten Adventure blog! 

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Start Off with a Great Year with a Rules and Procedures Checklist

Oh the joys of planning out your rules and procedures in your classroom. It is SO important to begin planning how you want your classroom to run before the first day of school.

My first year, I made the mistake of not having a very good thought out plan of how I wanted the classroom to run. I definitely learned that procedures are so, so important to teach. And don't make the mistake of thinking they will learn them on one day. Keep practicing, and practicing until your students have got them down. It may seem very redundant, but it will save you come December!

When it comes to teaching the rules and procedures, you should model, have a student model, and then let everyone practice the procedure. If you need to, you can have multiple students model how the procedure should be done. And it's ok for you to do this process every day.

I love to re-evaluate at the end of each year to figure out what I could do differently to make the classroom a more positive environment for learning. I take some time in the summer to figure out what could be done. I also think about what other teachers have done to make their classroom successful.

I have created a checklist to help me remember all of the rules and procedures that we would experience throughout the day. Below is an example of the checklist, and you can download the checklist at the bottom.

You can download Checklist here!

Don't forget to continue teaching the rules and procedures even after the first week. 

If this posted helped you, sign up for future emails and free downloads! I would love to hear your feedback if this checklist has helped you become better prepared for the beginning of the year! Comment below. 

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Classroom Decorating Made Simple

Classroom decorating can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you are a first year teacher. You want to make your classroom the cutest on the hall and you may feel like you have to have every wall filled. STOP. This is not true. I am into my third year of teaching, and I have learned that decorating your classroom can be simple and cheap!

Before you begin to decorate your classroom, you need to decide how you want your room to be set up. I have sat in my classroom for over an hour trying to decide the best way to place the furniture. I would move a table to one place, and the next minute, decide to move it across the room. I like to make my classroom feel open, with as much space between the furniture as there can be. You may adjust your room several times throughout the year to find what works best for your classroom.

When you are starting to think about decorating your classroom, find decorations that are cheap and can be used throughout the year. Hey, if you are great at DIY, it's the best way to go. For my classroom, I decided to make and hang pompom balls from the ceiling to make the room feel less like a classroom (made from tissue paper). I used a rug and a lamp that I had in college for the reading area. I was able to find calendar and birthday posters from  Amazon. I then found beginning of the year posters from Teacher's Pay Teachers; this included color names, ABC chart, and numbers up to 10.  Your classroom does not need to have everything that you would learn up at the beginning of the year.  I put boarder around the white board to add small decorations. I also created a bulletin board that I could post anchor charts for what we were learning. This past year, I added a desk cover and valencies in the windows to make my classroom feel more like home, but this is not necessary.

It is so much fun to decorate your classroom. Don't get overwhelmed by feeling your classroom is not as decorated as everyone else. Your classroom may look like it does not have much at the beginning of the year, but I promise that you will have student work, anchor charts and posters covering all of your walls at the end of the year. You will also find more decorations throughout the year that you can add to your classroom. Your classroom will look drastically different at the end of the year!

Enjoy decorating your classroom!!

For more ideas on how to decorate your classroom, follow Mrs. Peay's Kindergarten Adventures.

Thank you to Lindsay Catanzaro for helping make the beautiful door!!

Praise Your Students with Brag Tags

My first year teaching, I struggled with finding a good behavior management tool that the students would like. I wanted to make sure that I praised the students for their positive behavior, but I didn't want to go broke doing it.

I decided to try out Brag Tags by A is for Apple off of Teachers Pay Teachers. From the very first day that I began to use them, I fell in love. I decided that I wanted to use the Brag Tags to praise my students, and I also wanted the students to be able to take the Brag Tag home and show their parents. I printed out the brag tags, and laminated them. If a student received a Brag Tag, it would be turned into a necklace with string. I would make sure that the class congratulated the student that received a Brag Tag. The students were also able to wear the Brag Tags throughout the day, and they could even keep them at home to show off to their parents. I wanted to make sure that I created them to be able to go home as another great way to brag on the students to their parents.

At the beginning of the year, I would give out Brag Tags randomly to students who were caught showing great behavior. If I saw a student sitting quietly, they would received a Brag Tag for that. As the year progressed, I started to focus on all of the students working towards a Special Brag Tag, or the Awesome Day Brag Tag.

Everyday, we would end our day by giving a student an "I Had an Awesome Day" Brag Tag. I felt like this was a great way to end our day. It really taught the students to be supportive, even when they didn't get the reward; this took a while for some students to grasp, but by the end of the year, they were very supportive. We would also have days where we would have a Special Brag Tag that the students were working towards. At the end of the day, the Special Brag Tag would be given out.

I highly recommend trying Brag Tags this year. I plan to continue using Brag Tags in my classroom this year. It is a great way to praise students for their positive behavior, and teaches students to support others even when they did not receive a Brag Tag.

If I did not answer a question that you may have, comment below. Don't forget to follow Mrs. Peay's Kindergarten Adventures!

Parents Will Love You!!

During my first year teaching, I had a hard time remembering to communicate with parents, and share our successes in the classroom. I knew that I needed to find something that could help me out with communicating with parents; we all know that is a very important part of teaching!

One of my colleagues suggested that I look into Bloomz. I looked into Bloomz and fell in love. It had everything that I was looking for with communicating with parents. I used it as a commutation tool in my classroom last year, and the parents loved it! I want to share some of the features that Bloomz has to offer. 

Top 5 Reasons Why I Love Bloomz

1. You can send announcements out to parents, and they will receive them immediately on their phones. I've had several times where I forgot to send reminder stickers home, and I will get on Bloomz to send the parents the reminder. 
   
2. You can post pictures to show parents what is happening in the classroom. I know that this is a feature that parents love. They want to see their child in action throughout the day, and they want to see what activities we are doing. I also love that when parents take pictures of students in the class, like when we are on a field trip, they can post the pictures on Bloomz in a collaborative album.
   
   
3. You can ask parents to volunteer to bring certain supplies into class. I used this feature a lot during the Christmas season, since we were doing a lot of fun activities. The parents will see that I am asking for something, and they will sign up for that item.
   
4. Every student has their own profile that will go to the parent of the child. You can post work that the student is doing. I loved using this feature for writing and showing off their work. The students even loved me sharing their work with the parents. 
5. You can create a class calendar of important dates for parents to get reminders. I made sure that I put our library date, so that parents could remember that our library day was always Friday; we rarely had students forget their books. I was also able to put important events, like Kindergarten Graduation. 
   

Bloomz is very easy to navigate and do. It is so quick to type up a reminder, or share a student's success with parents. I had great feedback from the parents!! I definitely recommend trying out Bloomz for the year.

If you have any questions, comment below and I will be happy to answer. If this post was helpful, don't forget to share it with your friends! 

Teacher Wish List: Printout Included!

As I mentioned in the blog What Do I Need to Order?!, you should make a list for what you need to purchase with money that you are given from your school, and a list for what the parents can volunteer to purchase. A Teacher's Wish List is a great way to get items that are fun for the class, and get a few necessities that were not included on the supply list the students recieved. Below is a list of what you could ask parents to supply:

Teacher Wish List

- Crayola markers 

- Play-Doh

- Gallon size bags: I used a lot of these to organize the centers. 

- Sandwich size bags: Also great for putting centers into.

- Baby wipes

- Regular wipes (Clorox)

- Clothes pins: These are great for centers. 

- Paper towels

- Books 

- Kitchen toys: I needed this as a first year teacher! 

- Board games

- Essential Oils: I had a parent give our classroom a defuser, and we used On Guard and Orange oils. - Dish soap

- Stickers 

- Colored Cardstock 

- Post-it notes

*** All of the items list above are things that I asked parents to get, or I am planning on asking for this year. 

If you are going to do a wish list, make sure you print out individual cards, or write the items on a post-it note; this way, the parents can take the card home with them for shopping. Make sure that your wish list is visible during Open House night. I have posted mine on the white board, and have also seen teachers lay the wish list out on a table. I have created a wish list that you can edit to suit your class, print out the cards, and display them so the parents can take several home. I tell parents to pick however many they want to volunteer for, and they can take the cards with them.


Teacher Wish List: Free Download!

*** If you would like to edit the PowerPoint to make it your own, comment below.

Ready to Sing and Learn?

YouTube is a great resource to use in any classroom and has some awesome songs that help the students learn and retain new information. You can go ahead and get on the ball by finding songs that will fit what you are teaching, create a library with playlist on YouTube, and you will be ready to sing and learn! Follow the steps below to create your library for your classroom! Your team will be so impressed that you are prepared for fun learning!

Creating a Youtube Library 

1. Login or create an account for YouTube.
2. Search for videos that fit your grade and content. 
3. Once you have found a song that you like, press the + Add to below the video. 
4. Click Create New Playlist. 
5. Create a name for the subject of the video. My playlist are Math, ELA, Writing, Science, etc.
   
6. Continue looking for videos that fit your grade level and content, and save them to your playlist. 
7. When you are ready to use in your classroom, go to Library on YouTube, and all of your playlist will be there. 
8. To assure that no inappropriate ads pop up, copy the link of the video that you like, and paste the video link here. It cost a little money, but will be well worth it, especially when you have an observation! Or, you can use AdShield to download the videos to your computer; you will be guaranteed no adds, plus your viedos will be saved when you're offline. 

I love to sing and dance along with my students while they are learning. You can hear them throughout the day singing the new songs that they have learned. You can find link to my playlist here.

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