Visual Classroom Management Freebies for Back to School

I can't believe back-to-school time is coming up so quickly! I've been thinking about my classroom decor and decided to go a little different route this year. I want to try and use as many actual photos as possible to make things super clear for my students and help with explicitly teaching classroom procedures.

I've made some new visual posters and wanted to share them with all of you.

My first change was with my class rules posters. I have used a modified version of the Whole Brain Teaching rules for the last several years.

I also wanted explicit Voice Level posters for my students.

If you haven't checked out A Day in First Grade's blog post about her morning meeting, it's a must read {here}. I loved how she gave her students three choices for sitting on the carpet. Last year, I had a lot of students who didn't want to sit criss-cross applesauce. I think my students will be much happier with these options.

If you're interested in any of these visuals, you can download them all below for free by clicking on the pictures!

I hope these are helpful in your classrooms!

Covering Up the Ugly! - Shelf Makeover

Last year, I took over a classroom mid-year.  I didn't have much time to decorate, so I did a quick rearrange and change bulletin boards on a weekend.  I purged the rest of the year (read about the moldy play dough here) so that I could start off this year FRESH!

I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It to show how I covered up my ugly shelves.

I decided that there was NO way I could look at these ugly shelves in my room anymore!

This one actually had wood grain contact paper on top of the ugly shelf.  :/

I didn't want to take the time to repaint them, so I made a quick trip to Target.  I bought contact paper (not my favorite pattern but beggars can't be choosers), duct tape, and a sheet.

I covered the shelves in contact paper.

To make sure the contact paper sticks, I applied duct tape along all the seams and corners.

I have a TON of velcro in my room, so I ran a strip of velcro across the front.

Then I cut the sheet to fit, hemmed the edges, and applied a strip of velcro to the sheet.

Now my shelves look better, the stuff in the shelves are hidden from sight, and it looks way better!

Best of all, I can easily take this off if I decide I don't like it anymore (or find a better contact paper pattern).  It was cheap.  I only used a little more than 1 roll of contact paper, less than a roll of duct tape, and 1 flat sheet.  And it was quick to do, took a couple of hours to do 3 shelves.

Come Check Out My Classroom!

I've been back at work a few days and figured it was about time I showed you some updated pictures of my classroom.  Plus, my sweet friend Corinna from Surfin' Through Second is having a Classroom Theme Linky Party that I couldn't pass up.

This summer I kept seeing all the really cute chalkboard themes going around the blogging community, and the cuteness really grew on me.  Plus, I have this hideous red floor that I needed to somehow how work into a theme.  

You can see for yourself below this horrible red floor!  Whose idea was it to put that in a classroom anyway?

Here's my calendar area.  I really love this board.  My Whole Brain Teaching class rules can be downloaded for free {here}.  I love the calendar set I'm using from Growing Kinders.  

 I also love this bulletin board (please disregard the fuzzy IPhone pic).  The top pictures are Hawaii's  General Learner Outcomes that can downloaded {here} if you happen to be a Hawaiian teacher.  My color word posters can be found {here} and I have another version found {here}.  The glue bottles are another freebie from The Teacher Wife that can be downloaded {here}.

These Chalkboard Touch Point Number Posters can be found {here}.

I love my Chalkboard Alphabet Cards that can be found {here}.

I redid my word wall cards to match the images in a new intervention decoding program we are using.  I love these, but I don't know if anyone else uses the Sonday program.  So I haven't uploaded these to my TpT store.

I also organized all of my books by topics.  It's been much easier this year already.  You can find my Chalkboard Book Labels {here}, but I haven't included the letter cards yet.  I'll try to get those added in this weekend.  And boy do I need to bring in my camera to take better pictures for you guys.  Maybe I can remember to do that this weekend!

Don't forget to stop by Surfin' Through Second to see everyone else's rooms!

Classroom Makeover (the beginning)

School starts tomorrow for Hawaiian teachers, so it's time to get back in the swing of things.  I've been up to my room a few times to start working.  I got to move into a new room this year (yeah for no more sharing!).

But that means, I walked into this.  When I opened the door, I found this.  Not looking too bad!

But then I looked at the other side of the room and found all this piled up!  That's a lot of stuff that needs to be organized and put somewhere.

I haven't gotten much done yet, but I did at least get my bulletin boards covered.  I absolutely adore these borders.  I used flat black sheets from Wal-Mart.  Best part was that they were only $4.61 each.  I love hanging charts and student work on black backgrounds. 

I didn't get much done after I hung borders, because I have a billion books.  Seriously, it feels like a billion.  What in the world, will I do with all of these books?  There's WAY too many.  I pretty much left my room just like this today.  I gotta get really busy tomorrow and figure out something to do with these books.  Any suggestions?

Make sure you check back tomorrow, because I'm joining in a Hawaiian blog hop with freebies.