My Classroom

My Students

My days are spent in 1st grade with a marvelous group of 6 and 7 year olds. A typical class size in my school is between 20 and 25, with a small population of students with Individual Education Plans (IEP), and who are multilingual. In more recent years, classes have trended to having more males. The community surrounding my school places high value in education.

Our Happy Place

The physical environment can make or break a classroom culture. Each year, when I set up my room after a summer away, I reevaluate the colors, decor, and set up to ensure that the space is welcoming and not overwhelming to students. Every item in my classroom is intentional and has a purpose.

Colors including green, blue, and yellow are heavily used to create a calming atmosphere. Red cupboards are covered with light green contact paper to mute the harshness. Desks are strategically placed in pods or rows depending on student need.

My classroom also features two carpet areas, a luxury I'm afforded when class sizes are small. This allows for two learning spaces, a dedicated portion of my room for our Number Corner, and a variety of free choice seating.

Our Class is a Family

Together, as a class family, we create a classroom charter. Students collaborate on how they want to feel in our classroom, and then list ways that they can help others feel these desired feelings during our time together. Once created, students sign the charter as a reminder of the promise that they are keeping to their peers. This agreement is often referred back to in times of disagreement or undesired choices. While this changes from year to year, the core often remains the same. Students want to feel welcome and safe when they walk into school. It is so empowering for them to take ownership of how they can impact their classmates' attitudes and feelings towards school.

Student Voice

This is not my classroom -- it is OUR classroom. Students deserve to see themselves in the space where they spend most of their day. Deliberate choices on my part result in an environment where my 1st grade students belong and want to be.

Art Gallery - Weekly, we update our art creations. Each student has a clip that belongs to them, and where their art always hangs. These works were insipred by our latest read aloud, The Wild Robot

Class Quilt - Our math curriculum - Bridges in Mathematics - has 1st grade classes create a quilt focusing on counting by 5s in the first unit. This is one of the first ways that we build class community and it remains part of our room until the end of the year.

Class Family Wall - Names have value. Full stop. Each child is worthy of having their name pronounced and spelt correctly by peers and all adults who walk into our classroom. To ensure this, I consciously dedicate a space where each name belongs, along with a self portrait.

Our Mood Meter - To work along side our RULER social emotional learning curriculm, students collaborated in small groups by sorting through magazines and finding images that matched their feeling word's emotion, color, or made them feel that way. It was so sweet to see groups sharing images with other feeling word groups!

Class Mantra

If you say or hear something enough, you're more likely to believe it. This goes for language full of optimism or pessimism.

Every morning during our morning meeting, and afternoon before getting to our transportation lines, we circle up and take turns putting our hand into the circle and stating "I matter." Once each student has their hand in the circle, we chant together "I belong here and I'm happy to be here."

This mantra is also posted behind my workspace to serve as a reminder to students throughout the day.

I cannot control what messages students are hear about themselves or are telling to themselves, but I can give them the words and power to change the self-fulfilling prophecy.

In my classroom, each student matters to me, to their peers, to our community. Each student belongs.

Safe for all Emotions

Emotional regulation is not a skill that I take for granted. Since my first year teaching, I have made a consious effort to create space for my students to naviagate tricky problems and big emotions right inside our classroom.

By holding students accountable to name their feeling, what they need, and what they can do in our calm corner, this becomes a place of expectation. They can expect me to check in with them when their timer is done, and I can expect them to reenter the learning space quickly and effectively.

Having a space within our classroom that allows feelings to be felt teaches students that they are not too much, their feelings are welcome, andThey are welcome, just as they are.

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