Back to School

     It's that time of year again. Here in NYC, we only have a few short weeks left before that exciting first day back with our new group of little ones! Parents and teachers alike are getting anxious and excited to start. Sometimes as teachers it's hard to know where to begin or what to begin with. We decided to share a few things we think about and do when setting up for the first days of Kindergarten.
     Although there are many beautiful and lavish bulletin board displays and labels you can buy out there, there is no need to go and spend all of that hard-earned money. However you set up the room will communicate a valuable message to the students. A bare classroom sends a message to the children that they will be taking part in the decorating and creating of it. In order to learn responsibility, children need experience making decisions and having responsibilities (Kohn 1998). It is not the teacher's classroom, but the whole community's classroom. You can start by displaying photographs of the students and the teachers (& other professionals that will be working in the class community). If you do not have photos of the students yet, you can take pictures of them as they arrive. They can also create a self-portraits, name tags, etc.

HOW DO YOU UNPACK/EXPLORE THE CLASSROOM TOGETHER?

     At the first community meeting you can have a group discussion about their "noticings" around the classroom. This invites the children to have a voice right away and sets the tone that their voice matters and you care about their perceptions. "To introduce the idea that the classroom organization is a shared responsibility, you might say to the children: 'We can see how this arrangement works for us over the next few weeks. If you have ideas about any changes, we can discuss them and decide together.'" You can move into a slow-paced scavenger hunt with labels. You can have pre-made labels or labels without the initial constant or blank note cards. Our top suggestion is that there is a picture to match (that can be pre-made, a photo of the actual object, or drawn by a student or teacher).
     It is important that everything in the classroom is introduced and talked about in the community. Sometimes it's easy to assume that children know how to use simple materials, but that is not always the case. This can be done during community circle. As with everything you start by asking what they students notice about that particular object. This can be linked back to prior experiences and asking what they might already know about it. It is very important that you not only tell the children how to use, store, and care for he materials, but you model the proper way for them to see it in action. As the community grows more autonomous you can introduce a new game or set of materials to a small group of children and ask them to teach the others.

     There are so many different ideas for exploring and creating your classroom community together. Stefanie has posted some photos below of her classroom in its current state. Of course, she's going back in next week to set up a little more and can take more pictures of the set-up journey.

Feel free to reply to the post with some of your fantastic ideas! 

bare-bones classroom for the start of kindergarten

simple block center before the community explores it together

You can label the blocks as a community by thinking together and coming up. One suggestion might be to trace each kind of block to create the label.

One way you can label your classroom as a community is to have a pre-made label scavenger hunt. Then a child can write the label to match. Alternatively, you could have them draw the pictures and write independently.  Labels can also be written via interactive writing; or have only the initial sound missing and the class can identify and label the initial sound of each word.

These the students' individual bins. You can label them with students' photos or they can create their own label as a great first day activity! :)

Kohn, Alfie. 1998. What to Look for in a Classroom . . .and Other Essays. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

An amazing and useful text to support this topic: 

Cheers, 

Stefanie & Chrissa