A kindergarten position opened up this summer at my school, and I jumped at it! I loved second grade, but I was ready for a change. The position entailed team teaching with one of my good friends, which was something I had always wanted to try. She and the previous teacher tried out team teaching in kindergarten the previous year and had tremendous success. After watching them and hearing all about it, I knew I had to go for it.
We have two classrooms, one is hers and the other is mine. We have a total of 37 students, but we divide them up into two teams: green and yellow teams. We split for things like unpacking, lunch count, attendance, going to lunch, packing up, and math. It also helps us at parent teacher conference, since we each meet with our own team's parents. We do teach whole group math to our own teams. It helps break up our morning and helps with the noise. We do lots of group work in math, so it's just easier that way. We each lead teach every other day to the whole group in the other subjects. The other teacher is helping students, passing out materials, and getting things ready for the next activity. I am telling you that I am not sure if I can ever go back to doing it by myself! ;) I have already given you a tour of my classroom, so I want to share Holly's room with you today!
We have two classrooms, one is hers and the other is mine. We have a total of 37 students, but we divide them up into two teams: green and yellow teams. We split for things like unpacking, lunch count, attendance, going to lunch, packing up, and math. It also helps us at parent teacher conference, since we each meet with our own team's parents. We do teach whole group math to our own teams. It helps break up our morning and helps with the noise. We do lots of group work in math, so it's just easier that way. We each lead teach every other day to the whole group in the other subjects. The other teacher is helping students, passing out materials, and getting things ready for the next activity. I am telling you that I am not sure if I can ever go back to doing it by myself! ;) I have already given you a tour of my classroom, so I want to share Holly's room with you today!
This is the green team room where we do all of our whole group. All of the lights are on for these photos, but we usually keep the overhead lights off and only use lamps. Holly has lots of lamps around the space so it lights it up really nicely. We have eight students tables around the classroom and it actually doesn't feel crowded when all of the students are in the room.
We picked up these two rugs at Ikea this summer. One is for yellow team and the other for green team. Twenty students can fit on each rug. They have held up really nicely so far and do not show dirt at all! We have the small squares around the rug for friends who have a hard time staying in their own space on the carpet.
We would love to take those ugly TVs down! Holly had the idea to cover it up with a cloud. We also made this banner to hang above her desk. She needed some pink in her room to go along with the color scheme for both rooms, so we made these pink apples from lanterns. They also match all of her apple accents.
This is the green team cubby area. I love the clouds and her apple lights that she also uses to hang student crafts.
This is the back of the classroom. We fit two tables back here. One table also serves as a small group meeting area, too. The shelf there houses small group materials. Our alphabet wall and compliment board are back here, as well.
This is our Kindercraze inspired alphabet wall. You can read about how it works on her blog HERE. The font I used to make the letters is KG Shake It Off. I printed the letters on card stock, cut them out, and pasted them to black card stock.
The alphabet line comes from Schoolgirl Style's Happy Rainbow collection. I stuck some pictures on them to help students. She has them hanging on a really cool wire line we picked up at Ikea.
We post our standards on this focus wall by Learning in Wonderland.
Holly posted the WBT signals on these clipboards and attached a little pennant. You can't have too many pennants!
I had lots of questions for her about how we were going to organize their supplies. I think we have a great system for managing 37 little ones' things! The shelf below holds things we use quite often. Holly picked up these little plastic paint cups from the hardware store to hold glue sticks and each tables' scissors. We just pass them out when we need them. Each table also has a glue sponge they use, too. The little red tool boxes hold counting objects for math.
Each table also has a pencil cup from the Target Dollar Spot. We keep pencils and dry erase markers in them. Holly hot glued pom poms to the ends for erasers.
We use this cart to keep us organized for the week. The current week's activities are in the tops bins. We start planning and pulling for the next week on Wednesday and put those activities down below in those bins. We just move everything up on Friday for the next week and we are ready to go!
Each child has a chair pocket in the whole group classroom. They have their own crayon box, which only has crayons in it right now. They each also have a green folder. We use these for morning work. It is full of handwriting practice in sheet protectors. They just use their dry erase markers each morning to practice writing their name, alphabet, shapes, colors, numbers, number words, and tracing different types of lines. We also add in a seasonal practice page.
This is a copy of our schedule. It has taken some tweaking, but it's getting better since the kids have gotten into a routine.
We get lots of questions and lots of crazy looks when we tell people we teach 37 kindergarteners in one room! Do you have any questions about it? Do you team teach? If so, what are some tips you may have for us?
By the way, I am LOVING kindergarten! Holly is one of the most amazing teachers I know, and I have learned so much from her! We have lots of fun, too! I do, however, miss second grade! My heart will always be there, so I am going to continue creating activities for second grade and testing them out at my school on the second graders there. It is so fun to create for that age group and I don't think I can ever stop!
Thanks for stopping by and have a great rest of the weekend!
Wow! You both have made the best of having so many students. I am sure that took a lot of team work and planning. The students are so lucky to have you. You've made their classroom a well organized, fun place to be. If I'm ever in your situation, this blog post would be a life saver. Thanks for sharing.
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