Hey, there, friends! It's Laura from Peace, Love, and First Grade!

Step by step guide to setting up a classroom for a first year teacher. Practical tips on organizing and time management to create a warm & welcoming class.

Learn how to set up a classroom step by step with this clear and helpful guide. Your classroom set up game is about to get a big lift!

If you are a new teacher, it can feel overwhelming to walk into your first classroom. These tips will help you stay focused as you prepare for back to school. Plus grab the free first year teacher checklist to help you get started.

Are you setting up Google Classroom for a new school year with new students? Then avoid these 5 mistakes! Discover and learn what mistakes to avoid.

Utilizing classroom jobs save time! This applies to academics, character, and...helping you around your classroom!

Setting up an IEP work bin system can feel overwhelming! Here are some easy ways to do it so that your students can quickly work on goals!

Setting up a kindergarten classroom at the beginning of the year can be an exciting, yet overwhelming. Whether you are a student teacher, or this is your last year teaching elementary school, I'm here to share

Are you looking to create your own classroom website? Google Site is an amazing, FREE platform where you can easily create a website viewable to anyone online. This is a great way for teachers to make a fun website. My school currently has their own website platform, but Google Sites is easier to use and ... Read more

Learn how to set up a middle school classroom so that the room looks visually appealing without looking too young for the age group.

Hey Friends! It's Theresa, from True Life I'm a Teacher! I wanted to share how I use (and have used for several years) a token economy in my classroom. I've taught at PBIS/PBS schools for 7 years, and a token economy is the perfect addition to what your school is already doing! I've used this system in 1st, 2nd, and 4th grades, and absolutely LOVE it! Even better? My students love it, and that's really what matters. While I don't use a clip chart, I have in the past, and a classroom economy can be used in conjunction with a clip chart. Why Use a Token Economy? Reinforces positive behavior Targets specific behavior Targets behavior change Students work for delayed reinforcement Students receive immediate and delayed reinforcement Promotes fair exchanges, addition, subtraction, counting money, and economics There are LOTS of different ways a token or classroom economy can work in your classroom. The best part is that it doesn't have to cost ANY money! I choose to spend a small amount of money on candy and gum, but not much. Assign Values to Tasks Pay Day Monday - I pay my students on Mondays just for showing up. We talk a lot about how coming to school and learning the job of my students. So I pay them! Homework - I am NOT assigning homework this year, however, in the past I've paid my students for turning in their homework. Reading Log - I am also NOT assigning a reading log this year, but I also paid my students for completing their reading log each night. Take Home Folder - I pay my students daily for remembering to turn in their Take Home Folder each day. Pay as You Go Hand out your classroom money as you catch students doing things they should. This is especially beneficial at the beginning of the year when you're trying to reinforce procedures, routines, and expectations. This can be continued throughout the year, or you can switch to the assigned values method once students know and regularly demonstrate classroom and school expectations. Combination You can also use a combination of both methods. It really comes down to your students, their needs, and your preference. How Much Do I Pay? Pay Day - $10 every Monday Homework - $5 every Friday Reading Log - $1/daily Take Home Folder - $1/daily Positive Behavior - $1 as needed Deductions / "Fines" Depending on the age of your students, and your preferences, you may want to consider "fining" your students. However, in my experience, a classroom/token economy works much more effectively, if students are not penalized for misbehavior, BUT it also depends on each individual student. Some students respond well to understanding that there are penalties associated with certain behaviors. For example, students who are "blurters" may respond well to being fined $1 for each time they blurt. This is an intervention you can set up with individual students, or the whole class, if needed. Penalties aren't typically necessary because regardless of the method you choose, if a student isn't doing what they need to be doing (homework, expectations, etc...) they just wouldn't get the token for that task. For example, if a student doesn't turn in homework, they simply don't get paid for their homework...I do not also require them to "pay" me and amount. So what do students DO with their money? Fun Friday Every Friday is Fun Friday! It's the last 10-20 minutes of the day, and it's free time. Blocks, Legos, coloring, computers, board games, puzzles, pretty much whatever. That's the beauty of it. Before students can purchase ANYTHING from the class store, they must pay for Fun Friday. It's not optional. I charge $5 for Fun Friday. Although, you could make it whatever you want depending on your class. You should charge a fair amount though. You WANT most or ALL of your students to be able to participate. Students who cannot afford Fun Friday, complete a reflection sheet, and have one-on-one conferences with me to talk about why they were unable to participate, and to set a goal for the following week! Class Store: I open the class store every Friday during morning work. I call students back to my table a few a time. Students must purchase Fun Friday first, and may then purchase anything they'd like in the class store, that they have the money for. Does it take time? YES! However, the payoff is HUGE! The real life skills my students learn far outweigh the amount of time this takes each week. Students may also choose to save their money, to purchase a more expensive option from the class store. Some students spend every penny they have, others spend a little and save a little, others purchase only Fun Friday and save the remainder. These are the items I have available for "purchase" in my classroom. But the list is pretty endless. It just depends on what is allowed at your school, and what you want in your classroom. You can grab these "coupons" HERE. Shoes off in the classroom Computer time Choose the brain break Sit by a friend Fun Friday Choose a stuffed animal to have for the day New pencil (pencils with designs and mechanical pencils) Write with a pen for the day (student favorite) Chew gum Piece of candy Lunch bunch Treasure Box The ONLY things I spend money on are candy and gum! Everything else is just what I already have in the classroom, and are things that I'm willing to manage. I use a small sheet like the one below for documentation. I use a check mark to show that they paid for Fun Friday, and then jot a quick note about what they purchased. On the back, I write down who has paid for Lunch Bunch, as I only have Lunch Bunch once per month. The yellow tickets, are what my school uses in common areas, as well as at specials. These have a value of $5 in my classroom, and can be used just like our classroom cash.

Visual boundaries are a vital part of classroom setup. Let me show you how I utilize these visual boundaries in classroom!

I wanted to stop by today and share some a few of my “go-to” activities during the first week of school to build our classroom community and set expectations for […]

Classroom transformations are a great way to spice up the school year. Camp Read-a-Lot is sure to leave your students with great memories!

Let's talk about policies for classroom management to help make the year go smoothly! These classroom rules in Spanish class set boundaries.

Do you like to see other classrooms? Come take a look at these 7 different preschool classrooms!

As teachers begin planning for back to school, I see an abundance of creative classrooms filling my Instagram and Pinterest feeds. I love seeing how other

Browse this post for 13 classroom desk arrangement ideas (Ideas for tables included, too!) with and tons of photos!

I have been CRAZY excited to share my classroom with ya'll this year. This is my third year in this classroom, and I'm in love with how it turned out it this school year. I kept a lot of the same centers from last year, and added a few new fun ones (Magnet Center,

Amazon is a teacher's best friend! Each year my list of must haves for the classroom grows so I'm here to share more of my Amazon classroom finds!

This writing lesson and craft revolving around snow globes helps bring winter to the classroom, even if live in a place without snow!

Decorating, organizing, and preparing your high school classroom spaces is critical for new and veteran teachers alike. Here are four ideas to get your classroom prepared to support and inspire your students and keep you motivated to deliver incredible lessons!

Who's ready for a smoother year? ? Stock your classroom for success with these 11 essential supplies, resources, and strategies.

I know how much you LOVE FREEbies because I love them too! Make sure to share these free deals with all of your family and friends!

I have 10 tips for your Autism classroom set up this school year! Special education classrooms can be hard, but click to learn more.

CREATING A CACTUS CLASSROOM - Tips and printables for creating a cactus themed classroom you will all love to learn in! Choose from a stunning range of CACTUS Classroom Decor to create your own unique space this back to school | you clever monkey

Classroom management and thinking through how my classroom will run is more important than the decorations and arrangement! Do you agree? My classroom has several different strategies set up; and as needed, I will adjust accordingly as my students arrive and I learn their needs. Today, I have 8 Classroom Management Tips for you to […]

Setting up a classroom family photo display is a great way to build a positive classroom community. Today, I'm going to share a letter you can send home requesting a family photo, as well as some

Looking for tips on resource room set-up? Read more to learn what I have planned for creating a comfortable learning space for my students.

As a teacher, there is so much to do when it comes to setting up the classroom, that it is hard to know where to start! Over the course of my first six years of teaching middle school math, a few of these classroom projects have become staples in my classroom. In this post, I plan to share a few of these ideas. (1) Assignment Notebook Board The first thing my middle school students do (or should be doing!) when they come to class is fill out their assignment notebooks. With some ruler tape that I found at Office Max, I created this assignment notebook board. The number 1 on each day is for what we do in class. The number 2 on each day is any homework that is assigned. For example the 1 might be "Multiply Fractions" and the 2 might be "Pg 232 hw (due tmw)." (2) Math is Everywhere Board I have written about this project in a few other posts, but it is one of my all time favorites to start the year! I have two bulletin boards in my classroom. This one gets filled with these tiles. Students must show how they see math in the real world on their tile. On the back of their tile, they must write a paragraph explaining how math is seen in the topic that they chose! You can click HERE for a free set of the bulletin board letters! (3) Challenge of the Week Many of you have already seen or tried out the Challenge of the Week in your classroom! I have loved seeing the pictures! Each week, I put up a new challenge problem. They are optional and students have until the end of the day on Thursday to turn it in. Anyone who gets it correct gets a small prize on Friday when we go over the answer! Both the 6th Grade Challenge of the Week Problems and the 8th Grade Challenge of the Week Problems are FREE in my TpT store. Enjoy! (4) Teacher Book Shelf My teacher book shelf took on some major changes recently. I started with this new way of organizing all of my math workshop materials. I decided to organize them more by the type of game, rather than by the topic like I had done in the past. I cleared these shelves off and organized them in these containers that I had ordered a few years ago. If you are looking for the materials and resources that I use for math workshop, be sure to check out my Math Mega Bundle (Upper Elementary/Middle School) and my Math Mega Bundle (8th Grade Math). Below these containers, I have two shelves with labels for Monday through Friday. This is where I put all of my plans and resources that I will be using for the coming week. This has been a useful way to stay organized and prepared throughout the week! As you can see, I am not quite ready for the first week of school... On the bottom of these shelves are my task cards, which very well could be the hardest resource when it comes to organization! I found these containers at Michaels. They have worked out pretty well. I have two sets of task cards that I use throughout each school year for each grade level. I have a regular set of task cards and then a set of enrichment task cards. Each set takes up two of these containers. Teaching two different grades means I end up with 8 of these containers, which is pretty manageable! Check out the links below if you are interested in the task cards for each grade level! 6th Grade Math Task Cards Bundle 6th Grade Math Enrichment Task Cards Bundle 7th Grade Math Task Cards Bundle 7th Grade Math Enrichment Task Cards Bundle 8th Grade Math Task Cards Bundle 8th Grade Math Enrichment Task Cards Bundle (5) Bulletin Board (Number 2) My second bulletin board is filled with some routine-oriented and expectation posters. I made these the last few years. The colored math workshop poster shows where students of each group should be at any given time. The homework data chart is where we record our homework data. As a class, we figure out what percentage of homework we turn in on time each day. Over the course of the year, we graph these and look at trends. It also becomes a fun competition between classes! (6) Bobblehead Collection I started my bobblehead collection a while ago and it has just grown ever since! Students enjoy seeing them and it is a fun way for students to get to know me and my interest in baseball! My wife and I are trying to get to all 30 MLB stadiums, and recently made it to Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. Luckily it was a bobblehead giveaway, so the Kevin Appier Royals bobblehead is the most recent addition to the collection!

In you special needs class, do you have any behavior issues? Any kids that are over-responsive or just the opposite, under-responsive? YOU.NEED.HEAVY.WORK. I cannot stress enough how much of a DRASTIC change we saw in some of our special thinkers when we began implementing this work system into their daily routine. Here's some info on

Back to school means it's time to set up your elementary music classroom-- but what do you do? Make it simple with these tips!

In this blog post: Thinking about setting up a writing center in your classroom? Find the best Kindergarten writing center ideas and activities for here. The writing center has long been one of my favorite literacy centers for Kindergarten. It’s easy to set up, easy(ish) to manage, and students absolutely LOVE going there! If you […]

I’m back to talk more about independent work stations. I don’t know if you’ve realized, but I’m basically obsessed with them. I think I’ve written about independent work stations at least a half dozen times on this blog if not more! I love them because not only do they provide an opportunity to teach students ... Read More about 5 Mistakes you are Making in your Independent Work Stations

Guest Blog Post By Sam Bradford Let’s talk about “Classroom Rules.” Are they something you keep in your syllabus and mention the first day of class and never return to? Do you find that printing--and, if necessary, even laminating--a list of rules and tacking them on your wall safeguards you from problems with student conduct? We’ve all had the experience where a student comes to us and says “Gee, teacher, I sure was on a bad path, but when I saw that little sign that said ‘Respect Yourself and Others,’ it turned my life around. It was like, all of a sudden, I realized that I needed to respect myself. And others. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for that sign!” Oh, you haven’t had that experience? You see where I’m going with this. I’ve been teaching for twelve years, with four of those years as a department chair, and two as Dean of Academic Affairs. I’ve had the opportunity to observe lots of classes across all disciplines in high school, and one of the most prominent trends I’ve noticed is that we could be a lot more intentional about building classroom culture. One other connection I’ve noticed is that the teachers who say “Some years you get good kids. Some years you get bad kids. At the end of the day, there’s not really much you can do about it” are often the same teachers with that posted list of classroom rules--rules that are not even readable from the back of the class and go as unnoticed as whatever paintings are in the same room as the Mona Lisa. I was one of those teachers until I learned about norms from the School Reform Initiative (SRI). I think that norms are one of the best tools for improving a healthy classroom culture. Norms are not rules. Rules can’t change. Norms change with the different chapters of the year. Rules are created by teachers. Norms are thoughtfully crafted by both teachers and students. Rules tell us what to do and what not to do. Norms remind us of what we need to be resilient and take risks. Step Up. Make Room. We’re All Trying. Stay Open, Stay Cool. Adopt, Adapt, Adept. One Second At a Time. Shake and Bake. What are norms? They are bumper-sticker-length phrases, usually in the imperative tense, crafted, agreed upon, and revised by the class. Norms can give us a boost when we’re feeling complacent. They can help us breathe when we feel paralyzed (especially for classes with overachieving students). They are things we tell ourselves and remind each other. Norms can mean slightly different things to different people. Step Up can translate to “I’m going to try to speak more often in discussion” or “I’m going to get ahead in the reading.” They can also be really creative. One of my all-time favorites: VolSTAYved. Get it? Stay involved. Rhetorically, they give you buy-in from your students and allow you to avoid the role of disciplinarian. Instead of “because it’s on my laminated page of Classroom Rules,” the stance is one of “I’m reminding us of our own language we agreed to. Is that language not helpful for us anymore? What would help?” How To Create Norms With Your Students At the start of the year, I use a discussion protocol to remember that learning comes when we take risks. SRI’s “Zones of Risk, Comfort, and Danger” is crucial for me. Then, we do a different protocol to establish norms, framing them with the idea that these are things that keep the maximum number of people in the risk zone for the maximum amount of time--either SRI’s “Attritubtes of a Learning Community” or “Norms Construction” works really well. I aim for no more than three norms per class so that it’s easy to remember. Once norms are established and unanimously agreed upon, I do make a sign with our norms, which are separate for each class. Yes, I sometimes laminate them. At the start of each class, I remind the students of our norms. Some days, it takes ten seconds. Occasionally, I’ll turn it into a warm-up activity. For example, “journal on which norm you most need help with today and why” or “take a post-it note and write the norm you most need today on that note and stick it on your desk as a reminder” or “find a meme that best captures our norm.” Similarly, you can use them as a conclusion activity: “Who in here deserves the VolSTAYved award for today’s work?” If I start to notice patterns in classroom conduct that impede learning, I’ll ask the class if any norms need to be revised or replaced. They can take ownership and build self-awareness. Things are very different when it’s the start of the year and no one knows anyone else as opposed to when it’s mid-semester and we’re comfortable. Or if it’s one week before a much-deserved Spring Break. Those chapters all feel different and require different reminders in order to do good work. By the end of the year, I’ve usually revised norms half a dozen times. The Result Of Using Norms The result? Better class cohesion than I’ve ever had. Constant positive feedback on student surveys. The student who, a month ago, told me “I adopted ‘We’re All Trying’ as a norm for our Diversity Alliance.” More than once, I’ve heard some variant of “even outside of class, I tell this norm to myself--it helps me.” Can your list of Classroom Rules do that? Related Articles: High School English Teachers: I Planned Your Frist Week Back To School (abetterwaytoteach.com) Want An Outstanding First Day of School Activity for Your High School (abetterwaytoteach.com) For more information on School Reform Initiative and how to bring this to your classroom or school, check out: School Reform Initiative – A Community of Learners SRI Theory of Action – School Reform Initiative Protocols – School Reform Initiative

Are you wanting to get started with preschool writing journals in your classroom this school year? This post will walk you through...

Come check out how I organize, decorate, and utilize spaces & activities to be functional on this Adult Transition classroom tour!

Enhance the learning environment with effective classroom decor! Learn how to create an ideal space for teaching, learning, and growing.

Task Boxes are important to practice mastered skills, work independently, and gain life skills to be successful in their special education curriculum!

As educators, we realize the value of goal setting and are constantly encouraging our students to dream big and set goals. What we often forget is that unless

Every school and every teacher has a different philosophy with student cell phones, but with classroom management as a whole. Whether you are on the FORBIDDEN end of the spectrum or on the “do what you want, it’s your grade” end, I just might have a solution that will help in your classroo