Assemble the Minions!

Oh.my.word! This summer has been completely on a hiatus as i have had to handle various personal family issues... But, as the adage says "the show must go on!" So whether I am prepared for it or not, back-to-school officially starts for me tomorrow{insert gasp here!}.  It was definitely not my intention to go M.I.A this summer but hopefully things will slow down enough for me to give y'all some much-needed attention.  Last we spoke, I was filling you in on the fact that I had been moved from 2nd to 5th grade and that my school had not chosen a theme... Well, the theme has officially been set and it is "around the world in 180 days" but LONG before i received the news I had already begun planning for it (call it teachers intuition) but i changed it a little.  I am a HUGE Despicable Me fan and since I will be teaching 5th this year I couldn't imagine decorating with all those 'around the world kiddies' they sell at the teacher supply stores so i came up with my own sub-theme "Taking around over the world in 180 days" and this is what I have done so far when I went in last week...

Before pictures:

After...

That's it for now. Sorry if the pictures aren't that great... I will take more tomorrow (the Mr. took these) and I can see that he missed a lot so when I go back to work tomorrow I will take more and add the captions underneath each to explain them.

Until then...

Have a great time back-to-school prepping!

I CAN'T believe it! My 1st Year teaching is over and I'm STILL alive!!!

Y'all are not going to believe the year I've had!  I feel like such a bad blogger...but in my defense, I want you to STOP reading right now and take a trip down memory lane to YOUR very first year teaching.  That should explain why I have been MIA this whole year.  Now, back to the business at hand, I promise that I will try to make it up this summer with lots and lots of posts but I can't guarantee anything during the school year because *yikes!* it's going to feel like my second-first year all over again.  You see, I have been notified that this coming school year I will be teaching 5th grade and since I have never ever ever taught 5th grade I am thinking that I am going to be super duper ooper shmooper busy again.  But I will try my very very best to post every now and then so that none of you think that I have been captured by vampires and/or zombies.   If I recall, I left off last summer promising that I would share my finished classroom pics.  Well, drum roll please, here they are... I hope you like them and I look forward to reading all of your comments.  Also, if you like any of my superhero stuff it is still available in my TpT store.  On the last week of school all of the teacher's voted on a couple of themes and there was a tie between Candy Land and Around the World so as soon as I am told which one it will be you can expect lots of classroom decorations on that theme.  I just wanted to give you a heads up so that you can check back for new posts and items in my TpT store.  As Abby would say, I am *12 kinds of excited* to be teaching 5th grade Reading/Language Arts next year and I look forward to all of your advice and ideas about that as well so comment away!  Oh, and for giggles... this was me this year during Mad Scientist week! Ha!

On to the 2012-2013 Superhero Classroom Tour...

Reading and Math Group Rotations

The famous pom-poms and superhero girls

My Math "bulletin board"

Science/Social Studies "bulletin board", cubbies and pennant window decor

Superheroes above my marker board (I did LOADS of coloring last summer!)

"POWER! Words" Word Wall (Superhero Word Wall alphabet is available in my TpT store!)

My one and only filing cabinet, bookshelf and my Superhero behavior clip chart (also available in my TpT store)

My "Hero Code" (WBT class rules)

One of my bulletin boards with student work for the Exemplar Text: The Stories that Julian Tells