Ms. Wu Teaches: Five for Friday - Back to School Style!

Hello friends! Boy, that whole week of blogging really took something out of me because I went MIA for two weeks!!!

But I'm back today for some Five for Friday action!

I'm hoping that I will be able to get back into the blogging mode soon!

This Five for Friday is all about Back to School since that's what I've been working on these last two weeks.

Monday and Tuesday was all about supplies shopping! On Monday I hit Office Depot, Staples, Walmart, and Target. On Tuesday I went to teacher specialty stores. Let's just say, don't ever do major shopping all in two days. You will definitely feel the money impact right away. But it's all worth it of course!

Since I have two classes rotating through my room every day, desks have to be shared between two students, which also means less desk space for each kid. I used to do pencil boxes in the past but with this new scenario, I decided to try pencil pouches instead since they can just fit nicely on top of each kid's stack on their side of the desk. Hopefully this idea works!

Some creating happened this week!

Pinterest inspired. Love these frames from Ikea!

Always need to create something on Vistaprint! Made myself a new tote bag, a notebook for student notes, magnets with my school and contact info to give out at Back to School Night, and another mousepad for the classroom.

Binder clip labels for the students' mailboxes! This was also Pinterest/blog inspired. Since I have two classes I decided to go for a bird "theme". My homeroom class will be the owls while my other class will be the birds. So things around the classroom are labeled by owls or birds to differentiate which class it belongs to. I've already created the owl labels which can be downloaded for free in my TpT store. Needed bird ones so I decided to go ahead and make them!

I printed the labels on cardstock and just taped them on the binder clips. Halfway through, I realized I should've printed the labels on those Avery® White Full-Sheet Labels (affiliate link), cut them out, and directly stick them onto the binder clips to keep them from falling off. Oh well, next year!

Just a look at the owl ones in action.

Who else purchased tons of products during the TpT Back to School sale????

Yep, the shopping didn't end with physical stores!

Online shopping had to happen too!

Below are some of my purchases. Click on the images to check them out on TpT!

Posters

ELA Interactive Notebooks

For Homework

Quite a haul since this is my first year teaching third.

I can't wait to use them all!

Since I am new to the district this year, I had to attend the district's new teacher orientation.

Meet all the district people, along with our union who provided us lunch and gave us these goodie bags with supplies and awesome merchant discount cards.

Orientation was also the time for me to pick up my work laptop.

Are you ready to see what it is?

What for it...

A giant chunky Dell!

Now I don't know about you, but I was a PC user before I started teaching.

Once I began teaching I slowly got converted to a Mac user because everything was Mac. Even bought myself a Macbook Air this summer.

Four years of teaching later and apparently I am back to using a PC. Have to start remembering how to navigate through Windows again!

The main reason I've been MIA for so long is that I've been working hard in my classroom and getting it ready for school!

I spent the entire last week moving into my new classroom and getting it set up.

It is ALMOST ready for a classroom reveal (still some decorating left to do!) but it definitely has to be ready by Wednesday since that's when school starts!

I will have a classroom reveal post next week.

Here's a sneak peek for now!