Wow, time flies when you're having fun (or when you're super busy getting ready for a new school year) ;). Today was the 10th day of school for me, and I finally have some time to share some pics of our classroom so far. I had to switch classrooms this school year so I started from scratch putting the room together. It's amazing how I spent so many hours in there and still didn't feel ready to start. How does that always happen??
Anyways, here's a quick photo tour of a lot of my classroom...
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| View from the door |
As you can tell from the above picture, I like to start the year with things pretty bare and build the classroom along with my students. The walls and bulletin boards only have headings and are waiting for anchor charts and student work. When students are involved in creating what goes up on the walls and on the shelves, it is much more meaningful to them. They really do refer to anchor charts created together because they have a connection to them. Here are most of the bulletin boards and the word wall.
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| This board is our writing VOICES board. I haven't used it before but am excited to try it as a strategy resource for writer's workshop. |
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| Close-up of the first three columns of the VOICES board. |
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| Close-up of the last three columns of the VOICES board. |
If you like the VOICES board headings, you can pick them up in my
Teacher's Notebook store. To see the idea behind this board and how to use it, check out one of my other blog posts
HERE.
Okay, more classroom boards...
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Calendar board- This houses are daily schedule, calendar, days in school pocket chart, etc.
This is also where I will put the sight words and word family we are learning for the week. |
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| CAFE Menu board to use with Daily Five |
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| Close-up of CAFE Menu board |
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| Word Wall |
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| Close-up of table supply bins |
The alphabet is on top of the word wall, and the word wall is empty to start the year. On the lower right section of the board is the stoplight I use for behavior management. Each student has a piece of white foam with their name written on it to move up and down the stoplight. The star on top is for "shining stars" who do their jobs without reminders. :) The shelves below the word wall house our writer's workshop paper baskets, supply bins (markers, scissors, glue sticks) with supplies we don't use all the time, and our word work materials. Each table (group of desks) has its own color with corresponding bins and baskets.
One more board...
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| Bucket Filler board- more to come on how we use this. |
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| Classroom library |
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| Classroom library |
The first few weeks of school we work together to label the bins in our library. I give each table a bin and they look through it quietly on their own first to figure out how the books are the same. Then, they have a few minutes to talk and decide on a label for their bin.
On with the tour...
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| Math manipulatives |
I have 31 students for math. So, we need a lot of manipulatives. ;)
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| Our classroom door |
The owls are
Pinterest inspired, of course. I hope you enjoyed the tour of my classroom. Please comment and let me know what you think. :)
