Classroom Tour

Meet your teacher night was Tuesday night. I can't believe how fast the first two days went! If you have already started school, I hope you are having as great of a year so far as I am. It looks like I am going to have a great class! Yay! Here are some pictures of my classroom setup this year!


View from the door. I made the leap from desks to tables this year! My school actually bought me brand new tables! That is unheard of around here!

Calendar and turn-in table.

Back wall with student computer and part of the classroom library.

My small group area and I turned my desk against the wall since I rarely ever sit there anyway. It was just taking up space. The kidney table makes a lot more sense!

More of my classroom library and word wall that I put up on my cabinets.

Classroom library. I have a Donor's Choose project up now to get a pretty new rug for this corner! Hopefully it gets funded soon!

A second reading area that I set up this year! Already loving the garage sale coffee table. Students are like a magnet to it! They love  to sit on the floor all around it to work.

Where I hang anchor charts and posters as we study them.

Another picture of my corner....

Pano of the whole room...

Hope you enjoyed my little tour!

Classroom Tour 2013

Well, here are some pictures of my classroom this year. We just had open house on Thursday and I start school Monday. Ready or not, here they come! I have 24 sweet 5th graders on my list so far... you never know how many will really show up or how many extras you might get. We shall see. Hope you enjoy the tour!

View from the front door...

My "ticket out the door" poster. Students will write something they learned on a Post-It note and stick it on the poster.

My Boggle board for word work.

View of my cabinets and cubbies. I will put my word wall on the cabinets and the cubbies hold their math and reading stations.

One side of the classroom library. All books are in baskets by genre and then stickered with reading levels. More about my library can be found here.

View of the front of the room.

Another look at the word wall and classroom library.

This is my data-tracking board. I will show student progress on this board through our formative assessments we give. It will not have their name on it, but rather, just show how many students in our class passed each skill tested. There is one for math and one for reading.

This is my small group table. I recovered the chair to make it match the room a little better!

My desk... palm tree is just a carpet tube, lunch sacks over it, and an umbrella in the top.

My podium and chair I also recovered so it matched.

Small reading and writing area. Table and chairs are from Target a few years ago.

Writing center with writing supplies and our VOICES posters.

These are my "turn-in" folders where all work is turned in. They turn in their work in alphabetical order inside the subject-area folder.

Table for staplers, paper, highlighters (to highlight their names before turning in their papers).

Behind my desk... kind of messy in this picture, but you understand that, right?

Open house homework... students are asked to bring in a picture of their family to show the class and parents are asked to fill out a survey about their child and family to return to me.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Classroom Progress in Pictures

I have been working on my room for a couple of weeks now. We start school a week from today! Summer goes by way too fast. Here are some pictures of my progress. I still have a few finishing touches to do.

Here is the view from my door:

I have student desks placed in groups of 7-8. This is my favorite desk arrangement. It makes my room feel like we have more space than when they are all spread out or in small groups of 4-5.

I also added bulletin boards (outlines anyway) on the back wall for each subject area to put my anchor charts on.

Here is my take on the Boggle board I have seen all over Pinterest:

I used the "Dots on Turquoise" line of letters and shapes. I got the printable alphabet from: Mrs. Rojas Teaches.

Here is picture of my whiteboard I added a pennant banner to, my "Brownie Points" pan (I found here), and a first day of 5th grade frame the kids are going to hold for a picture I take of them.

This is just a cart that another teacher was throwing out. I put some scrapbook paper on top and in the drawers to pretty it up a bit. I will use it to store the Boggle letters, brownie pieces, notebooks and such. (Please excuse the trash.)

Classroom Library and Cafe bulletin board:

Another library picture:

 You can read more about my classroom library here.

Here you can see my library, storage, station materials, word wall, and construction paper.

Well, that is all I have done so far. I hope that the kids like it. I just love this part of back-to-school! I have really enjoyed seeing everyone else's photos on their blogs of their classrooms. I always get great ideas!

Classroom Library

Sorry for the lag in posts... school has been a mad house! 

Here are some picture of my classroom library. I worked really hard to get it organized for the year. I chose to sort it by genre, favorite author, or series. Each basket is labeled on the outside. Each book also has a sticker label on the inside so students don't have an excuse for putting them back in the wrong basket.

Nearly all of the baskets are from Dollar Tree... so cheap! A few are from Garden Ridge.

I made the labels on a print program on my computer. I then printed them out on cardstock and laminated them. I attached them to the baskets with zip ties... took a while but I am hoping this will hold them on better than tape.

This bookcase looks a little messy, but the signs hanging on the front are the procedures for our classroom library. I will only leave these up a couple more weeks. 

This is the bulletin board in the library. This is where my students can write book reviews and post them for other students to read. I got the idea from Mailbox Magazine.

Picture books are on the bottom shelf. They are still in the traditional shelving since there are not that many.

Here are my non-fiction shelves also. They are not as organized. I do have some of my history and math books sorted into baskets since I have a lot of those.

Hope that this sparks some ideas for you too! I love to see other people's classroom library for new ideas.