The One With a Tour!

In honor of the state testing that will soon force me to cover everything in my classroom I figured I would do a classroom tour! A few people who read my blog have seen my class but many haven’t so I thought I’d give an inside look! 

If interior classroom design was a job I would seriously consider a slight career change but since it’s not I like to waste spend valuable time on Pinterest looking at classroom layouts and design. The summer before my first class I spent countless hours looking at classrooms and preparing my own. It really was a time saver when I walked in and had most things ready and laminated. I would guess about 10% of what I made before wasn’t used but it was so much better than having to create the other 90% in the few days I had to make an empty room a class! I've never wanted to add up the exact amount of hours or dollars...some things are better left unknown! 

Take a look! 

First when you walk in to the left is a small closet and cabinet area. My desk is also right near by. This year my desk area looks a little less dungeon-like but I don't have pictures from last year to prove it. Take my word! :) 

 

The other side of the door is our "Ticket Out the Door" usually just a quick post it question thought of on the fly if I want to double check who gets it. They use their class number for the tickets. Sometimes I don't even check names, I just want to know about how many people understand the concept. 

I also have things listed early finisher options for students. They are on velcro and can be changed out but usually stay the same since they are meaningful enough to last the whole year. Then I also don't have to teach new early finishers! 

The next few pictures are of our breakfast/math seat work/science materials area and the different places I keep organized! Fairly boring to be honest! 

 The last area of the front cabinets is our iPad storage. We are extremely lucky to have 6 iPads in our classroom thanks to generous friends and family supporting my DonorsChoose campaign! There the iPad rules are posted and students use the charging stations independently.

 The back left corner of the room is my class library! It's pretty self explanatory but one of my favorite places in my room. It definitely took the most work overall to create a complete library but it's so worth it! 

Next to our library is our small group table! Used daily for reading groups and interactive notebooks in math. It's also used for writing and science at times.  

 

Near our small group table is our Daily 5 bookshelf with our book boxes and our work on writing cart. We also have a bulletin board that was up the first half of the year as a reminder of how to do Daily 5 correctly. Each student has their book box with 3 books and a folder for other Daily 5 papers.

On that same side of the room is our computers, a few more cabinets (lucky me!!) and manipulative storage. Mostly for math!

 













All of my cabinets and files are labeled so students can grab it themselves if need be during math centers! 

Here's a look at some of the anchor charts we created at the beginning of the year...most are still up or just recently came down. It took us a long time We're still trying to figure out how to work together.

To the left the color posters are transition words. The popcorn has a 'boring' word on the bag and words that POP in the pieces of popcorn.

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Well there you have it! Quite an inside look at my room...maybe too detailed! Hope you enjoyed the room tour. As I've said before, I LOVE looking at other classrooms so share your rooms as well!