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!

The One with a Freebie…And a Dog

Today I’m going to try my hand at TpT! For now, just freebies until I perfect my skills. (I did create a literacy center game to pair with Bananagrams a while ago, but that was a copyright issue, oops – I’m new!) 

A few weeks ago I did a mini lesson around the book, The Daythe Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. Amazing book! There are many different writing ideas you can take out of it but since our overall unit is Opinion we went the persuasive route. Recently we jumped into Lucy Calkins with two feet. While my Lucy fandom varies from day-to-day it can be monotonous – cue our crayon mini lesson. 

For us third graders who have been working on voice and persuasion in speeches the lesson took 3 days, for others it may take longer depending on the level of exposure to opinion writing.

In the lesson freebie it goes in to MUCH more detail but I will keep it short and sweet for all of you! 

Day 1

We read the first page of the book with purpose, trying to hear what the crayon was persuading the boy to do. Then we read it again listening to his great voice and examples. I read a few more colors which we added to a chart that organized what the crayons wanted and examples of how they spoke directly to the audience. 

That was all the more time we needed to start brain storming objects in our lives that would want to quit. My class example was our pencils, (something students have knowledge on and something that really would quit in room 21) students came up with their Xbox, tablets, couch, grass, soccer ball and much more! 

After our objects were decided we did many partner brainstorms and class share-outs to decide why they want to quit, examples the object will use, and how they will address the audience (them!).

They did surprisingly well taking on the role of the object and writing to themselves – it’s something we’ve never worked on but they fooled some teachers around the district who came to observe. 

Day 2

Most students wrote more the day before than they have all year. I think that has to do consistently using Lucy and having a motivating activity in front of them. Either way we were done drafting and ready to revise! 

Today students heard three other crayon colors stories (they begged for even more!) and this time really listened to the emotion and vocabulary the crayon used. We took this as an opportunity to add better emotion and vocabulary to our own writing. 

Day 3

We finished the book, The Day the Crayons quit, spoiler – the last crayon is the funniest and will have your class in stiches. Add an extra minute to your lesson so they can come down back to class. 

Today students finished revising, did minor editing, and published their page for our class book. Students who finished early could add a drawing to enhance their writing. 

My kids really enjoyed this lesson and I’m happy to pass the idea along! As promised in the title of this post … a puppy! 

This weekend I had the absolute JOY of dog sitting my 3^rd grade teammate/dear friend’s sweet dog. My dog fix was not satisfied this weekend and instead I’m toggling back and forth between doggie websites. A puppy here I come! Tagdog is a beautiful Alaskan Malamute whose beauty you all need to see. Thanks for sharing him for the weekend, Em! In true Colorado fashion it was 70 all weekend and we got to spend a lot of time outdoors – he also received more compliments at dinner than a supermodel (or so I would suppose) a record 30-40+. Luckily it doesn’t go to his head. 

 

For sticking out the lengthy post, here’s Tag!