Classroom Tour 2010-2011

When I went into my room over break,  I finally did something I had meant to do for a long time... take pictures. My room is a portable with no storage and I also share the space with another teacher who teaches half day with me, but needs to store her stuff here as well. I have tried to make use of every square inch of this room. 

Here is the view from the door. You can see the small group u-table and the writing wall straight ahead.

 This is also from the front door, looking slightly right at the front of the room. 

Another view from the door.

Here is the door. I have been meaning to cover the cabinet (This is one of only 2 cabinets I have -- a teacher's worst nightmare, right?) with butcher paper but couldn't stand them plain, so I threw some borders up to tie me over. Also, I use command hooks EVERYWHERE. I hang the red emergency backpack and first aid kit with them. 

Here is the behavior wall. Everyone starts on Star Student and then if they break a rule, they move their clip down. When they are on green, blue, and/or red, they must fill out a behavior log. That's what is in the yellow oops folder. (Oh, and I hung the folder and chart with the command hooks)

This is the reading area. There is no organized theme here. Every year I mean to organize my library, but then I get told I need to pack up and move classes/schools/grade levels and it never happens. Oh, I am an expert packer by the way ;)

The other rooms have a "teacher corner" but since there is two of us in here, I call it our "teacher wall". This is my partner teacher's desk.

Loooove loooove looooove my Lakeshore Daily Organizer thingy. It's empty because we are on vacation for 3 weeks, but usually each day is packed full of everything we need for the day. In front of it I have trays for us to put loose papers in. I am the first to admit, I'm a neat freak and I love my partner teacher, but she is not the neatest teacher you've ever met (Love you Sheri). So I decided to throw trays all over the room and she can put whatever into them and that way at least they aren't just laying around loose. So far, so good. If you have organization issues, do this. It works!

Here is my desk area.

I used to do stacking trays to organize my papers, but I love this way more.

Those little colorful crates are the best ever. I wish I would have bought all of them when I saw them at Office Depot a few years ago, but didn't know how amazing they were at the time. 

 This is what I use to organize the student's files. I like this because I can roll it across the parking lot and into my car if I need to. Another little tip, if you have ugly hanging file folders like me, make them cute by glueing a cute piece of paper from a notepad on the front.

This bookcase stores all of my TE's. On the side, I hung command hooks (I told you I was obsessed) and binder clipped and hung my sentence strips for the year.

So I came in on a Saturday during vacation to get caught up and take these pictures and as I am doing that, I notice that yellow paper there that looks like it's been folded. Weird... I didn't fold that. Looking up... up... up... ohhhh my roof is leaking! Good thing I came in to take pictures. Who knows how this would have looked 3 weeks later?!

Try not to pay attention to the awful window covering job I did. The sun comes beating in and I have to wear my glasses when I sit at my desk! The balloons up there have the student's birthdays on them.

Some math charts to help the students know when to add or subtract with word problems.

Weekly grammar/mechanics posters.

I turned some plastic filing crates on their sides and stacked them and put the student's Writer's Notebooks in them.

Word Work Area - write spelling words, use magnet letters, etc.

A view from my teacher desk. I usually have stuff out on it, but we needed to stack chairs and clear table tops so they could be cleaned over break. In the back you can see the TV stand. Soooo ugly so I covered it in fabric and used magnets to clip the blue pocket chart to it.

Another view from my desk.

I thought I'd share this pencil idea. It works for my kiddos. It's just a cute way to remember prefix/baseword/suffix. Now that I am looking at it, I am having a thought, it may be better to have prefix on the pencil tip and suffix on the eraser. Explain it that you write before you erase maybe?

My listening area needs help. 

Writing table and word wall.

Concept/Question board - week 1. 

So when they made this hideous super cute bungalow, vents must have been in. I have like 50 vents all over, little boxes with nothing behind them and panels, panels, and more panels. My incredible boyfriend spent a whole day covering this wall, cutting out around each of these nuisances, and then because he knows how crazy I am loves me so much, cut little strips of blue paper and made little borders for me.

I could not find any cute writing borders this year! Where are they?! So I was just going to do plain white and then a friend had done this cute little idea with DJ Inker's pencil die cuts. I copied her and I love it.

I made my buckets with clear plastic solo cups and then hole punched them and made a little handle from glittery sparkly wire stuff. The kids decorated, cut, and glued the front of their buckets. If you have a cabinet like this, I have an idea for you!! I bought cork board tiles from Target (4 for $1) and then stuck them up here and now I can staple to the wall without damaging the cupboard. Yay!

Math wall and some storage.

Our Brag Tag Board. Check the Brag Tag post for more info.

This wall has so much going on with it. It's to post social studies projects, display Brag Tags, and has our white board for the small groups.

After packing up my room every year for the last 3 years, I have learned to put everything into shoeboxes and label them. If it can fit, it goes in a shoe box. I rarely struggle to find what I need.

The left side of the cupboard, not quite as proud. But hey, it doesn't fit in a shoebox so what am I supposed to do?

This is the inside of my 2nd and last storage cabinet. I have art stuff and student supplies in here.

Well I hope you enjoyed the tour!