Sunday, August 21, 2011

Classroom Pics!

I've been working like a dog (as did everyone else out there) to get my room ready for our firsties. They come this Wednesday and I think I am ready for them. There is still just a few odds and ends I want to do but that will eventually get done. So here we go.

Our entrance to the room.


View from the door. This is our class library area and where I like to do whole group lessons and our morning math board. I just happened upon this awesome rug when our librarian was moving her room and didn't want it anymore. I love it!




My class library. I sorted the books into the various genres and level 1 through 4 books. I'm still working on the "just right" books this year. Each bin is labeled with a colored dot sticker and all the books in each bin matches the label on the bin. Last school year the kids were real good about putting the books back in the right bins.



I let my kids check out the books like a libray. Each book has a library pocket and index card in it. When they want to check out a book they just take the card and put it in their pocket. That way they don't have to write their names on anything and I can always see who has a book checked out (and who doesn't). This system works wonderful for us. You see our school library has such old books still that I thought it would be nice to allow them to take our class books home.
I saw these little seats on a ton of blogs and just had to have some. So we got busy over the weekend and made four of them. I used the smaller crates (beacause as you know firsties have little bottoms).


Here is our word work workstation. They can use the new seats when working there.


This is my area for small groups and computers. You might be wondering what the 6 and 7 are for on the shade. On the first day I will take pictures of the kids. Then I let them put their picture on the number for how old they are. When it's their birthday they just love switching their picture over to the 7. They also take home the birthday bag with the birthday binder in it to write about what they did for their birthday. This has always been a big hit in our room.

Here is my desk. I also saw this sucker tree on many blogs and once again, had to have it. I give the kids a ticket for all kinds of reason throughout the day (good behavior, returned homework, etc.). Then they put their names on the back of the ticket and it goes in this #1 bucket. On Fridays I pull out a few tickets and if I pull their name they can pick a sucker. If the sucker has a red dot on the stick then they can pick from my treasure box. This ticket system really works, it gets them to return homework and if I carry the tickets with me when we leave the room they are well behaved.


Our bucket fillers and class rules. I really hated my rules chart. It was plain and ugly. Last night I found these rules on The Polkadot Patch blog and loved them. They are all the same ones I have so I printed, mounted and laminated them. Now I just have to get them to stay up, they kept fall down today. I will eventually move them over to hang behind my desk on the wall but for now I want them front and center.                                  


  Here is my writing center supplies. I am still working on it. The blank board is for the Super Star of the Week's poster. The gutters under our white boards are awesome. We saw this done at another school
many years ago and then had our maintance men do this for us. I put books for the month or holidays in it and change them out at the beginning of the month. They are just plastic gutters from Home Depot. 
So, that's it in a nutshell. I hope you may have gotten a few ideas, however, many of my ideas came from blogs. There are so many wonderful teachers out there with awesome ideas and I thank you for sharing them.
Have a great year!


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