Where it All Goes Down

Over on Teacher Week it's time to show off where we get down to business. Welcome to my classroom!  Please excuse the quality, or lack thereof, of these photos.  I took them with my phone so they aren't the greatest.  I don't have much up on my walls yet since we just started school.  I like to hang things throughout the year, not have the walls filled with a bunch of "stuff" just to take up space. 

This is the view standing on the tile by the lockers looking into my desk area.  The magnetic letters on the whiteboard will be the headings for the word wall words that we hang up every week.  The round table is where I will do small group work and student conferencing for reading and writing.  This year I have covered the digital clock (do you spy with your little eye that owl hanging out over the SmartBoard?)  I hung an analog clock so the kids would get more practice telling time.  It's taking some getting used to, even for me. You can see a small part of the rug we gather on for large group lessons, class meetings, and read alouds. 

I use tables instead of desks so the seat sacks are where the kids keep their journal, pencil bags, and a few other items.  The caddies on the tables are used for the Unfinished Work folders that you see and eventually will hold math books too.  This is the first year in awhile that I haven't done "community supplies".  We had such a hard time last year with kids breaking pencils and crayons, poking holes in erasers, and not taking care of the supplies in general.  We thought maybe giving everyone their own pencil bag with supplies in it would cut down on that since they will take ownership of their things. The white bags are their Guided Reading bags.  The kids "shop" the classroom library once a week and keep their books in these bags.  This cuts down on any hustle and bustle in the classroom during the reading block.

In years past I have used the Helper of the Day concept, using one student per day to do the big jobs in the classroom.  This year, along with my fabulous team, I decided to come up with actual jobs for more than one student to do. We came up with actual job titles to go with each of the jobs and the jobs will be filled by the same student for the week.

This is the classroom library where I have tubs labeled using Guided Reading Levels.  See that cute directors chair?  The teacher I interned with 18 years ago painted it for me and I still love it.  I have collected most of my books through Scholastic bonus points over the years.  It's a big job keeping the library organized!  As a matter of fact, one of the jobs on the class job chart is that of Librarian.  

This bulletin board is a new one that I'm hoping is going to be an interactive way for my students to recognize each other for displaying our school's 3 core values: Be Safe, Respectful, and Responsible.  I put Post It's in the basket that they can use to write down what they observe and they can stick them to the corresponding sheet at the bottom and once a week we will celebrate the names on the board.  At least that's my plan, as I said it's a new concept and it may need some tweaking.