My Classroom Tour!

Phew! I made it through the first week of school! I am now as ready as I'll ever be to reveal my classroom for the 2014-2015 school year!

 

This is my reading focus wall. I don't have that many bulletin boards, so I used contact paper to create a board behind my guided reading table. I then hot glued clothes pins to hold up my laminated paper. I put Velcro up as well so that I could change out the labels if I ever wanted to. The pocket chart in the center is for my vocab words for each group!

This is my FAVORITE spot in my room. This is my reading corner. I haven't finished the bulletin board yet. I got the purple rug from Wal-Mart for about $15. The cute chevron table was $10 from Ross and the rest of the furniture is old. I covered up my wooden doors with contact paper to create a super cute and bright Word Wall. The shelf on the right has all of my book baskets that are sorted by genre.

It's kind of hard to see, but the banner that I made says "Math is a Hoot!" Looking at it now, I'd like to have lighter paper so that the letters could be more visible. I do not have the time or energy to fix it at the moment :) My bulletin board paper is actually wrapping paper that I bought from the dollar section at Target.

I found this awesome idea on Pinterest! Like I said previously, I don't have much bulletin board space, so I created this one with contact paper. I hot glued clothes pins to the wall so that I can swap out student work. This also shows my mailbox system which is a hot mess with all of the first day packet stuff :)

Try dressing up your door or bulletin boards with mix/match borders! I love this!

My job board is on a door that leads to the outside. I covered it with contact paper and it looks so much better. I love this!

I'm going to end my classroom tour with my favorite desk skirt that I made a couple years ago. This was super easy and didn't take much time at all. If you like that big chunky letter on my desk, they are 50% off at Michael's Arts and Crafts! :)

 

I'll post more classroom pictures very soon! :) Leave a link to your blog so I can check out your classroom!

Free Product!!

Happy Friday everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and Spring Break! Is everyone as ready for summer break as I am? :) I wanted to brighten up your day with a FREEBIE! Check out these super cute and simple binder covers. They cover a range of topics from subject areas, student data, to parent communication. Head over to my Teachers Pay Teachers store right here to grab them!

Writing in the Classroom

Happy Hump Day everyone! It's been a couple weeks since my last post...a lot has been going on! On top of MSA, snow days, and grad school, I'm overwhelmed to say the least. I wanted to do a quick post about writing centers. I love writing and I want my students to enjoy it as well. I'm even writing my 40 page graduate paper on the attitudes of students towards writing!

During the Daily 5, students are able to work on writing. It is a requirement to work on writing AT LEAST twice a week. I've created a writing table where I store their writing folders and the class writing journals. At the beginning of the year I bought a folder for each student to last the entire year. They are stored in the bins shown below. This way, students won't lose them and I can see the progress that they make throughout the year. My students can write whatever they want in these folders. I have journal cards, story ideas, creative writing cards, etc. In addition to the folders, I have spiral notebooks and composition books with labels on them that I created. You can grab these for free at my Teachers Pay Teachers store here! These journals have broad topics on them so students can write creatively.

How do you promote writing in your class?

 

Classroom Library Organization

Happy Friday everyone! I was lucky enough to have a half day all to myself in my classroom on Wednesday! We had an in-service the first half of the day and then it was organization station in my room! My library before Wednesday included great books, but they weren't organized or showcased, so I don't think my students took the time to look through them. I went on Teachers Pay Teachers and found an AMAZING freebie from Jessica Tobin's store: Book Tub Labels! They were owl themed which is my classroom theme so I had to download these. There are so many labels included with this product. I laminated all of them and only used a handful because I don't have much space in my classroom for a large library. I picked a few genres I wanted to stick with and organized it that way.

 

Check out my library BEFORE I organized....

 

Look at the heaping pile of books falling off the shelf! Makes my head spin just looking at it!

 

AFTER:

 

I can breathe now! This makes me happy just looking at it. And I must say, my kids were actually looking in the library this week! Organization really is an important component in a successful classroom.

 

 

How do you have your classroom library organized? Don't forget to head over to Jessica's store to grab this awesome freebie! :)