Room Tour 2013

Well, we've finished the first two days of school last week and I'm still exhausted.  Our pre-planning days went by quickly and it seems like I'm still trying to catch up.  I've been fighting the crud (stuffy nose, sore throat and cough) for over a week now and that hasn't helped.  Our Open House was a success and we met 14 of our 15 students that night.  We started school on Thursday (15th) with all 15 friends and they are a great little bunch.  Some of them are talkers but that's common in first grade.  One or two seem to whine/complain but I hope that will ease off as they adjust to the new routine.  I also have an intern who will be with us through Thanksgiving and she is off to a great start.  She visited my class before school ended last year.  She  also attended an IEP meeting for a student who is in our class this year, attended curriculum trainings during post planning and attended another training over the summer before "officially" starting when pre-planning began. 

All of our new friends like the superhero classroom theme and I wanted to show you how the room started and how it is looking right now.


This is the load I had in my trunk the first day I went back to school.

 

Here it is after I unloaded.

This is how the room looked after the custodians had cleaned the carpets.  Most of the furniture was pushed all together on one side of the room.

 All of the books that make up my books center get stored in the cubbies over the summer.

 

 

My classroom door.  I printed on magnet sheets.



Wall outside my classroom door.

As you enter the classroom, there are student cubbies on the left that have a large bulletin board space above them.  I use the bulletin board for our content area word wall and to display our school Warrior Expectations and class rules.

Just past the cubbies is a corner that has our computer area.   I have the mathematical practices posted on one wall and the other wall will have our Daily 5 charts once they are introduced.


 

 

 At the front of the room is our whole group area with our reading strategies board, SMART board and white board.

 

 

Cooper the Super Bear will be going home with students throughout the year.

 

 

 

 

I love my rugs from Office Depot!

 

I have a wall of countertop and cabinet space along with windows and a back door that leads to the playground area.  Red contact paper on the window of the door stops kids from looking out at children playing on the playground.
 

The back corner with a sink is also home to our superhero behavior clip chart.  The bookcase there by the sink houses all of our word work activities.  The coat rack holds our two superhero outfits.  They cane from Oriental Trading and they are reversible. 

The door leads to our restroom.  There was a mirror on the door but I covered it with red contact to make it into a bulletin board.  It has month of the year, day of the week and color word cards.

 

This wall also holds the entrance to my office.  The shelf on the left has our non-AR books.  They are labeled by color and they match the colors on the labels of our AR books.

 

 

The cart under the office window houses big books and the top holds our listen to reading boxes (tape players and Tag readers).  The back of the shelf on the right has a pegboard back with a pocket chart hanging on it.  Right now I have my number word cards there.

 

 

The front of the shelf has some of our AR books that are grouped by author.

 

 

Our other AR books are grouped by book level.  All of our books have colored labels that indicate what level they are. 

 

 For example: 0.0-0.9 books have a purple label, Blue labels are books that are 1.0-1.4, etc.

 

Above the AR books is our high frequency word wall and you are back at the entrance to the room.

These posters are on the back of our student mailboxes which sit in behind a table by the student cubbies.  I should have put these two pictures up earlier in the post.

 

 

 

 Well, if you made it through all of that you've seen our room.  Below are pictures that were taken at our Back to School Open House.  Our team always get a team picture taken and this year I also had a picture taken with my intern, Eliza.  Its going to be a great year!  (I'm the one in the black dress with the flowered jacket.)