Classroom Tour :)

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Happy Saturday :)  I can't believe that this is my last weekend before the school year starts Monday--whoa, where did the summer go?   I started my Saturday off today with a grueling triathlon brick workout, my last before next Sunday's race.  I have loved tri training this summer, but I'm kind of ready for it to be over!  My running training routine takes far less planning than tri training!  After the brick, I collapsed on the FLOOR in my living room on a beach towel, turned on TLC, and passed out for an hour.  Yep, on the floor.  Even after I woke up I didn't bother moving to the couch.  My goodness.

Anyways, enough about my pathetic laziness (I think tri training makes one deserve a certain degree of laziness during the rest of the day, don't you?).  The real purpose for this post is to share pictures of my finished classroom!!  Friday I was at school from 10:30am to 6:30pm, one of the very last cars left in the parking lot.  I spent the day putting finishing touches on the room, finishing my lesson plans, making copies, and prepping chart paper for all of the charts and things I'm planning on using during the first week.  (I use charts like CRAZY and try to prep them in advance as much as I can.  Huge time saver!)

I really must apologize for the awful quality of these pics.  My phone usually takes decent pics, but in my frantic rush to GET OUT OF THE BUILDING at 6:20 last night, I forgot to turn on the lights in the room.  Um, I know.  Duh.  I work in the dark with lamps on, though, and it honestly didn't occur to me to turn on the overhead lights for the pictures!  Will you forgive me?

My decor theme this year is turqoise and black with polka dots, plus neon accents.  I'm going for soothing. :)

 Morning check-in and rest room sign-out, just outside the door.  Students will move their clothespins from the left to right side of the hanging posterboard as they enter the room--makes attendance a cinch.  Sorry, I had to cut off their names!

Thank you, Pinterest!

 

On the window next to my door--a reminder to the kids AND to me!

 

View from the door.  I have four groups of 5 or 6 desks with a gathering area in the front.  My room this year is SMALL, but it works.

 

Job Chart--thanks for the inspiration, Jordyn the Messy One! 

My teeny tiny teacher desk and happy wall.  Check out the awesome post-it board my friend made me a couple years ago!  It rocks.   

Close up of the gathering place where I do the bulk of my teaching.

I'm trying something new for my word wall after seeing Stephanie's word wall display under her board.  Try as I might, I just CANNOT keep up with writing words on sentence strips and cutting them out--hate.  This year I printed the alphabet on neon cardstock, mounted it on black construction paper and laminated, and taped them up under my board.  I plan to write our vocabulary "wonderful words" on the pages in vis-a-vis marker.  This might be a system I can actually maintain! 

Front board: Place value chart along the top, schedule at the right, reminder signs and boggle on the left, magnetic pockets from lakeshore (that I prettied-up with scrapbook paper this year) for turning in homework and assignments. 

I have little "reminder signs" up around the room every year, but this year I decided to pretty them up with some sweet polka dot duct tape--check it out!

I think this tape was created especially to match my room, don't you??

Library corner

 

More library and my Writing Workshop board--soon to be filled with anchor charts!

 

Guided Reading table  

 

"Affirmation Wall" above the board--Again, sorry about the awful picture.  I got the idea for this from the Clutter-Free Classroom--my favorite teaching blog.  I taped a roll of black fadeless paper above the board with teal duct tape.  I am just starting with one affirmation poster and will add (and discuss) one at a time throughout the year.  Our starter: "Everything I do deserves my best effort."

 

Trying something new for rest room procedures this year...I make kids ask permission and sign out, but I sometimes have a hard time remembering if someone is already using the restroom--I only send 1 kid at a time.  I hate the kids carrying passes with them, so I'm going to have them place one of the beanie babies on their desk before leaving and return it when they get back.  That way I will be able to see who's there.  We'll see how it works! 

One of my hanging lanterns--I have 6 throughout the room, 4 of them displaying team numbers.  Ugh, sorry for the blurriness!!

I couldn't take pictures of two whole walls of my room because the light coming in from the windows was making everything blurry and dark--worse than the pictures I actually included!  So I will post a second set of classroom tour pictures soon.  All in all, I absolutely love how the room turned out.  It is both warm and soothing at the same time, and the colors and polka dots just make me happy.  Happy teacher = happy students, didn't you know?  :)