Wednesday 18 September 2013

I'm Back! Classroom Reveal and Freebies!!

Wow. I don't think I've ever been gone this long before. It's a combination of life is crazy, back to school is exhausting, and no internet at the new house. Boo it sucks. I've been using my phone as a hot spot and I think I hit my data limit by checking on the 300+ blog posts I missed on Blog Lovin' since about mid-August. I didn't even stop by for Farley's September Currently! Well, I am back for a bit. I have a few things in the works (ie. some Fall Word Work and Fall Math Centre packs) and have some freebies planned for ya as well. Stay tuned! For today though I am finally going to do my classroom reveal! I am at a new school but it is a PERMANENT job, which means that next June, I don't have to pack up all my stuff and move it out again. Woo hoo! I only had a short time before school started to get things set up, so I did a lot of hiding junk in drawers/cupboards so everything looked organized on the outside. As school has begun, I've been slowly tackling each project and I'm becoming happier and happier with my room. Everything is finding a spot and things are slowly falling into place. Here's a peak into my classroom...

Here's my little bulletin board in the hallway. I love this colourful sock monkey accents! Too cute!!


This is the spot next to my door, near the front of the classroom. The white tubs are my students' cubbies. They keep their pencil boxes and belongings in there, seeing as we have tables. I like this system. No desks to keep clean. I numbered the tubs to match their book boxes. This works well. We also have our mailboxes on top.


This bulletin board houses our birthdays, tooth chart, and star of the day. The star gets to be line leader, teacher helper, and bring show and tell. Easy classrom job/show and tell schedule set up.


Next up is our carpet area. We're finding the carpet a bit small for our 23 buddies, so we can't do as much work at the carpet as I would like. We tend to do a bit more at our desks.


Here's our monthly calendar.


By the carpet I have our season and weather charts. I ended up moving that book shelf out of the way because we couldn't see the weather chart clearly.


This is my favourite spot. The classroom library! It has the only window in the classroom, my adorable pink ABC rug from Target, and my newest addition--end table and stools from IKEA. The kids love that spot! There is always someone sitting on the stools. I'm thinking of eventually setting up a few more of those tables around the room--great for math games or word work stations!


Here's a little spot to display our author of the month. I always start the year with Kevin Henkes. I find his stories a bit long and he has some very unique vocabulary, but it's a great way to build stamina and start book discussions with these youngins.

 
Here's our word wall. It's blank to start with, but we add words as the year goes on. On the counter are a few more library tubs and the students' book boxes.


This is a spot where I can display student work. These faces are something they did in June last year. They have a transition day where the Kindergartens go visit the Grade 1 teachers for an hour. I was lucky that I got a sub that day so I could go visit them as well. I had to add happy faces for some of my new students who weren't there in Kindergarten.


Here's my teacher corner. My desk, my computer, some storage shelves, my bulletin board of important documents. My little oasis. Granted I don't spend much time here after attendance is done, but it does house important things I need daily!


The grey plastic towers house different work books/journals. The colourful tubs are toys for indoor recess/free time. The blue tubs are our word work stations. There's the only view of my tables. I have four sets of tables--two trapezoid tables to make a hexagon.


Here's a close up of our classroom promise that we made on our first day of school. It's missing a few self-portrait signatures, but still looks good. I refer to this ALL THE TIME. We are having some difficulty with sitting quietly at carpet time. I may have to bring out my listening chart soon.


Here's a very packed corner. This is my guided reading table--love that I have a horseshoe table this year!!


Here's a close up. These shelves house math manipulatives, math centres, math books, and math games.


This section of shelves has my word work centres, word work manipulatives, binders for our portfolios, and levelled home reading books.


This is the side of the room where the students hang their jackets/backpacks. That bulletin board on top is SO TALL, I had to climb on top of the shoe rack. Definitely not safe. Definitely never changing that board. Those four seasons posters will stay there until I retire. lol.


We made these math people the first week of school. I had seen some cute "Math About Me" posters on Pinterest, but I felt the kid faces/shoes were a little our of date. I made some new ones with, of course, adorable Melonheadz clipart.


These people turned out so cute!! They had to write the numbers for their age, their grade, people in their house, pets, teeth lost, and their favourite number. You can download this freebie {here}. Clipart from Melonheadz and KPM Doodles.


Here's something else new I started this year. Monthly "Weekend Journals". Each Monday (or Tuesday after a holiday) we write about something we did on the weekend. These will be great for showing year-long writing progress. We will put these in our portfolios. (A post about our portfolios will be in the near future.)



You can download these weekend journals for free from {here}. They contain ten different monthly title pages and four different writing page options. I love the checklist I include on the bottom. We go over it each time and I have the students self-check their own writing to see if they have a capital, punctuation, spaces, and sight words spelled correctly. Such a great visual.

Well that's it for now! I have to finish watching the Big Brother finale, then head off to bed! I promise I will be back soon. Thanks for stopping by! :)