This summer was definitely one of the busiest summers of my life! With ending out the school year to selling our house to moving into a new one to planning and throwing our babies’ birthday parties to job-hunting to packing my classroom of seven years and to moving into and decorating my classroom! It has been such an adventure, but I am so glad everything has settled down and after 30+ hours working on my classroom, it is ready to be revealed!!!
In ten years of teaching, this is my first year ever have round tables! Can you believe it?! I have had individual desks in the past, so I am very excited to try this new arrangement! With limited storage space in the classroom, a lot of the supplies this year will be community property and will be refilled as needed. No more cleaning out students’ desks and finding work and old pencils and crayons from way back when! 🙂
My goal for classroom decoration has always been engaging and welcoming without being distracting. With that in mind, I spruced up our big white board with some fun border and sectioned it out for our weekly student-generated anchor charts. One of my sweet teammates was kind enough to let me borrow her light blue masking tape when I ran out of border. Who knew masking tape came in different colors?!!! And of course, I had to bring out my Boho Chic Birdies from my previous classroom along with an inspirational quote for my sweet students! Please don’t excuse the note on the board, it was meant for Meet-the-Teacher Night. 🙂
Right behind my reading table is a HUGE white wall that was calling out to be decorated. I brainstormed all summer what to do with it, until I found my Pinspiration (inspiration from Pinterest)! Using scrapbooking paper and self-adhesive burlap letters, I created a vocabulary word wall for my students. Each time we learn new content words, I will ask my students to write them on big sticky notes that we will be stick them onto our wall! I’m so excited to see how our wall will be filled up by the end of the year!
The previous teacher in my classroom left a lot of these book boxes that just so happened fit perfectly in my cubbies! In addition, I was lucky enough to snag up lots and lots of new books for my library from teachers on my campus! That right there is called TEACHER JACKPOT, ladies and gentlemen! 🙂 I then organized the books for genres along with match colors of the book boxes and VOILA!
Right by my reading table/teacher worker is a little bulletin board I made to personalize my classroom and help my students get to know a little about my family and me. As a child, I’ve always loved hearing stories and seeing pictures of my teachers’ families. It always made them so much more relatable and helped me to see them not as teachers, but also people who have likes and interests and a family like me!
Here is another big board that I have sectioned out into my Interactive Word Wall, I Can Board, and Student Work Display Board. A teammate of mine suggested for me to tape a pad of sticky notes to the bottom of the board so that students can copy down a word and then big it back to their desk! What a great idea?!
Since I am teaching STEM, I thought I would dedicate a small board to it! This will definitely come in handy as reminders and review as we go through the design process over and over again this year!
And here are some ways I am organizing manipulatives and students work this year! Each child is assigned to a number according to the roster which he or she will keep all year. After writing their name on each assignment, students will also be asked to write their number. When I am done checking their work, I can simply place it in their cubby to take home afterwards.
Thank you so much for stopping by! I’m so excited to share my new adventure with you as I know it will be such a great year of learning and growth for BOTH my students and me!
