Classroom Is Done!!!!

 

After many weeks of planning, my classroom is officially ready for first graders! I'm now at that point where I can't think about adding anything else to my room or my brain might explode. It's definitely time for students to come! Thanks to many great ideas from Pinterest and other bloggers, I think the room came together great. We will see how functional it all is in the next few weeks.

Here is my finished teacher corner. The objective chart is from Think Share Teach. I took our state objectives and reworked them to fit the margins of each subject's bordered page. Then I laminated them and added velcro to the back so I can quickly change out objectives when needed. As you can see, I have a lot of cinder block walls and the hot glue gun worked great! I also love lamps.

Here is a view of my classroom from the carpet in the front of the room.

Here is the front of my room and where I feel like EVERYTHING happens. I added boundaries to my word wall with painter's tape and love how it came out. I feel better looking at it, so I think it will make a big difference for my kiddos who have a hard time focusing and finding words. The green bins will house finished work throughout the day and during both literacy and math stations. The shapes correspond with the table they sit at. Last year I had students turn in work in baskets labeled according to their reading group, but then I could only use those baskets during literacy work station time. I'm hoping these updated work bins will be used more often. Grab your own set of labels from Mrs. Wills here.

Here is my finished calendar board. The date portion at the top is all velcro and I plan on adding tens frames to the right of the calendar to count how many days we've been in school and tie in with number sense. Later I'll add tens and ones, but a team member of mine pointed out that it can be very confusing to first graders who are still firming up basic number sense skills to see hundreds, tens and ones on the first day of school. A lot of our students are still working on one to one correspondence.

Another VERY important part of my classroom...the station boards. This is where students check to see which stations they are going to each day. From left we have literacy stations, math stations and then yes....science and social studies stations. More on how that will work later, but for now I think it's safe to say I'll be teaching a lot of station expectations in the next few weeks.

A little dark, but here is the Welcome banner on my door looking into my classroom. Grab your own Welcome banner here.

Classroom Library: New pillows and a new lamp this year. You can also see my terrariums that I used in my inquiry staff development last week. Let's see how long they live!

Classroom Library closer up.

And last but not least...the part of my classroom that has been getting the most "ooos and ahhs" are my lovely felt chair covers. THEY ARE SO QUIET!! And since we will be spending so much time in stations pushing in chairs and moving around the room, I can't wait to see what a difference they make. It's the small things in a teacher's life : )