Classroom Tour 2014

Whew! Today was the first day of school and I am still left with a goofy grin on my face :) It feels so great to be back in my classroom and have so many wonderful students to share this upcoming year with!

Here it is! The official tour of my classroom this year! If you've followed me on Instagram or Facebook, you've seen some pics already, but I want to show and describe each section a little more in-depth.

I kept with the teal blue, navy and white theme and couldn't be happier! I changed my borders up and redid my classroom library as well as the labels on my big storage tubs up above and I liked how they turned out.

Here is the view as you first walk into my room. Each table is numbered 1-4:

My teacher desk is in the back right corner and we have that wall full of windows on the right. Each student has a chair assigned to them and their "academic" blue bin in the back of the room. These hold their folders, workbooks, and notebooks. That wall of shelves will soon be covered up by anchor charts, so it won't be visible much longer (which is a relief to me, since it will cut down on the "cluttered" look).

Here is a view the other way towards our meeting area:

Our projector/document camera and speakers are on that stand and our Chromebooks are stored in the trays on the right below the calendar. This year, I took cupcakes of the different months (from Creative Teacher Press, I think) and wrote the students' names and dates in the bottom section. Our schedule is to the right of the calendar and the homework assignments are to the right of that. To the left of the white board is my Mountain Climber Formative Assessment posters that we will use A LOT this year! The clock also has my chevron clock numbers hot glued to the border to help with time-telling.

"MENU" is my take on CAFE this year (more on that soon!) and above that are our Whole Brain Teaching-inspired rules.

We store our Word Work materials, iPads, and iPods in the drawers up front. Clipboards, white boards, markers and fleece scraps (aka, erasers) are up there, too:

These labels are now available in my TpT Store HERE. Fully editable to make your own!

The east wall of our classroom is all our class library. I have used these white Sterelite bins for almost ten years and they are still holding up beautifully! I organize by genre and on the corner of each book put two stickers: a round one for Guided Reading Level and a rectangle one for the genre to make sure it gets put back in the correct bin.

Kids have a separate white magazine file box from Ikea for their reading books since there's little space left in their blue bins, plus these can be moved around the room easily during Daily 5 or DEAR time. Those are numbered and to the left of the library:

The west wall is all yet-to-be-filled-in, but will soon hold things like Class Jobs, a math focus board, and social studies and/or science displays on the large board. Fortunately, my job-share partner is in charge of all of that, so I don't have to get too creative with all of that space ;)

We also have our Clip Chart and Super Improver levels hanging in that space and the large cubes to hold Legos, K'nex, and other building toys for Free Choice time on Fridays.

In the back corner of our classroom is our sink/water fountain and our larger class supply area. I got rid of that awful green countertop color by covering over it with navy blue vinyl and it's shiny and dark now, so I am oh so happy! This also is the spot where kids drop off dull pencils and pick up sharp ones. The sharpener itself is near my desk since it's a classroom job.

Our Class Voice Levels and Writing Process Steps also hang out on this wall and you can see the cardinal direction signs on each wall as well.

For the large bin signs, all I did was take the editable labels from my Book Bin Label set and make up bin names! I separated them by subject to make it easier on my job-share partner and I and got the cheap $5 bins from Walmart that are clear so we can peek quickly to see what we need.

Here's a final panoramic video of my room:


To see more of my chevron decor in my TpT Store, click HERE.

I hope this tour was helpful in seeing how my classroom is laid out and the different sections for storage and supplies. I will be adding more detail once the school year gets underway and I know there will be changes as we go through the year, but this general structure has worked really well for the past several years and I hope it gave you some new ideas!

Happy New School Year!!