Finally... Classroom Pictures!

Welcome to my classroom! I posted these pics to my Facebook account back in August and then never got around to posting them here! *fail* I love sharing these pics so I don't know what happened to make it so hard for me to just sit down and get these posted. I hope you enjoy the tour!

There really isn't any specific order to these, but I'll tell you a little about each one as we go.

This is one section of my classroom library. We're a Literacy First school / district so they're big on having classroom libraries that the students actually use. This shelf contains my fiction books. I've never really gotten around to really organizing and labeling my library to the extent I really want, but it'll happen one of these days.

This shelf had previously lived behind my teacher's desk, but when I rearranged the classroom it didn't fit anywhere near there. It fit over by my classroom library, though, and found a new home housing some reading supplies and some of my little teacher gifts from years past.

I can't remember off the top of my head where I found the inspiration for this fluency poster, but I loved it and had to make my own version. The kids refer to it a lot during their reading work stations.

This is my new listening center. I've never had a listening center before, but we have to have them now. I ended up getting a pretty nice one and even though it's a small space for sometimes a group of four kids it still works out quite nicely.

This is the view from the door. The room was all decked out for our open house the night before school started.
Our school did a team / sports theme this year, so this is my door decor. I had the banner made from Vista Print and the rest are just simple little die cuts in K-State colors!
Can you tell what my favorite team is? I love my Wildcats and I'm very obviously not afraid to show it.
Because I don't have much wall space I have to get creative with how I use space in my classroom. I use the door as our AR board and for the students' library cards and library bookmarks. It's actually really convenient for them to grab on the way in and out the door.

Here's part of my corner of the classroom. I found this printable through Pinterest and bought a cheap Wal-Mart frame for it.

More K-State goodies. Our new principal was a teacher in our building and a fellow KSU fan. I inherited a lot of his decorations when he was cleaning out his classroom at the end of the year.

These are our tool kits for Everyday Math. The curriculum calls for a lot of manipulatives to be available to the kids on a daily basis, so I have the organized for each table group. Overall it works out really well. I found these purple drawers at Big Lots for only $18!

I had been wanting to rearrange my classroom and move my desk to the opposite end of the classroom for several years, but one of the reasons why I didn't was because I was going to give up the shelving for all of my teacher books. I'd asked for another shelf last year, but didn't know if I would get one or not. Then, I couple days before school started I walked into my classroom and found this beauty waiting for me. It holds sooooooo much! I love it so much. Good organization and storage makes me happy!

Can you believe another teacher put this out in the hallway to get rid of? This is kind of the command center for classroom supplies. The colorful baskets are labeled for materials like pencils, pens, erasers, highlighters, and so on.

These little resource cards are made from printables I found online as well as stickers from Dollar Tree. I mounted everything on construction paper and laminated it so that they can be reused year after year.

Okay, I will admit this isn't the most attractive setup, but I love this unit. This comes from the kid's furniture department in Target and holds a bunch of random stuff like flashcards, counters, playing cards, dice, games, and books. You can find a very similar one here also from Target.

I needed more storage for my reading and math resources (mostly from my massive Lakeshore and Mardel shopping trip) so I dropped about $20 on these plastic cubes from Wal-Mart. Disclaimer: If you want these for the purpose of stacking, check to make sure they have the connecting part before you buy them in the store. The ones from Target were the same brand (but more fun colors), but they didn't connect and therefore stack properly. Back to the store they went.

This is where I post daily info and assignments, but for open house I had these cute little baseball notes where parents could take one to donate an item.

I hate clutter in the kids' desks so these book bins from Target help to take away part of that problem. I was lucky enough to snag 25 or 30 of these the first year Target carried them and got them for only $1 each. Now they run $2.50 each during back to school time.

This sitting area is an example of how you can create a little reading nook for very little money. The chair was purchased at Bed Bath and Beyond my sophomore year of college. The K-State pillows were 90% off at Linens N' Things when they were going out of business. The small pillows were from the $2.50 bin at Target. The table was a Goodwill find for $2.99 and I spray painted the scratched up red to back. Finally the rug (which you can't really see in this pic, but you can in others) was a Target sale item (less than $20 I believe) when I lived in the college dorms. I love that I have a designated reading area and I even more I love that I hardly spent any money putting it together!

This is my reading focus wall. Not really in action yet because it was before school started, but you get the idea. I love my Target pocket charts. Just glue on some magnet strips on the back and they're good to go on your magnetic white boards.

This is my computer area as well as my word wall. I really *really* need more space for a word wall, but this has to do the job. I love my Poppin' Patterns letters that I used on there and get tons of compliments on it!

Here's the lunch choice chart with the super cute library pockets I won from my post at Tommie's Tools last summer. You can read more about it here and follow the link to where she featured my idea. (PS ~ If you haven't been over to Tommie's Tools before you need to check out her page! She's got some super creative ideas! I love her page!)

My teacher area. It's more cluttered than I wish at times, but it's the best I can do. Don't you love the poster on the front of my desk? "Be a winner, not a whiner!"

This file organizer from Mardel is one of my favorite organization tools. I use it for a lot of copies, particularly things that I want the kids to have easy access to. I also have a smaller back on back behind my desk for easy access to folders and data. Here is the link to all of them on Mardel's website.

Finally, here is my version of a clip chart for behavior. I love the way it looks, but I'm not totally convinced this is the best behavior system for my current class. I talked about behavior management last summer in this post and linked to a lot of other sample clip charts. I may switch to another system at semester and try this one again with another class. I've ended up using some other school wide incentives for behavior this year and trying to do both just doesn't seem to make the whole clip chart system seem as effective. Oh well! That's the joy of teaching sometimes... We can try things and change or adjust based on the needs of our students!

I hope you enjoyed my classroom tour. Please leave a comment and feel free to ask questions about anything. My classroom is like a work of art that I am constantly making changes to and trying to improve, yet never seems to be finished!