2014 Classroom Tour

Hello, little blog! It's been a long time! I warned you last summer that blogging would be pretty sporadic until grad school was over. Well, guess what?! I'm DONE with grad school! That feels so good to type. I had my exit interview last week and I passed (with honors!). I have to take the state assessment to add Reading to my teaching certificate, but I can officially say I have my M.Ed now. :)

So, since that year-and-a-half-long journey is over...I can now turn my attention to other things...like my blog! And TpT store! You can expect to see and hear a lot more from me now...

A few updates since I haven't blogged since DECEMBER (ugh). First of all...in addition to having a shiny new degree...I moved schools this year. It's a big change in neighborhoods and size, but I am in heaven. You guys...my new school is SO nice. It's a lot smaller than my old school, and everyone is just as helpful as can be. And the parents are amazing...PTO came by with cash envelopes for the teachers last week to purchase supplies. I feel like I've been transplanted to an alternative universe! I will still be teaching first grade, but I won't have inclusion this year and I am not the grade level chair. Whew! I'm not going to know what to do with all this free time!

Now for the fun part...my classroom tour! I had a great time decorating my new space.

This is the view of my board. Ignore my to-do list on the left hand side. We have to do a lunch count every morning at our school, so that's what the taped-off boxes in the middle are for. Eventually kids will move their magnets into their designated lunch choice as part of their morning routine.

The view from my guided reading table. I chose not to claim a teacher desk this year. There was an enormous one in the room when I arrived, but it was beat-up and took up a crazy amount of space. I don't know yet how I will like only having my teacher table, but we'll see!

The view of my Word Wall and the clocks from last year. I was sad to let my magnetic word wall go...it was pretty awesome...but I think I will like this set-up okay. Since the meeting area pretty much needed to be here in the classroom, I thought the benefit of having the Word Wall close by outweighed the nifty-ness of words on magnets.

 My entryway table...same baskets from last year, new spot. One box is for tardy slips, one for hall passes, one for notes from home, and a basket for nametags.

The back of my classroom library. One neat thing about this classroom is that has an adjoining door to the classroom next door. The teacher next door is also new to the building, so we LOVE that we can stick our heads in each other's room to ask questions! The teacher who had my room before me painted the back of this bookcase with magnetic paint. I like how it is arranged now, but I am considering flipping it around to use the backside for our CAFE strategies. I don't know...thoughts?

View of the sink and counter area. This was BEFORE the kids and their mountain of supplies arrived...now those blue baskets are full of sanitizer and the counter is covered in Kleenex and copy paper! (At this school, almost everybody brings in supplies. This is SUCH a change for me!)

The view from the door. I re-painted my rocking chair this summer to match my new color scheme. Well, to be completely honest...I SUPERVISED my husband painting this chair...which means I picked out the color and he volunteered to do it. He's a keeper!

 The classroom library. It's a work in progress. I have several hundred more books at home, but we are searching high and low for the shelf clips to hold those last 2 shelves. Turns out they are very hard to find! My custodian repurposed a few from an old bookshelf for more but we are still looking for a few more. I will probably have to get another piece of furniture for the rest of my books at some point. I'm thinking a long low shelf along the back side of the rug would be good. (That means a trip to IKEA, though!)

Here are my cute signs for Open House! Like the rest of the teaching universe I got them at Michael's (along with the bowls) and I found cutesy signs on Pinterest that I liked.

We had an awesome first day on Friday. (Yes, our district started CRAZY early this year!) I have 18 kids as of right now, which is such a change from the class of 27 I had last year. I hope that number doesn't increase too much! They are a sweet, sweet bunch. I am so excited about going back to work tomorrow! I hope all of you that are headed back this week have a great first week!