Peek In My Room: Virtual Tour

Hey everyone!  I wanted to give you a little sneaky peek into my classroom.  I will let the pictures and videos speak for themselves.  Please enjoy!

I finally found the panorama option on my iPhone...awesome!

This year I decided to add hanging table numbers and more paper lanterns.  Because, why not?

Next you will see my whiteboard, calendar, and birthday board set up:

Video clip of our beginning of the year calendar elements:

Video of the Common Board Configuration:

I painted these new months-of-the-year hanging plaques this summer.  I've been wanting to spruce up my calendar for a while and these guys did the trick.  I'm going to attach popsicle sticks or clothes pins with each students birthday to the corresponding month once everything is settled!

Video clip of our birthday board and routines:



Now we'll move into specific area's of the room.

Above you will see a picture of my classroom library and below you'll find a video clip:

This is my Word Wall corner.  Below it is the Writing Station.  The following video clip will provide a few more details.


Up next is the listening center!

Finally, I wanted to share a few pictures and videos of some handmade items in my classroom!

Behavior chart:

Classroom helpers/jobs chart:

How we go home:

Last, but not least, C3B4me!  Best invention ever.  This is a reminder that students need to ask 3 people before they interrupt your reading groups, testing, RTI, whatever time to ask you to repeat instructions (that you probably gave 3 times already).  I love that it helps my students develop a sense of personal responsibility to begin solving their problems independently!

I hope you enjoyed this interactive tour!  Let me know what you think.  All questions and suggestions are welcome!

MTSS Monday: Organization

Do you thrive on classroom chaos and find order in disorder?

Do you believe there is a place for everything and everything belongs in it's place?

I lean toward the "place for everything" mentality, especially at work.  During our last planning day, I spent 4 hours in my classroom closet getting organized (it was a disaster, I'd like to blame it on my students but they don't go in there).  I do this every 2 years or so.  Stuff piles up and I need to change the way I store it so that I can find it/get rid of things I don't use anymore (I hate clutter!).

Since I've found, created, and bought (thanks Pinterest and TPT!) multiple reading and math activities for almost every skill I teach, it made sense to put them all in Ziploc bags and group them into magazine holders.  I've been collecting the wonderful array of magazine holders in each picture from the Tar-jay dollar spot :).

Reading activities

Math activities

As you can see I labeled the front of each box and grouped my games and activities according to the labels.

This has made MTSS (formerly RTI) a lot simpler for me.  Games and activities are easy to find and already bagged and prepared to go into each groups bucket.  It literally cut my planning/prep time in half.

Tier 1-enrichment, Tier 1-practice, and Tier 2-remediation buckets containing MTSS activities.

Beyond MTSS, it's made literacy and math centers a breeze as well.  I might be married to this plan for more than 2 years (I hope)!  It took me a while to find, print, laminate, cut out, and prepare all of these activities but it was time well spent.

My go-to places to find new games and activities are:

Pinterest

Teachers Pay Teachers

Blog Hoppin'

Freebie-licious

My questions for you are:

*How do you stay organized?

*Where do you find your games and activities?

Birthday Bucket

I'm the worst about birthdays.  I know my students have birthdays and I know they're excited about them because on the first day of school they inform me that their birthday is February 22nd.  Then, everyday...every....single...day, they remind me that their birthday is February 22nd.

I love that their Mama's birthed them on that special day and I only get annoyed about their daily reminders once a day, when they remind me.

In the past I've just never seemed to get around to making it a special thing in the classroom because there are just so many other things.

SO. MANY. OTHER. THINGS.

This year I decided to make their birthdays a little more special.  I posted their name and birthdate on yellow and orange circles around my calendar (no picture, sorry, I'm lame).

We also have a Birthday Bucket!  They get so excited about this!  When they come in and the bucket isn't on top of the T.V. I hear them say, "Gasp, she took the birthday bucket down!  It's someone's birthday!"

Inside are a whole bunch of treats to choose from so it's like going to the treasure chest just because you were born.  Which reinforces the fact that I am the greatest teacher in these United States.  It's so easy to make kids happy :)

This is what it usually looks like sitting on top of the T.V.

So on their birthday they get to wear the birthday glasses, pick a treat out of the bucket, and make a foldable birthday book (I got the birthday flippy book from Bunting, Books, and Bainbridge).

B.A. celebrating his birthday this past Friday.

I introduced the Birthday Bucket during the first Friday back and we celebrated the summer birthdays since they always miss out on the class celebrations!  It's been a lot of fun and really easy to incorporate so this Birthday Bucket might be a keeper!

Where I Teach

I can't even begin to express how pleased I am with how the classroom turned out this year.  I recently decided to choose a color scheme/theme for inside of my classroom and keep the school theme outside only.  It just costs too much to completely transform a room every year!  Below are a few general pictures of my class set up.

I love having my desk smack in the middle of the room, nothing gets by me, at least that's what I like to think!

Top: Front of my room with the white board and class meeting area.
Bottom: Back of the room with the word wall, cubbies, and fridge.

Can you guess what our theme is this year?  This is the view outside of my classroom.  I finally got brave enough to hang a few things from the ceiling outside of my classroom!

I love that quote from Seuss, "It's fun to have fun but you have to know how!"  It's the perfect way to kick off that behavior expectations discussion.

Students added their names are on stars to the word wall.

Below you'll see my calendar...nothing exciting, I need to do something about that.  My schedule, and our 60 day countdown.  We are filling in one minute each day of the clock to count down the first 60 days of school.  

The clock corner is my newest addition to the classroom!  Thanks Ginger Snaps for the cute clock labels!

I found the pencil labels on Pinterest and traced them back to Ladybug Teacher Files.  There are my student files in the blue and green crates.  I painted those Dr. Seuss pictures a few years ago and last year I made the first grade frame that became so popular on Pinterest.  I pinned and made it almost a year ago and of course now the link is broken so I'm sorry I can't credit that brilliant teacher!  Finally, I made lots of pennants this summer and I think they are one of the reasons I'm so excited about my room this year!

The How We Go Home board was another Pinterest inspired find from Lesson Plan Diva.  I've also pictured the students library, birthday bucket, and some new shelving units I spent a couple hours putting together last week!

That's basically what I've got going on in my room this year!  I can't wait to see what everyone else's rooms look like!