Last Year-First Year

To start, I thought I would add some pictures from my classroom last year. Unfortunately, I only have pictures from before school started and, therefore, they don't reflect the many changes that took place throughout the year.


Last year, my classroom was space themed. I am going to stick with that theme this year and try to incorporate it more. If you have ideas for space themed bulletin boards, management, etc, please let me know! I loved these high ceilings, but didn't like the large amount of dirty white space so I tried to fill it.

I got the idea for this poster when I was touring another school in the district. Unfortunately, I don't know whose classroom it was. I made it and posted it on my classroom door. 

 This is my class jobs board. Everyone had a job at all times. I have new ideas for this year's job board and will post pictures when it's complete.

 This was my desk area. This may have been the cleanest it ever was. One of my goals this year is to keep my desk tidy.

 The front of my room. I added collaboratively made posters above the whiteboards during the first week of school that demonstrated what our three class rules (Be safe, Be respectful, Be responsible) would look like, sound like, and feel like in the school community.
I am also looking forward to utilizing a smartboard more this year. However, my new one won't be installed until after the start of school.

 The back corner of my classroom. I moved a table to under the light blue board to serve as a "Office of Productive Thinking" for kids who needed a different space to work in. Unfortunately, once we started science, it became a science supply storage/distribution area.

 Another picture of the back of my room. My meeting area was to the right. This bookshelf had textbooks for math.

My classroom from the door. The windows look out to the playground. They provided a lot of wonderful light, but took away wall space. My classroom library is under the windows. 

 Looking back to the door. The dark blue board changed throughout the year. I was going to use it to display student work but couldn't find a way to fit 30 students' work on it. For part of the year it displayed group projects which worked well.

 This was my attendance/lunch count board. Students in one step on their way in the door moved their card from the blue pocket to their lunch choice. Any name left in the pocket is a student who is absent or tardy. A student counted how many hot lunches were ordered and reported it to me so I could send it in with the attendance.

 This was my meeting space. Later in the year I got an easel for charting and added anchor charts to the bulletin board instead of having commercial posters. I also went through a couple rugs this year. One was old and small and a parent ended up donating a rug they weren't using at home. It was great and almost big enough for all the students to sit on!
I also started with book boxes (from ikea) for all of the students. I didn't know how to guide students to use them efficiently, so at some point midyear, we put many of them away.

 The green board turned into my social studies board, but was hard to access with the computers in the way. The word wall was alphabetical and just had words listed under each category. Therefore, it didn't actually support students with spelling or with vocabulary. If I wanted to support spelling I would organize it by spelling pattern. If I wanted to support vocabulary, I should have added definitions or pictures.

 I made a pennant banner to welcome students. Each pennant had a students' name on it. I wouldn't do this again because my class roster changed so much from the time I made it through the first week of school. I ended up having to take names off, add more names; it was too hard to keep up with and not worth the time.