When You Enter...

I made this the other day and will be putting it in the hall between my room and a teammate's room. :)

It says:

When you enter our classrooms...

You are scientists.

You are explorers.

You are important.

You are loved.

You are mathematicians.

You are authors.

You are leaders.

You are respected.

You are the reason we are here.

Love,

Mrs. _______

Ms. ____________

I am thinking I may change the order of these things when I fix it all up on the wall with my neighbor. :)

Also- to give credit where credit is due- I got the idea from pinterest and changed it to suit us. 

Third Year Teaching, Third Classroom

I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that I was asked to move rooms at the end of the school year. I happily said yes because I LOVE my job and will move where ever I need to if it means staying there. :)

Plus, I secretly LOVE new spaces and the challenge of new decorating ideas!

I went to school last week and worked some. This is what I was able to accomplish. 

I have decided to use this space to keep the kids on track with scheduling, etc. They will check here each day to see if it is their turn to use the ipod, go to the learning commons, etc. They will also find out what work station they will begin with in math station rotations.

This shows a close-up of the writing process tracking system. They will each have a button magnet with their number on it and move their magnet once they complete each step of the writing process. 

This is the beginnings of my part of the room where we will do guided reading and strategy groups as well as conferences.

This is the first half of the word wall. I haven't put my word wall so low before, but the kids make the word wall as we go through the year, so it is important that they be able to reach it. Last year I put it on 2 tall cabinets and that worked, but some of them couldn't reach the top letters.

This is the second half of the word wall and the "interesting words" wall. That's where kids put the words they see as they are reading that are interesting and can help them add voice to their writing.

This will be our math word wall. This is not something the kids build on. I add words as we go through out math units.

We are a Leader in Me school and we teach kids about leadership and encourage them to be leaders. I found this idea on Pinterest and fell in love. So, I made it a little more colorful and put it in our bathroom.

This is where we will store supplies. Last year the supplies were in cabinets and the kids could not easily access them. I thought this would be the perfect solution!

This is the beginnings of my classroom library. I like that I have been able to fit it in a small space, but I am a little concerned about how many kids will be able to use this area at the same time. I may have to have a rotation for that as well. That's ok, though.

See the Leader!

We are a lighthouse school for Leader In Me. This lovely little inspirational quote will go above the mirror in the bathroom in my classroom. 

Too cute!

Heroes

I used the Cricut and cut out these people and plan to hang them outside of my room with the quote about heroes. I think they turned out pretty cute!

The Writing Process

These are for our writing process. The kids each have a magnet with their number on it and they keep track of where they are in the writing process by moving their magnet to the correct pencil. It helps me to know who is where in the process.

Old Shelf Has New Life

Before I started teaching I came upon this AWESOME deal on this shelf at a yard sale. It was $5. Holy Cow I snatched it up and took it home.

I lived with it like that for 2 years... and I grew bored with it.

So I decided to paint it teal. (Teal Zeal, to be exact.)

But that wasn't enough.

So, I added quotes to each side. I LOVE it! I can't wait to take it back to my room.

Before you think I am crazy for putting quotes on a shelf that will be filled with books, let me explain how this shelf is used.

I go to the library (public and school) and check out Non-Fiction books on the topics we are currently covering in Science and Social Studies (and I'll admit that if I see a super cute fiction book I know they'd love, I'll get that, too.) and the books stay on this shelf when they are not being read.

My kids have book baskets where they store the books they are reading. However, because these books are checked out to me I do not allow them to store them in the book baskets. They keep them on this shelf. If they aren't finished they just put a sticky note with their name on it and the other kids know that that child has "first dibs" on the book the next time we read. 

So, when we don't have books on the shelf we will have super cute quotes! I am so excited!

Mrs. _____'s Heroes

This year I have decided we will be Mrs. _____________'s Heroes.

I found a quote online by Maya Angelou and cut it out using my Cricut. I plan to laminate it and put it in the hallway outside of my room. Too cute!