Classroom Reveal... FINALLY!

I literally CANNOT believe that school is starting in two days... I know that many of you all have started back within the past few weeks, but I am finally ready for my kiddos to come on Tuesday. Of course, there are a few areas in my room that I want to spruce up.... our Have you Filled a Bucket Today? board and our story writing center, but I'll post about those things in the future.

 

 

For now, here's a peek into my classroom!

 

The view from the hallway... On the bright side, our fabulous janitor painted over a parrot mural that wrapped around my door frame. I plan to put a mini-bulletin board display above the door, but again, that's a project for another day!

 

 

My guided reading/ small group table... set up with Open House goodies! Notice our class pet, the puma (we are the PUMAS).

 

Guided Reading Organization! The big crates hold my own personal guided reading book sets! the cart has lots of my math games and manipulatives!

 

THE CREATION STATION

 

Finally got this set up in my classroom! I've been posting about this for weeks and I'm excited to see it come together!

 

 

My mother-in-law covered these throw pillows for me! My students will pull out a pillow and grab a clip board at the writing center since it's not big enough for a small group to sit at the desk at the same time!

The baskets hold postcards, list-making activities, and word lists that the students can use at the center. On top of the desk, there is different paper for letter writing as well!

 

Grab my writing center paper and materials in a BUNDLE HERE or as separate items here: list-making, postcards, letter writing, and yearlong writing portfolio.

 

 

This cute little area on the floor is going to be my story writing center! If you notice the empty white shelf on the book shelf... that is where I will put materials for the kids to use! Still need some ideas for this area... Hope to get it up and rolling in October!

 

When I got my classroom, there were two of these "library" carts in it and I finally found a way to make them a little more functional for myself and my students. This year, I am using them to store our writing portfolios, math workbooks, and our "I'm Finished' basket for completed work.

Moving on to the classroom library/ whole group area...

Daily 5 book bins and my tubs that I use for math workshop!

My library is organized by topics and also by levels. When students choose books for their book bins, they chose out of these lettered bins. They also pick one "free choice" book out of any bin in the library. 

Ordered these awesome new book tubs from Really Good Stuff this spring! Love them!

Recreated all of my labels this summer! So much more organized!

 

 

Our word wall... with the kids' names up... waiting for our sight words as the year begins!

 

 

The whiteboard at the front of the classroom! I use my projector right in that big open space!

 

Learning goals that are correlated to the First Grade Common Core from Crockett's Classroom.

Grab them -HERE-

 

New classroom schedule and I AM IN LOVE! Pick it up from Ladybug Teacher Files!

Andddd they are editable. Grab them -HERE-

 

The start of our Daily 5 board... I-Charts will go up here after the first week of school!

Our CAFE board... just waiting to be filled with reading strategies!

 

Our morning meeting board/calendar... will be adding organizational charts for word work and writing centers! A work in progress as we add more to our routines!

 

And there you have it folks! I still feel like I'm scrambling to get things ready for the first day! Can't wait to fill all our white space on the walls with kids' artwork and our anchor charts!!

 

Got some banana bread in the oven (can you say stress baking.....) and I'm ready to curl up with my glass of wine and watch Keeping up with the Kardashians... don't judge me please!!

Organization Anxiety!

Okay, so this next school year will be my third year of teaching and I always try to be as organized as possible. I felt like the last two years, I didn't always know what I would need when, how to map out the curriculum, and what documents would be useful to have handy in a teacher binder. I've tried different things and I feel like going into this year, I am waaaaay more prepared.

 

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been drooling over all of the AMAZING teacher planners that exist out there on the internet.... They are gorgeous and have SOOOOO many great ideas in them. However, I just can't get myself to spend between $50 - $100 on a planner when I would need to order a new one for next year... and the year after... Agh I've been having this little battle with myself over them and I decided that I needed to just put together my own teacher binder.

 

I've been searching Instagram, Pinterest, and Teachers Pay Teachers for examples of teacher binders and I've been looking at the types of organization sheets that may be useful to me. I started creating my own sheets and putting them together in a fun colorful binder from Target ($5.00).

 

My goal is always to use as little color ink as possible from my printer so my pages are almost entirely black & white. I printed many of my pages on white or colored cardstock to give the binder a little more pizzazz.

 

During the process of creating these sheets, I've posted a few photos on Instagram and several people were interested in what I was creating. I figured.... I can't be the only teacher who wants a fabulous teacher planner but doesn't want to pay over $50.00 for it.

 

Therefore, all of my teacher organization sheets are FREE and always will be FREE in my TPT store.

 

Here is the link to my *FREE* Teacher Organization Binder Product.

 

If you like what you see, please leave feedback in my TPT store. I will continually update this product on TPT as I add more pages to it so follow my store if you want to receive product updates!

 

Take a peek at my binder pages below!

 

Cover sheet

 

In my Year at a Glance section, I broke down each week into subjects and organized that major topics that I want to focus on that week... these are NOT my lesson plans, but rather, a tool to help me lesson plan more efficiently. It also helps me to be certain that I met all of the Common Core Standards throughout the school year.

 

 

 

Blank calendar pages to insert meetings, important dates, etc.

 

 

There are many pages included in the pack that are not featured here... This is just a sneak peek. Head over to my TPT store for download your own set for free!

 

Enjoy!

A Day of Motivation!



For the last two weeks, I have been wanting to re-create my letter headings for my word wall and I finally got up the motivation today. Consonants in green and vowels in purple! Found a great idea on Pinterest to hang ribbon down from each letter to staple the words to. Can't wait to get it up in my room! Here's a freebie copy of my letters if you would like to make your own! (the blank circle is what I used to trace on cardstock for my borders)

 

 



I also made it to Big Lots and the Learning Shop today! Love both of those places! Got some new borders and some guided reading texts (on clearance!). I have been accumulating multiple copies of books for the past two years to use as guided reading books and they have been sitting in random piles, shoved on bookshelves and carts, etc. I am excited to finally have some big baskets to organize them in on my counter. Take a peek at my baskets from Big Lots and pick up my labels here if you are interested!!



Now that I've done a little organizing today, I'M HOOKED.... going to do some paper organization tonight! Need to put together a "teacher binder" for the next year!

PLEASE COMMENT with things that you CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT in your teacher binder! I'm always looking for new organization ideas!!