Classroom Tour!

Well, I finally have my classroom ready for my 20 second graders coming Monday!!!
Well, it's almost ready-we shall discuss that in a bit!

But first...

The hallway bulletin board!

Here is the view from the door:

I know it looks a little plain (or at least, it does to me!), but I am planning on putting stuff up as we learn things....don't want to overwhelm the kids on the first day! :)

Behind the door: hooks for backpacks and owls to keep track of stickers earned for good behavior!

Classroom jobs:

I am doing the number system this year where each child is assigned a number. Last year, my classroom was basically a revolving door--I lost about 12 students over the course of the year, and gained just about as many! So I was constantly erasing and re-writing names on EVERYTHING. This way, if I lose or gain a friend, I don't have to go around and fix the names on everything! Their numbers are on pretty much everything: jobs, hooks, behavior clips, textbooks, etc! Hopefully this will make my life a little easier!

 Bathroom corner...YES! I have a bathroom in my room this year!!

Behavior Area of the board...all 3 things I got off Pinterest! (DUH!)

Behavior system

Voice Levels poster

Classroom Rules

On the left is my behavior system this year. Each student has a clip that will be in green at the start of every day. They can move their clip up or down depending on their behavior. I am really trying to enforce positive behavior, so I like this plan because there are three levels to move up to! (Last year, I just had blue. And I always forgot to move kids up to blue. Oops.)

Next is the reading area. 

That's my fish carpet from Donor's Chose! GREAT website for teachers to get things for their classrooms!

{another view...after I put up border-THANKS JEN!-around some sections of the board!}

Next is the kidney table where I will meet with small groups (you can't really see it in this pic, but it's there!), and our Visualizing and Verbalizing structure word cards! V/V is this program my school does in grades 2-4, so it is a new thing for me this year!! 

On the shelves to the left are textbooks--again, a new thing for me this year!! 

On the other side of those shelves are more shelves, where I keep all of my teacher books and supplies! On the top are my daily tubs, where I put materials for each day that week.

{of course, those are wedding pictures in the bottom left corner!}

Here is my desk area! 

Last year, I had my desk facing the window, and I didn't like it because if I was ever sitting at my desk (HAHA like that ever really happened), I couldn't see what was going on in the room. Now, my desk faces everything! :)

The view from my desk:

On the other side of my desk: files, fridge and MORE teacher manuals and materials!

Math Wall:

Lucky for me, the teacher who was in this room last year left up ALL of her bulletin boards!! So I decided just to leave up her Math words, too!! Such a time saver! :)

Next to that is the word wall...also left up from last year. It's blank for now! :) 5 words per week will go on it, starting Monday!

I saw this poster on Pinterest, and really liked it:

I teach in a Title I school, where so many of the kids have difficult home lives. I thought it was important to put this up, so they can feel "safe" at school. 

Another view of the front of the room (the THINK poster is also from Pinterest! Seriously, how did people set up their classrooms/teach before Pinterest?!?)

Ok, so that WOULD wrap up the tour....BUT...I decided FRIDAY (aka yesterday and first day of school is Monday) that maybe I should turn on my SmartBoard to see if it worked. Guess what? It didn't! I frantically called the tech guy into my room and he basically told me that whatever is wrong with my SmartBoard (he explained it to me, but I don't understand all of that stuff...something with a bad wire that runs through the wall?) is like a MAJOR problem and I could be without my SmartBoard for like a month! (Good thing I didn't wait till Monday to see if it worked!)

If you're not a teacher, let me break it down for you: 90% of my lessons are on, or involve using the SmartBoard. It's like a doctor working without a stethoscope, an account working without a calculator, a football player without a football. In other words, it is HIGHLY essential. 

Fear not though friends, because we figured out a way that I can use my SmartBoard! I now have this old school projector hooked up to my laptop. It is super ridiculous, ugly and in the way of everything. But, it will project the SmartBoard slides onto the non-functioning SmartBoard screen, so at least the kids will be able to see everything. (It still sucks though, because we can't write or move anything around.) 

So here's what it looks like now:

Anyone want to bet how many kids bump the cart its on?!?!? UGHHHHHHH. 

Please come fix my SmartBoard ASAP people!!!!