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Classroom ideas
Classroom, or education as a whole, has two different blades. One side is the best place to prepare the best generation in the future. The other point of view is … Read more
The Organized Teacher
Hello! I just wrapped up my first week of my eleventh year teaching and wanted to share some picture of my classroom with you. This post contains Amazon affiliate links for your convenience. I am paid a small commission for referring yo
u to the products I am recommending but you will not pay any additional costs. My Theme I get asked what my theme is all the time. I don’t really have one. I use bright colors and lots of adorable Melonheadz clipart. The beauty of using Melonheadz is that it’s not geared towards boys or girls, and it’s not specific. It can go with everything. What I love most about the clip art is that it celebrates children. Each image reminds me of students that I have had in the past. I also love that my kids identify with the characters too. It’s our room. When you enter my classroom, you walk right into this area. I thought for years about getting rid of my desk to open up some space and I just couldn’t do it. I needed to find a way to reduce the amount of space that it took up in my classroom. What I ended up doing was making it a shared student/teacher workplace. I put my kidney table right by my desk to maximize the usage of this area. There are so many benefits to having the table this way. 1. The students are facing me only. They cannot get distracted by watching the rest of the class while we work. 2. I can see the entire class while I work with my small groups. 3. I can walk right into my room and put my materials down. 4. I can use my chair for both tables. This has seriously been the best set up and I don’t think I will ever change it! Above this wall, I decided to place a quote that we can focus on for the year. It’s always time to be kind! The inspiration for this quote is from @thinkgrowgiggle on IG 🙂 If you’ve been on social media, you might have noticed the giant flower trend. Well, I fell head over heels for it! I made some for my room and they added so much to this area. You can find free templates for large flowers HERE from The Happy Teacher’s Palette. Calendar Area: I searched and searched for a super long time for the perfect calendar. I gave up searching and decided to create my own. I am in LOVE! It’s bright, happy, and all my kids can see it from all areas in the room. It’s pretty large! I got it printed as an engineer print at Staples for around $5. I get lots of questions about how my cards are being held up. Have you heard of StikkiClips? I found out about them last year and they have been game changers! Prior to this I was using Velcro but then the cards took up so much space and they got all bent. I no longer have to worry about that. I just slip them in and out when I’m updating the calendar. This is what the StikkiClips look like. You can find them at Walmart, Lakeshore, and Amazon. Links: Calendar Kit StikkiClips Desk Area: Anyone else have a hard time functioning when their desk area is messy? I know I do! I use a few different containers to help me stay organized. To Do Drawers My to-do drawers are life savers! I keep my master copies for the week on the top drawer. Work that needs to be graded in the middle drawer, and papers I need to file at the bottom. Do you use this system? If you don’t, you should give it a try! You can pick up these labels for FREE in my shop! Teacher Toolbox My teacher toolbox is right by my work area so it’s quickly accessible. This is a teacher must have! All the items that would usually be all inside my desk are now in this labeled container. I no longer have to rummage through my desk drawers in order to find everything. This one container saves me so much time! This toolbox came from Lowe’s and I spray painted with white. Links: Freebie Labels Sterilite Bins Toolbox Labels Toolbox Right next to my toolbox are my tape dispenser, Stapler, and mini-lightbox. The brag tags are from @primarilyspeaking. The pocket chart is from the Target Dollar Spot. This is my first year using brag tags. My kids are super excited about them! Student Work Display/Gallery Wall If you look over to the left of my desk area, you’ll see a student work display (the black papers) and my #bestclass gallery wall inspired by RCA. I love to display student pictures in my room. It makes it feel like home. Links: Ikea Pink Chair Ikea Stools Front Wall This is a whole view of my east wall. And another angle into my south wall. Library My library is on the opposite side of my desk. Close up of my library: My shelving is new from Ikea this year. The bins from the Target Dollar Spot fit perfectly in each cubby. These shelves are perfect for classroom libraries. They are low so they make it easy for my kids to reach all the books, you can display books along the top, and because of the height, you can easily see the kids when they are in the library. I often get asked about how I sort my books. There is no exact system in place. Some of them are sorted by genre, theme, author (or groups of authors) or topics. It’s pretty flexible and I group them in a way that makes sense to me and my kids. Each book is labeled so that it can be returned into the right bin. I do not level my books. The reason why is because my kids do tons of leveled reading throughout the day. When they choose books from my library, I want them to be books that my kids self select to read for pleasure. I try not to limit them. I do however use the Daily Five model and the kids select books that are the right fit for them. I would say that most of my kids do a great job of selecting books that are great for them. Some children need a little help once in a while and I’ll choose special books that would be the right fit for them and slip those into their book bins with a special note. They love this! Links: Shelves Classroom Library Labels Anchor Chart/Brag Tag Area This large wall was kind of intimating and I was not sure what to do with it. I did know that I needed a place for our anchor charts. When I put up the charts, I realized there was enough room below for my brag tags! Perfect! Cubbies If you look to the right of the teal wall, you will see our cubbies. There is storage above my cubbies and it looks messy. I decided to add some fabric up there but the solid black looked kind of bland. I found this pom pom garland at Target a few months back and had no clue what to do with it. This worked out perfectly! The book bins are from Lakeshore with the exception of the teal ones. The teal bins are form Target. My kids place their books for Read to Self time in these bins. I personalized them with my book bin labels. My kids seriously treasure these bins and love how the little characters look like them! The stuffed animals came from Khol’s except for Pete the Cat and the bus. Those are from Barnes and Nobel. You can also get them from Amazon. Links: Lakeshore Bins Book Bin Name Tags Pete the Cat Pigeon Bus This is the angle from my front door over looking the south wall. A closer view of my south wall. Rug Link HERE On the left side, you can see our birthday board from my friend Ashley @schroedershenanigans! I’ve never had a birthday display before and I’m excited to try it out this year! Next to that is our focus wall. When I created this wall, I wanted something that was easy to maintain. Prior to creating this set, I was using something that required me to staple individual pieces in place every week. Well, that meant that our wall rarely got changed out. Now that it’s set up with the clips, I can change my cards out so quickly! This wall is so handy. We refer to these skills every day during reading time. I also use StikkiClips to display these cards. On the right side of the Smartboard, you will see my objectives board and math practices bulletin boards. This objectives board is another time saver! I print up my objectives for the week and put them on the rings. Then I can flip through them to find the ones I need for the day. So simple! View over to the corner. We focus a lot on mathematical practices in our district. I like having them up the whole year so we can refer to them throughout math time. I am loving this new addition to our classroom! You’d never know it but behind the board is a nonfunctioning TV that cannot be removed from our rooms. My bestie found the PERFECT chalkboard from Amazon to cover up the TV! My plan is to change it each week but this one focusing on kindness might stay up the whole month of August. This is the TV it’s hiding
. Links: Birthday Board Focus Wall Bulletin Board Kit Objectives Bulletin Board Kit Math Practices Chalkboard West Wall Along this wall you will find our alphabet line, grammar wall, whiteboard, computer center, and our center rotation board. Grammar and Writing This is our special writing area. It’s a great place to have our writing center. It provides a flexible seating option and I can call small groups back there too. The bulletin board above is from my shop. We teach grammar every day and we refer back to this board every day! Writing Caddy I have these items accessible for the kids when they need them. This caddie from Target was one of the best finds ever. I wish they would bring them back! If you have one from a few years ago in need of labels, you can get mine for free. Links: Grammar Bulletin Board Kit Freebie Caddie Labels Lime Bulletin Board Paper This is the view over to my north wall. I lost tons of storage moving back into this room but I still have a good amount of cabinetry. Over at the very left: Book Display This book display is one of my favorite additions from last year. I used some Melonheadz clip art along with vinyl and my Cricut to create this. It’s usually full of books but in between changes I like to leave it open to build some suspense for the next set of books I put in there. I love that it looks great when it’s full and when it’s empty. I often get asked about what kind of Cricut I use and the kind of vinyl that I prefer. Here are the links: Cricut Explore Vinyl Center Rotations: My center rotation board is above the computers. I assign each child into a group and rotate the group cards through the centers. This makes it so easy to move them each day! We are required to have objectives up for everything we do. I could not find a center display that had space for the objective/I can statements so I made some that fit our needs. Links: Center Rotation Kit Teal Bulletin Board Paper I wanted to have lots of space for student work so I created an extra space over here. North Wall This is the view from the desks looking over to our north wall. Paper Organization These bins are on my counter. I store my week’s copies in the daily drawers and copies for future weeks are stored in the subject drawers. If you want more details about these bins, check out THIS post. Monthly Bins Another set of bins I like to use are my monthly drawer. I use these instead of a filing cabinet. I did have filing cabinet for years but I realized that it ended up collecting a lot of trash. This system helps me hold on to essential copies and materials I need during these months. It’s perfect! Links: Editable Weekly, Monthly, and Subject Drawers Centers Storage | Data Door | Desk Fairy Center Storage: I picked up this cubby storage from Target. It’s was perfect for my needs! Each bin is labeled so that my kids know what bucket they will need for the day and so that they can put it back in the right spot when they are done. The bins are from the Dollar Tree and the labels are going to be added to my center rotation board this weekend 🙂 Pencils: I started using this pencil system a few years ago and I will never turn back! If you are someone that doesn’t enjoy seeing a bunch of stubby pencils, this system is for you! Here is more info about how my pencil system works: Kids never sharpen pencils and I do not allow pencil sharpeners in my room. I usually have a parent volunteer come in and sharpen pencils once a week or every other week. (They sharpen a lot of them at one time.) Those go into the sharp bin. I load the bottom drawer with new pencils so that my parent volunteer knows where to get the new pencils from. When a child needs a new pencil, they raise they hand with their pencil. When I see a pencil in the air, I know that they need to switch it out. If I say yes, they can get up and place their old pencil in the dull drawer and pick up a new one from the sharp drawer. Quick and EASY! This pencil sharpener is the BEST! It’s fast, quiet, and lasts forever. It even has a built in light that turns on when the pencil is sharp. Links: Mini Sterilite Pencil Labels Pencil Sharpener Data Door | Desk Fairy The graphs on our door are a way for us to track whole class assessments. This year I will be tracking spelling and reading assessments. I like tracking these scores so my kids can see the progress that we’ve made throughout the year. These graphs are not available yet, but will be posted soon in my shop. This desk fairy door had been on my mind for years! I didn’t implement it until I found the perfect door on Amazon. A super realistic door is the trick for some magical buy in. At the beginning of the year we talk about how to keep our desks clean and organized. Well, I needed some fun reinforcement. In comes the desk fairy! The desk fairy checks our desks here and there and leaves a note and treat for the kids if they have clean desks. She doesn’t come too often, just a few times throughout the year, but the kids love her and keep those desks clean for her. I could’t believe how much they would grow to love her. My class last year wrote letters to her all the time! She would write back and tell them about her adventures traveling around the world. Links: Fairy Door Fairy Notes Back around to the entry way, you will see our bathroom door, clip chart, and the picture display I mentioned before. This InstaClass poster from Teach Create Motivate is always a hit! It’s such a great way to document what we are learning about each month! Next to our gallery wall is our clip chart. I’m a firm believer of the clip chart, but I do need to mention that I focus on the positives and with that train of thought, my kids rarely clip down. I found the cutest clips for the clip chart over the summer! They are from the Target Dollar Spot and came on a spool of 24 for just $3! I love the colors they included! (The clips are blank because this picture was taken prior to my kids using them.) Links: InstaClass Poster Behavior Clip Chart And we are back to the entry way. I hope you enjoyed taking a tour of our classroom! I tried linking all the resources and materials in this post. If I missed anything, please feel free to ask! I hope you all have a fantastic year full of fun memories. Don’t forget to pin this post so you can come back and visit 🙂
Classroom
Bonjour! Today, I am here to share with you what I believe to be the best-kept classroom decor secret in elementary. So, we all have posters and référentiels on display in our classrooms, right? We use them for evvvvverything in maternelle – colours, letters, numbers, sight words, routines and procedures, vocabulary, reading strategies, writing strategies, etc. etc! In just about every classroom, you can find store-bought posters, teacher-made posters, and student-made posters (yes – I believe there is a place for all three types). We know that posters and référentiels are valuable – essential, even! BUT… we all have one little problem (or, at least we all do at my school). Lack. Of. Space!!! How many of you have strict fire marshals who don’t allow more than 20% of the walls to be covered (and 20% of the walls are pretty much already covered by bulletin boards, white boards, and coat hooks)? I do! Plus, I love using my big white board as a word wall. So, I am always scrambling for space to display my référentiels and the posters that we create together. Today, I am going to share with you one little change I have made in my classroom that has resulted in a few extra inches of space all around (and those inches do make a difference!). Drum roll please… Square posters! Yup, square posters. And here are three reasons why I love them so much: 1. THEY SAVE SPACE! As I said above, saving space is often the name of the game. And these babies do it! In my experience, you can fit all of the info that you need on a square poster just as well as on a rectangular poster. And, less wasted white
space! Those extra inches can mean a whole other row of words on my word wall. Amazing! 2. THEY LOOK GREAT Definitely the least important reason, but hey – we all like things that look nice. And square posters look nice! It doesn’t make you a bad teacher if you like pretty things in your classroom, as long as having pretty things isn’t more important to you than your students’ learning (and as long as it doesn’t get in the way of that). I mean, I am not going to spend hours decorating my room before school starts each summer instead of making sure I have amazing lessons planned for my students, but if I can display something that saves space, is quick, easy, and helps my students learn, and looks great? Sign me up! 3. THEY ARE EASY TO CUT Let’s be honest – circle posters also save space and they look great. But, they are terrible to cut out!! Sometimes it’s worth it (I did have circle alphabet posters up until last year, and my visual schedule is circles), but let me tell you – squares are waaaaayyy way easier and faster to snip. For teacher-made posters, all you have to do is print, laminate, and cut using a paper cutter – all straight lines! For square student-made posters and/or posters we make together, I just chop a strip off the end before I hand them out, so they are already square before we get to work. If we are keeping them on display all year, I may laminate them, but I don’t always. So, where can you find square posters? Well, unfortunately the square poster movement hasn’t caught on with everyone yet (but we are going to change that, right?!), so you will have a harder time finding square posters vs. rectangular posters. But, since I needed them for my own classroom, I do have a few things up on TPT! Just click on any of the pictures below to see them in my store. And don’t hesitate to ask if there is anything else you need! 🙂 Happy decorating! PS – Are you a member of my FREE Resource Library for French primary teachers? If not, what are you waiting for?? Sign up below for access to every freebie I’ve ever made… and will ever make!
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