Have You Seen My New Classroom?

Let me start off by saying I'm sorry it took me a whole month to get my classroom reveal pictures up! It's been a tricky start of the school year for me. Part of my goal for the year is to take care of myself and make self care a bigger priority, so instead of stressing about it, I got to this post as soon as I could! Anyway... here are some shots of my 2018-2019 room!

Above you'll see the view from the corner of my room. Behind me is the sink. On the table right by where I'm standing, I house our class butterflies (at least for the first part of the year while we have them).

We usually meet at the carpet for small group and whole group instruction. Afterwards, the kids go wherever they want for independent work.

You can see my "home base" a little bit better in this picture. I teach from the green swivel chair next to the easel. I just use a student desk to house my laptop and document camera. Underneath the desk, I have a drawer system which houses the papers I'll need for the week. I have 6 drawers--one for each day of the week and an extra one for over-flow or coming-soon papers.

There's a better shot of where I teach! You can even see my conferring binder peaking out in the bottom of my easel.

And, of course, this spot is very popular in our room for obvious reasons! Here's where Nibble and Nugget live. I love the gray table because it has a second shelf. I use it to store all of our class pet supplies. And the take a break chair is by the guinea pigs... for NOW. It might move if they prove to be too distracting.

And this is where Severus (our leopard gecko) and Neptune and Sushi (our 2 hermit crabs) live. You can also see some of our math manipulatives to the left of the table where they are housed.

Breaking parts of the room up with rugs does wonders! We also use a lot of floor space in our flexible seating classroom, so nice, comfy pillows and clipboards are a must for us.

Here's our ipad station and a small part of our classroom library. I know a lot of teachers decorate with duct tape, which I did last year, but I also like using colored duct tape for my iPad chargers. I use mail bins for housing the iPads too. The slots on the side are the perfect width for iPad cables to fit through!

Here's some more of our library. You can also see our (relatively empty) writing station. Eventually it will be filled with more writing supplies and papers. Since we're in third grade, we usually write in our notebooks until we start developing our drafts.

Here's the view of my sink and science table! You can also see a small, black kneeling table, which the students use with the pillows I mentioned earlier. We keep them in the closet when they aren't in use.

And finally, here's where the students get their mail. This is right where they walk in. 

One thing I want to mention is that I may change things again in a few weeks... we'll see how things go. Just because the year has started doesn't mean you're stuck with your lay out! See what works for your students and make adjustments as necessary as you get to know them.

If you’re interested in grabbing my conferring toolkit to help you launch writer’s workshop, you can download it HERE or by clicking the picture below. There are tons of beginning of the year behavior expectation and partnership lessons included. After teaching those lessons, it would make for some great video clip mini inquiries to boost confidence!

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