Welcome to My Classroom Tour!!

Whew, I survived the whirlwind of the first day of school! Does anyone else feel like it is one of the toughest days of school?? I love love LOVE meeting my new kiddos (though I knew most of them – one of the benefits of teaching in a small school!) but getting back into the swing of things with no real schedule is always a big difficult. So much of the day was filled with discussing policies and procedures for 5th grade, but I tried to break up the “boring”-ness with some fun too!

Anyways, now that school has actually started, I figured it was about time to give you the grand tour of my 5th grade classroom – welcome!!

Here is my classroom! This is the view from the door – notice the lovely Big Lots rug that is all over the teacher bloggy world…I love the pop of color in the middle of my room:

 

This is my computer area to the right of the door, as well as my WOW Work display board:

 

 

WOW Work board up close – I actually hot-glued the clothespins to the board because it is actually a chalkboard and there is no way to get them to stay up there any other way!!:

 

My desk area, to the right of the computer area:

 

 

 

Calendar area behind my desk. I used to have my fridge back here too (notice the plastic cabinets in the bottom left of the picture…), but I had to move it due to safety violations with the plugs…haha. So the pictures that used to be on the fridge of my previous classes are now posted above my calendar:

 

 

My Writing Process pencil – this used to be on a bulletin board near my bookshelves, but after some rearranging, this is where it ended up! The door on the right leads to the 4th grade room:

 

 

Here’s the back corner of my classroom with the doorway to the 4th grade room, my unit bulletin board, class supplies, books relating to our unit, and games:

 

 

Here’s a close-up of the bookshelf and surrounding area, including my newly-moved fridge. This month we are obviously studying the universe (if you didn’t figure that out from the previous picture’s bulletin board!) so all of the books on the top shelf here relate to this topic:

 

 

This is my early finishers spot, on the wall caddy corner to the unit bulletin board. Here I have ideas for the students if they finish an assignment early and need something to do. I included ideas for both Language Arts and Math (excuse my hand…I forgot to hang up 3M hooks today!):

 

 

I keep supplies for our literature centers next to the back bookshelf. We do centers once (sometimes twice) a week. Students can work 3 to a center and they include topics from “Fiction Books” and “Poetry” to “Imagination Station” and “Typing”. Many of these ideas I got from a book about literature centers (but of course I can’t remember the name of it now…):

 

 

The kiddos’ desks all set up and ready for them to come! I always get them small pencil holders that are designed for lockers and stick them to the side of their desks filled with a few small goodies, but this year the magnets would NOT stick! It was terrible! I decided to velcro them to their desks instead and this has worked great so far:

 

 

The front of the room with Morning Work posted for the first day. The area on the right of the board is where we write our homework every day:

 

 

Here’s a close-up of the board with the cursive alphabet above, a few motivational posters, and the brain teaser of the week:

 

 

I ran out of wall space, so I did a little rearranging and pulled some bookcases away from the wall – voila! Instant wall space! I purchased this awesome writing set from TpT and I can’t wait to use it here. You can also see my tired words pocket chart that I made last year:

 

 

So excited for this classroom Boggle board I made!! I was inspired by this Boggle board and was pleasantly surprised to see that our school Cricket had the exact cartridge I needed to make the cute scalloped background for each letter. I laminated 3 sets of the letters and keep them in a purple basket, along with the recording charts, below the board:

 

 

Here is my library/reading area. I just got that chair from Big Lots for $25 and the kids love it already! I have tons of books – I am and have always been an avid reader so I love having lots of options for my students to read. They are organized by AR levels, but the kids are encouraged to read based on their interests too. I got the blue chair at Big Lots last week and my students were loving it all day:

 

 

Last but not least, here is my beautiful lovely stunning wall of wood! Isn’t she a beauty? Oh boy…haha. The closet doors on both side of the “nook” will be filled with reading/writing vocabulary and math vocabulary. The bulletin board in the nook is one that I do every year – the students decorate puzzle pieces that we hang up on the 2nd day of school. I also have the always wonderful chart paper posted here which is wonderful and gets lots of use:

 

 

So that’s my classroom! Thanks for taking a tour and checking it out. Any suggestions or ideas or comments??