Welcome to my classroom for the 2013-2014 school year! This year, I decided to tackle a theme. I love the super hero theme I have going and cannot wait to incorporate more super hero stuff throughout the year. We start school tomorrow so that is why the classroom reveal is so late! I wanted everything to be perfect :)
My big book center fits in this tiny space. I like how the books can slide in and out of this space between the wall and my cart. I locked the wheels on the cart so it can't move.
This back wall bothers me because it is hard to hang stuff up there that changes throughout the year (which is what I did last year). This year I decided that this whole back wall, including my word wall, will be to help my students spell... a "Spellers' Secret Weapon" if you will. This way they can access vowel sounds, word families and blends to help in their writing. I hope it works out well.
This area is designated for math. I hope to change the wall as the units change, but also think its a nice place for this information. The baskets on the cart are all my math centers. For the first week of school, each center will simply have a different math manipulative for them to explore as they get use to our math procedures.
I bit the bullet and bought a rug this year. It was a bit pricey, but I hope the kids will take care of it. It just adds so much comfort and color to the classroom! This is my reading corner. Kids each have a reading bag. In it they must keep 2 classroom library books and 2 leveled readers. The leveled readers are numbered and each group will have a designated box they can check out of depending on their reading level. For the classroom library, they each get 2 clothespins with their names on them. They use those to mark where they took their books from so they know where to put them back! I also have a toy box full of stuffed animals for them to read to!
The reading corner also houses my Author of the Month center. We will start with Kevin Henkes because he has such wonderful books about going back to school and making friends. I will keep Kevin Henkes books in the green basket and then pictures of him and his books on the bulletin board. I am proud of these bulletin boards. The shelves were ugly in the back so I bought cork board from Michaels and put it on there so I could easily use it as an additional bulletin board!
This is my Theme Center. In the past I have had a science and a social studies center. I am simplifying this year to only ten centers. I combined science and social studies. In this center, they can read any of the science/s.s. books. They can also explore state themed flash cards or peruse their science textbooks. Each week, I will also have a thematic activity for them to complete. This week it will be "All About Me." They will draw a picture of themselves and write 2 sentences. I am hoping this center gives me a place to add fun things that I don't have time to teach... like extra activities for Groundhog's Day or President's Day.
This is my writing center. I found those great posters on Pinterest two years ago and love them. I also found the idea to hang the binder dividers up on Pinterest. This way their weekly paper choice is visible to them and easy to access! I also have Word Folders for each season, month, holiday, etc. I plan on changing these weekly to help guide their writing. The Word Folders have common words for that theme. This week I have summer and back to school ones out so they can spell words like "beach" or "school."
My Fluency Center is ever changing. We will start with these... they have monthly readers' theater, poetry books, sentence match up and their weekly poem. The poetry books are simply books of poems they can browse. I have my readers' theater from Scholastic. They have great readers' theater books. A couple years ago I invested the time of putting them in file folders and laminating them. I split them out by monthly themes and change them each month. Having them laminated and having multiple copies allows them to use dry erase markers to mark their part. I also have sentence match up. This can be found at my TPT store. It is only 5 dollars for a whole year's worth of fluency practice! With this activity, they have a picture and they have to find the sentence that describes that picture. I also write the poem of the week on sentence strips for this center. They then have to organize the poem in order and practice reading it.
Does anyone else have tons of old Scholastic News? I can't afford to order the news this year, but I have all my old posters from past subscriptions. These are still prevalent so I hang up a different edition each week for students to read. There is a microphone for them to practice "reporting the news."
Organization is key to me! It helps me be so much more productive in my limited planning time!
This year I am trying the Listening Center a bit different too. I use to put out all of my Listening Center books all year, but they just couldn't keep that clean! This year I am going to try putting out one book a week with an activity. Here is a little tip on how to create your own listening center books!
Can you tell I was tired on Friday when I wrote the objectives for tomorrow up? Can you find my mistake?! Fortunately, a good friend of mine saw it so I can fix it before the kiddos arrive tomorrow. We are required to write the objectives and identify the process skills. I made the process skills cute so I would be more likely to use them :) I want to add a sign above them saying "what super power are we using today?"
This is my reading table. I love those storage ottomans :)
My Word Work Center is different from my Word Study Center. At the Word Work Center, I will have sight word practice, word family practice, blends practice, etc. At the Word Study Center they will each have an individual box with their words of the week to practice using games and other activities. You can find my whole years' worth of Word Study sorts and games at my TPT store. You have to buy the first half of the year and the second half of the year because they were so big! Its only $20 for the whole year!
Classroom view from my desk!
My desk area! Sorry its a bit blurry... not sure what happened there!
I add 5 sight words/week to our word wall.
I invested the time in making new book labels this year and I think it looks a million times better!
I am proud of this :)
My word study center will be on this counter where each group of kids will have their own differentiated box to work from. We won't start word study until week 2. I also love my Redskins Locker! It was at my mom's house from Christmas 1995! I hope this brings the team good luck this year!!
Once I get pictures of the kids, their faces will go in their super hero for their birthdays!
Thanks for visiting my classroom! I can't wait for it to be filled with first graders tomorrow!
Annie
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