Welcome to my 2015-2016 classroom! My name is KaSandra Elvir and I teach first grade in a suburb of Houston, Texas. When my campus opened in 1980, it had an Open Concept floor plan. Since then accordian walls have been added, so I have two real walls and two accordian walls if you're wondering why the walls look rippled. I apologize for the quality of these photographs. I do not have any windows or natural lighting in my classroom.
This year I replaced my chevron fabric with black paper. I want the room to have pops of bright color, but still look clean and organized. I can't stand clutter! (at school...my house is a different story altogether;-) I want the classroom to be print rich, but not look like I vomited words and patterns all over the room. The accordian walls help because it's IMPOSSIBLE to get anything to hang from them that weighs more than ounce. I've tried hot glue, push pins, ticky tack, Command hooks, velcro, tape....forget about it!!! Nothing stays for long. The two hanging boards behind the small group table are hung from the ceiling using fishing line. I can get an anchor chart to stay using push pins as long as no one touches it!
Let's get started...
ABOVE: The view from the doorway. All my chairs are still stacked by the door.
ABOVE: The view from the back of the room looking toward the white board. The door is to the right of the little wall behind the American flag.
ABOVE: The view from the front of the whiteboard facing the back wall.
ABOVE: The right wall has floor to ceiling storage. Happy face! The cabinet doors will hold a clip chart, a reading goals chart, the student work display, and a super improver wall.
I did not snap a pic of the left wall. It is a blank accordian wall and I will hang anchor charts on it.
My small group table is at the back of the room (almost in the middle) offering me views of almost the entire room.
ABOVE: I took this picture while sitting at the small group table. On the other side of the shelf that holds math manipulatives is a computer table with two computers.
ABOVE: The shelves to the right of the small group table holds student book boxes, math tubs, word work drawers, and math goodies.
BELOW: All the monster lables seen here are free in my TpT shop.
ABOVE LEFT: The super improver wall seen here is my spin on a Whole Brain Teaching technique. Our school wide theme this year is, "Shiver me Timbers...Where our students arrrr our treasures." The name of my campus is Timbers. I found these pirate themed reward cards at Office Max, so for level one of our super improvers wall students will collect gold doubloons (stickers) each time they show improvement (on work, behavior, reading level, etc.).
ABOVE RIGHT: I still need to add ribbon to my clip chart and print letters to label the GOALS chart. Each student gets a monster that starts out on their beginning of year reading level and then climbs the chart and he/she levels up. The chart on the cabinet goes to Level 20. After that your monster moves to the ceiling! It's kinda a big deal!!
BELOW: Also, at the back of the room is a filing cabinet that I'm using as a magnetic job board. I hot glued magnets to the back of the laminated monster job cards. The white space on each card is where I will write a student's name using a dry erase marker. The marker wipes off easily with a tissue.
BELOW: This year I am switching from I Can... statements to a magnetic focus wall. I hope this will be more purposeful and interactive than just posting statements. I forgot to write "Launching Reader's Workshop" under Reading before I took this picture.
ABOVE: To the left of the small group table is the classroom library. The books are semi-leveled which means there is a range of levels in each of the colored baskets. The red baskets are Levels A-D, the blue baskets contain Levels E-F, the pink baskets hold Levels G-I, and the green baskets hold more advanced books. These are the books students can shop for their book boxes. The books I use for small groups and homework are not included in the classroom library.
ABOVE: You may have spotted the paper lantern monsters around the room. Aren't they adorable? I was going to hang them from the ceiling above the table groups, and that would've been super cute, but, again, I'm trying to declutter and simplify, so I tacked them to the walls instead. I purchased the monster cut-outs from School Girl Style.
Tomorrow is the first day of school! Here is a skeleton lesson plan for the first week
of school.
Here are the links to the products shown above:
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