My Classroom ~ A lil Tour

I thought I would take you on a lil "tour" of my classroom, since many of you know how time consuming it was for me to get it together. =) This year I changed classrooms and was able to upgrade to a much bigger classroom within the grade level hallway. For the last 4 years I have been just outside our grade level in a classroom that was originally designed for the school literacy specialist. Since our school pretty much outgrew the original design after the first year we were open, we had a few classrooms that were smaller than the others. This year since we originally only needed 5 first grade teachers, I was able to move back into the hallway. With the new move, I decided to update a few of my things, you might remember this post where I posted a few of my new creations. Well, here they are all put together in a whole classroom:
(I apologize in advance for the blurriness of several of the pictures. Don't know what was going on with my camera.)
Here are a couple of overall views:

My desk area:



Class Library:


It only took me 7 years to find a great way to organize my class books. =) Before, I would just have my tubs labeled and expected first graders to always put them back in the exact same tub as they got them from...which really only happened about 60% of the time. Well at the end of the year last year, it donned on me that I should color code the books with the tubs for a super easy way to make sure the books are back in the correct tub. If one happens to be out of place, its a quick and easy visual to see if it is out of place.

Listening Area:

Last year we had a really big push to use graphic organizers more, so I found this really great flip chart that has several graphic organizers. The kids can actually write on it and wipe off, but I'm not sure I plan on having them do that. I like it in the reading corner because after they read a book they can try to mentally complete the chart in their head or I can always bring it out and have them do it on paper.

This year we have a school-wide "bathroom checkout" policy. Here is our little bathroom checkout that I made on the side of one of my filing cabinets. I mod-podged the bathroom passes and attached a super strong magnet to the back of a traveling clock so they will be able to write the time they leave for their restroom break. It has worked out wonderfully!

Our beginning of the year empty word wall:

We also have had a big push for "science" within the last couple of years so here is my dedicated science portion of the room. In the top tray it has a few science tools that they can explore with along with a TON of non-fiction science books on the bottom.

Here is our mailbox/miscellaneous area. It holds extra school supplies along with our weekly readers/dictionaries and my gifted students store their binders above our mailboxes.

Above my whiteboard, I strung a clothesline apparatus to hang up their "good work" from the week.

Perfect lil cubby to store our clipboards:

I saw this "Sound Check" idea in one of our kindergarten teachers classroom and I loved it! So far it works out really well also. My students are so sweet, they already tell each other "sound check"

Using the side of a file cabinet for practicing their spelling words:

2 Big Hits: Reading Wands and Pet Palace Fridays. This is one way I have reused my old collection of beanie babies. Every Friday the students get to pick out a "pet" to have for the day.

Calendar Area:

Bottom Half of our calendar:

Back of the Room:


This area isn't completely done yet. On the left hand side I still need to add their birthdays.

The red tables were super cheap from Ikea and they fit perfectly here. When we do group work and stations, I pull them down and place them in two different locations throughout the room so the kids have a lil fun table to do their groupwork.


One of my previous students brought this back to me from a summer trip to China. It is my name written in Chinese and I love it! It has Beijing scenery around it.

This is my guided reading area. I don't have it completely organized to the way I want it yet, but hopefully eventually it will get done the way I want it:


This is a window that leads to another first grade classroom:

Well that was a tour of my classroom. Hope you enjoyed it! =)