I’m still working in my classroom. It still has lots of boxes, but at least I’m finally moved completely out of Room 103. To see what my room looked like last week, check out the post here.
Door to my classroom.As you enter the room and look to the right. Still lots of boxes, but now there’s a cheery carpet!Center of the room, pretty much the same as in the last post.Front and center of room. ALL OF THE PURPLE BULLETIN BOARDS. You’ll notice I cropped out most of the remaining boxes.CAFE board is ready to go. Also, letter and poster from Bill Thomson, and C.R. Mudgeon from Julian Hector!Leonardo, all up in Lucy’s business. Also, rad ecological calendar.Close-up of my math teaching corner / my “desk.” I need to fix Oodvar, my broken wooden stool. :(
So I’m moving across the school, and it’s a bit of a chore, considering the vast amounts of crap I have accumulated in the past five years. But I’ve been inspired by Mr. Schu’s updates of his enviable library environment, so I figured I’d share how things are going on this side of the country.
My new classroom faces the front parking lot and is pretty close to the office, which will mean an increase in foot traffic outside and inside the hallways. Which means I will need to have freaking inspiring book advertisements/displays posted everywhere. All in due time. Here’s what I have so far. My new classroom is basically a mirror image of the room I vacated, which you’ve seen featured here. Although apparently it gets hotter than my old room, which is pretty bad news for a prolifically sweaty teacher like me. Yech. Anyway:
View looking into my room from the inside hall doorway. I started putting out a few table groups… I have 26 students this year, so I need more desks.If you walk in the door and look to the right, this is the end of my fiction book buckets and all of my nonfiction buckets. Plus textbooks. And teacher reference materials that need to be unpacked.
The next few photos are taken from my vantage point standing in front of the laptop you see in the first picture and turning 360 degrees.
Me standing at the laptop, looking at the inside hallway door where I took the previous two pictures. The bookshelf on the left has all our writing materials, plus folders for our anthologies and Letters to Ms. Houghton.Turn to the right from the previous picture, and this is my new teaching space for literacy. CAFE menu will be on the righthand bulletin board, student writing and vocabulary and integrated unit goodies will be on the big bulletin board. The table on the left side of the frame is our sewing machine, used to repair student uniforms. My fiction book boxes start on the righthand bookshelf.This is the “front” of our room, featuring my teammate Emily Koyama covered in some of the books I’ll be using the first week of school. Also, SLANT. We’re an AVID school. I post goodies from authors and illustrators on the thin bulletin board strip above the whiteboard.Our new classroom meeting place / math carpet spots. This is where I will teach my math small groups, because we inevitably need all sorts of manipulatives. Books related to our science/social studies unit will go on the blue book rack.A few tables for small group work. Last year, my kids ADORED the little table by the radiator. The stilts are a prezzie from Mrs. Burn, the best teacher of all time. More fiction books on the left and center of the picture. Larger green bins are for Caldecott winners and Battle of the Books titles.Back of the classroom. Tea steeping on the back counter. Our huge yearlong timeline will live on the upper border of this wall instead of on the whiteboard.
I hope this was interesting/useful. I’m still not entirely moved out of Room 103, so there’s plenty to still be done. What’s your favorite book that you catch a glimpse of in the images?
