Our classroom is completely flexible seating, which means no assigned desks and lots of alternative seating choices! Although the students will have the choice of where they sit throughout the day, there will often be times when they work in assigned cooperative learning groups. Each student will have a “home group” that we refer to by color. There are color-coded rolling 3-drawer carts and supply caddies throughout the room (as indicated by the Japanese lanterns hanging above) where the students will store most of their individual supplies. For more information on the types of seating choices, visit the “Flexible Seating” section of our website under the “Classroom Tour” tab.This is our Bucket Filler corner where students earn drops in their buckets for kind and helpful acts. To the right, we have the subject area baskets where the students turn-in their completed work. We have a big spinning wheel that we will use for different purposes throughout the year, but if we ever have a guest visit our class, we will have him/her spin it. If it lands on orange, we all get a special surprise! In this area, we keep our calendar and our and Wish Well board. We will store our laptop headphones in the hanging pockets on the door.
These cabinets are used to display several social-emotional learning skills, including “The 7 Habits of Happy Kids.” Every few weeks we will introduce a new habit. We will also use these cabinets to post our pictures on our “Birthdays” display. Our “Class Family Jobs” are posted here, as well. Each job plays an important role in making our classroom a fun, productive, and safe place to learn. We rotate jobs every Monday.
Each student has a numbered cubby for his/her textbooks. The wall above showcases our “Give Me 5” class family and school rules, which we will create together on the first day of school. To the right, you can also see our Friends and Family area where we post pictures of our loved ones. This is our small group area where we do some of our best learning! The bulletin board will be another growing resource as we learn our different phonics patterns this year.
Tucked away near Mrs. McBride’s computer is our “Safe Place.” This is a private area where students can choose to go on their own if they are feeling stressed, frustrated, or up-set. We have a basket of stress-relieving objects to help us refocus and de-stress. Our growth mindset sentence stems are also in this area to inspire students to think positively! The students can use the light-up “Affirmation Station” mirror to hype themselves by speaking one of the phrases out loud.This is a very interactive part of our classroom. “Resource Row” is an evolving space where students can access resources that will help them work independently (number lines, alphabets, thinking sentence stems, etc.). We also have a trampoline that is quite comfortable to sit on for independent work, but will also be used for classroom for celebrations!
This is also our STEAM headquarters and where we keep our “STEAM Bins” of different materials for the students to build with.
Our reading corner is one of my favorite spots in the classroom! Our classroom library is organized by genre, category, and level to make it easy to find just the right book. There are genre picture frames on top of the bookcases where we sort pictures of all the books we read throughout the year. The word “because” is featured on the wall for good reason: we use it all day long to explain our thinking and elaborate on our ideas! You can also see our laptop cart where we charge our laptops.We are lucky enough to have a Smartboard, which is basically a giant interactive whiteboard/tablet! Underneath it is a long stage to help us share our learning and develop our speaking and presenting skills. The surrounding whiteboard is filled with learning resources. It is divided so that each subject area has its own special space. We post our important subject-area vocabulary here. Our special “Brag Basket” hangs under the whiteboard, as well, and you can also see our scoop rockers and cool cardboard building bricks that we use for fun review activities. The right side of the whiteboard has all of our cooperative learning and CHAMPs resources.We begin each day on the big open floor space with a Morning Meeting, which is one of the most important (and beloved) parts of our school day.This bulletin board will be used to post all of our helpful anchor charts. My goal is to create independent, resourceful learners and we refer to these anchor charts constantly. You can also see some more flexible seating options, including a yoga mat, wiggle cushions, and different types of lapboards. Not pictured hanging above the black bookcase is the giant word “YET.” This is remind us of the importance of keeping a “growth mindset.” When you feel frustrated or like giving up, always try adding the word “yet” to the end of your sentence. “I can’t do this…YET.” “I don’t understand…YET.” “I’m not good at this…YET.” We are all here to learn and grow, so we keep lots of positive reminders posted for those times when things get tough! This long counter is a woderful additional workspace. On the shelves, we keep labeled tubs of all our math manipulatives on the bottom 2 shelves so the students have easy access to pick the math tool that will help them best solve a problem. And all those hula hoops hanging on the sides might seem like odd things to have…but you’d be surprised how many different ways we can use them! You will also notice lots of fun games that we integrate into our lessons to make learning even more fun and engaging!
