Photos of the Old Classroom

Here are some photos of my classroom from last year. These photos were taken just before open house, two days before school started. In other words, these were taken before our little classroom was "lived in," but it stayed pretty much like this - nice, neat, organized, and bright. When you are a teacher, your classroom is like a second home. Let's face it, you stay there more than home as far as "waking" hours; it is in your best interest to make it a place where you would like to be...

Pictured below is a view from the doorway:

Below is my teacher chair. I stuffed cute fabric between the plastic and cushion to "re-cover" this chair, and it stayed! In the background you see my CAFE board. The outside of a project board had the same fabric as my chair. I opened the board when we had CAFE lessons. I needed a board that could migrate because some groups fit at the table, but most of the time we met in the floor!

Below is a view from my desk. The caddies up top are from Walmart. Two of them have regular school glue in them, and one has tacky glue. I used those and the others when we would do projects. I would put paintbrushes in them or special markers, etc. for projects, and then I would put a caddy on each group's table.

The bulletin board pictured below says "Our Super Amazing Traits." We added a character trait a week to the board, and we used those traits to describe our "Student of the Week" when we wrote letters to him/her.

The picture below makes me sooo happy. On the bookshelf are about half of my book baskets. I set those up the way that Joan Moser and Gail Boshey describe at thedailycafe.com. Each basket has a label on the front that describes what is inside. Those vary from "Newberry" to "Dogs" to "Funny." The labels each have a number on them, too, and the baskets are in order on the bookcase. On this bookcase you see basket 1 (top left) - 24 (bottom right). Each book in each basket has a matching number on it. For example, all the books in basket #3 have a "3" on them. This way students can find the books they want by the title on the label, and they can put the books back by the number on the book. It works beautifully - which is great for an OCD teacher who cannot handle clutter!

Pictured below are more of my bookshelves and bookbaskets. Below the bookshelves are textbooks for the year (Those did NOT stay there; that became extra math manipulative space.)You can also see my extra baskets stacked behind my bookshelf (ready for more books!) and my super cute Crayola curtains that my friend Alice gave me. Thank you, Alice!  

Pictured below is a closer shot of "Our Super Amazing Traits" board. I used traits from DJ Inkers Words to Live By Series (there are three sets in the series).

I've always loved crayons. A friend of mine gave me a framed copy of a quote about a Crayola Bomb once, and I claimed that quote (I've included it at the end of the post). My brother drew a Crayola crayon character with a parachute, and I made a bunch of copies of it, colored all of them different colors, and plastered them all over my cabinets! You also see in the picture to the left the homework and student of the week baskets which are hot glued to the counter (I hate it when baskets get knocked all over the place. Yep, I'm that OCD!) The chart on the bottom-right is my behavior chart. Students get a sticker if they did not have any behavior tickets during the week. If they got two stickers in a row, they could get a pencil, and if they got three stickers in a row, they could choose to get a homework pass or a make up a zero pass. The chart on the bottom left has each student number (1-30) and a velcro dot under each one. Usually, there is a character on each one, but since the school year had not started yet in this picture, they aren't shown. I changed the characters with the seasons. For August, I had flip-flops and surfboards. In September, I had farm animals. In October, I had candy corn, lollipops, spiders, frogs, and witches...you get the idea (all came from DJ Inkers downloads!). The seven little white rectangles were different places at school (nurse, office, library, restroom, and three labeled "other"). When students left the room, they would move their character to wherever they were going. Other included resource classes, "green" team, and other stuff. Anytime I could not remember where I sent a student (especially around fire drill time), I just looked at this board. I loved it for that reason. The kids loved that they had a new character each month, and they really liked moving them when they left the room.  

In the picture to the left, you see my aide's desk (I had a student with CP), more book baskets, and my math manipulatives and reading tools. Each are labeled so the students can easily find what they need and put them back. I got the drawers from Walmart. The clear tubs came from The Container Store. They are the shoe boxes and the men's shoe boxes. Buy them in bulk, and buy more of the men's boxes than the regular ones. The men's shoe boxes are big enough to fit papers and folders inside. I use these boxes for EVERYTHING! They make everything look soo nice and neat and clean (yes, I realize the overuse of "and"), but you can see what is inside. Love, love, love - top ten. In the bottom left, you see board games. Those are used for award days (like after ARMT, AL Reading & Math Test, testing...).  

Below is another shot of my aide's desk, and one final bookshelf with book baskets. Can my 4th graders reach those top baskets? Most can. Can I? Absolutely not! Those top few are holiday (Christmas, Halloween, Spring, etc.) baskets, and I pulled them down during the appropriate season.

Below is a better picture of all of my reading and math manipulatives. We used these EVERY day. Yep, EVERY day. Again, I love how nice and neat they are...and yes, the drawers are hot glued to the counter. The other bins are not, but they did stay put because the bins link so easily...and because I trained my students :).

In the picture at left, you can see my shorter bookshelf behind the bookshelf I told you about earlier on the far left. The students were not allowed to go to the short bookshelf (to prevent sneakiness). On that bookshelf, I had all of my teacher books and stuff (scantrons, reading passages, science kit books, etc.) on that shelf. At the end of the other bookshelf, you see an example of my behavior tickets (and you can kind of see the blue ticket basket...again, hot glued to the table). The bulletin board has my behavior cards. I made all of those Crayola box looking library pockets by hand - well, I bought white library pockets, and then I drew/colored them by hand. Maybe I will make some and sell them someday... I also made the crayons inside, and I laminated them five times so they would be durable. When a student misbehaved, he/she flipped his/her crayon to the white side (he/she lost some color), and then he/she filled out a behavior ticket. Really in 4th grade the crayon thing was not necessary. I just really like how cute they are...so we used them and the tickets :). My word wall is along the bottom of that wall, and I rotated words on and off the board about every six weeks. Honestly, I did not like my word wall there because the kids would lean against it as they read which would make the words pull from the wall. You can also see my "Math Daily 5" board in this picture. Since this was taken before open house, the papers on the board are volunteer sign-up sheets and transportation validation sheets. During the year, I listed the games we had learned how to play on this board. The magnets were supposed to be for different ability groups. I planned to put the magnets next to the games the different groups of students most needed to play, but I never really needed to. The students usually played what they needed to play - because I usually played with the group that needed a certain skill. With a different group of kids, though, those might have been necessary.    

To the left is a view of my desk! All of the crates on the floor were eventually filled with pillows for the students to use when they read independently. You can see my beautiful pink file cabinets, too. I contacted the company (because I wanted more pink file cabinets!), and they said they do not make and do not plan to make pink file cabinets ever again. So sad. Above the darker brown file cabinet is my blue "Sub Tub" which is just one of those plastic file boxes. I put a hanging file for each subject inside, and I put a couple of stacks of worksheets in each folder. Throughout the year, anytime I had any extra practice sheets that we did not get to, I would put them in the "Sub Tub." I also put our schedule, FYI stuff (like that my diabetic student was allowed to leave to go to the nurse at any time), behavior plan, etc. in there. Three students knew to give that to a sub as soon as he/she came to class. I actually had a freak incident with my ear drum that left me unexpectantly absent for two weeks. I had enough stuff in the sub tub to last that long. No panic necessary. In fact, that little box became the box for the hallway. Anytime any 4th grade teacher was sick unexpectantly, I just took the box to their sub. In this picture,  you can almost see my clear trays on the left side of my desk (because I do not like walking all the way across the room to get the papers students turn in! Ha!) and my teacher textbooks are in the stand on the right so I can access them while teaching or planning.

To the left is another view of my desk. You can see my pink basket on my desk. That basket was for graded papers after parents had signed that they had seen them. There is a yellow basket, too. That basket was just for me to put various things in - so that my desk did not get cluttered. There is a homework poster on the board that is really only used when the internet is down, because I usually posted homework to my website while the students watched and recorded from the SmartBoard. Above my computer you can see some drawers I have - those are my Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Other folders. The red pocket chart has a folder for resource in it. Students took that folder with them on the way out the door when they went to resource. The resource teacher took out what she needed, and sent back anything she had for me. I also have a make-up work folder and a late work folder where students turned in make-up work and late work (so it didn't get mixed up and "lost" in everything else).

To the left, you will see my door at the beginning of last year. My brother drew all of it. He got the inspiration from the Crayola PipSqueaks label. I painted the "Welcome to Our Box" sign, and I colored the individual ones with Sharpees (Tip: Color anything like that with Sharpees for even ink distribution. People ask where I bought these!) I laminated them, and then I wrote the kids' names on the sides like the colors on crayons are written. I erased their names with expo cleaner for the next year when I took everything down for our Halloween door theme.

Below is our hallway display! The words are from Creative Teaching Press. I made the polka dots in Microsoft Word. I just put one color circle inside another color circle. I put them randomly all over our wall outside the classroom, but I put the ones with the kids' names on them on clothespins before gluing them to the wall. Anytime we displayed our work, the students just went into the hall and clipped their work on their dots. Super cute. If you haven't noticed, I decided that everything must be super cute at all times.    

I leave you with one of my favorite quotes: "Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination." -Robert Fulghum

I hope I inspired you and made you smile :).

Enjoy!