Classroom Tour and More

Well, I survived the first day of school. I love my class! It is so refreshing to have the first day of school go so smoothly. It also helps when they are the same kids as last school year. I only have one new students, plus, my two mainstreaming kids from special ed. We'll see how the kiddos do tomorrow.

For now, here are some pictures of my classroom. I really love the color scheme!

I found this great decal at Khol's on clearance.  I just wrote the kids names with Expo marker. 

Our word wall.  I kept the words from kindergarten.  In first grade many of these will become spelling words. We'll learn about 100 by the end of the year.

This is the room from the front looking back.  I've been trying to declutter the last few years but it is hard; especially after teaching from 12 years.

This is my big book storage, a small portion of teacher read alouds, and our writing reference posters.  We made these in kindergarten for the letter of the week.  The kids use them often!

This is a small portion of my math focus wall.  Our first unit is numbers to 50.  We'll use the number chart for skip counting, one more, one less, ten more, and ten less.  The number line will be used for adding and subtracting.  The money chart will be used for the date. 

Here is the rest of the math wall.   I'll keep calendar short and focus on math routines.

This is our whole group meeting area.  Note my Daily 5 pocket chart.

Here is our Help Box.  I got this idea while attending a workshop for teaching children with autism.  My kids really like it and refer to it!

One of our seating areas.  We don't have assigned seating.  I like to have large community tables. 

When not in use by students, this table doubles as my Guided Reading table.  During my summer purge, I downsized to 2 kidney tables, 1 trapezoid table, and 4 rectangle tables for student seating.  My room is not large but it looks open.