~!* Tour Our Classroom *!~

As I set up the classroom each year, I try to make it an atmosphere that will be fun and inviting, yet conducive for learning. I want my firsties to be excited to come to school each day and feel that it is a safe place where they can be. I like to incorporate bright colors and set the room up so that many of the things we use each day are within the students reach. Throughout the year I teach the kiddos how to become independent learners and like for them to be able to access resources we use. I also teach them how to use all of the bulletin boards in our room as resources for learning.

This is one of the places where we do learning in our classroom. We will often come to the floor and sit as a whole group to listen to a story, learn about what writers do during Writer’s Workshop, or even discuss math topics together. This space is set up so that we have a large enough space for us all to sit together, and I have all the things that I might need to teach Writer’s Workshop right at my fingertips! I just love when we are all sitting together!

These are a few of our important bulletin boards that we use. They have rules and reminders on them of lessons that we learn. New information will continue to go up on them and sometimes changes as the year progresses!

This is our calendar. We use this at the beginning of the day to talk about the date, and day of the week, and we often use it again during math time.

Throughout the course of the year, your firstie will have lots of opportunities to use the computer. We do a variety of different educational programs that reinforce concepts being learned in class. I love that we have computers in our room! How lucky are we!?! J

This is my kidney table that I use to work with small groups. This provides me the perfect opportunity to invite students back to work on certain skills that I want to reinforce with them. I LOVE this table because it allows me to get to the kiddos easily and spaces them out nicely to work. I also have many of my teaching materials set up around me so that it is within easy reach as I need it.

This is our classroom library. Students have the opportunity to check out books in our classroom library as they need them. They have learned how to do this, and how to pick out what we call ‘Good Fit Books’.

Each student has their own cubby. This is where they keep their ‘Good Fit Books’. They also store their Fluency Binders and Writer’s Workshop Binders here! These cubbies help keep us organized so each student can easily find their belongings! (I LOVE ORGANIZATION … I really try to teach my firsties the importance of organization and how it makes things easier!)

I hope you enjoyed our little tour!

More soon ~

~ Mrs. Christensen  
Empathy – Adaptability – Communication – Arranger – Developer