Welcome to Room 515! {A Classroom Tour}

Don’t you just love the beach in the winter? Secluded, quiet, serene…wait, you mean you don’t enjoy the beach in January? I’m typing this at the beach. I’m sitting on sand. There is an ocean in front of me. And it’s JANUARY. Let me gush about it, I just moved from a state where I would be shoveling 2-6 inches of snow off of my car every morning right about now. And my home state? They were out on a snow day today. So give me a break 🙂
I am so excited for this post because it’s the first one where I show you my classroom! It’s mid-year, so everything has settled in its spot and there are traces of life. Some things are a little messy, but that’s real life! I love looking through photos of other teachers’ classrooms in August, but I just wasn’t ready to share mine yet. Now, here it is! Come on in!

This is our writing center; you see it as you enter our classroom and turn left. I hang their “brag work” on the mini cork boards with a clothespin. The kids come to this center every day as part of our center rotations.

Here is our word wall; you see it on the right of our classroom when you enter. It houses our sight words we’ve mastered. We use the Dolch Preprimer list. We also use Zoophonics for our letter friends which are pinned next to the letter cards (that are available in my store). We sit at the kidney table in this picture for reading groups!

Our calendar area is next to the word wall. (Obviously took these photos last week!) I let students be in charge of calendar, I so rarely do anything here!

This corner is a hodge-podge of things. You can see the big book center which is part of our center rotations. The listening center is also located here. (And so are my class photos of all of my sweet classes!)

Here’s our daily schedule/procedures part of our board (It’s broken into three sliding parts). The kids absolutely depend on these schedule cards from The First Grade Parade. You can also find the hand signals and voice level chart in my store. The baggies are the table points. They are working towards getting 10 “marshmallow” points right now to earn a hot cocoa party!

Under the white board are these awesome shelves. I keep my weekly activities and books in the IKEA bins, and our treasure box that my grandpa made sits proudly waiting for some visitors!

Here’s a long shot of the white board. Class jobs go across the top and get rotated weekly. The morning message and daily practice goes on the middle section, and the far left section houses our “We can” statements for reading, writer’s workshop, math, and phonics.

These two parts are the word work center. Students can choose 1-2 activities from here to complete during our center time. I have to say that a class favorite is the magnet center from Kindergarten Smiles!

More storage, our “We can” statements up close, and our small pocket chart center (stuck on an IKEA easel).

The inquiry table is also part of center rotations, but is included in the “green centers.” You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

My favorite place in our classroom, the reading center. Reading window. Reading nook. Whatever you’d like to call it. It provides so much natural light, and on warm days, a nice ocean breeze (we’re a half mile from the beach in Santa Monica).

Here is the “Centers” board. The purple chart is for math rotations. The blue and green centers are used during our center time in the morning. First, students see which “blue center” they are to go to (I choose). Once they complete the activity, they choose a “green center” to go to.

Cubbies, self-explanatory. Since I only have 19 kids, the extra cubbies come in handy as drying racks for the art center…

Art center, where kids actually use PAINT and GLITTER. *Insert gasp*

My favorite place to watch students, dramatic play.

Classroom sink, discovery table, and loose parts. The things that they create from these loose parts are amazing.

And as we leave, you can see what we see when we line up. Thank you so much for stopping by on this photo tour of our classroom! Besides the beach, this is my favorite place to be. I love my couch and all, but I think I love my classroom a little more. What does YOUR classroom look like?!