My Classroom :)

Oh.My.Goodness. I am exhausted!

The past two days have been crazy. Our school is not done being renovated, but they let us in anyway to work on our rooms. I have worked like crazy to get things done. I wish I had taken a before picture, because there was seriously nothing in my room besides desks. It was so overwhelming! But now, my room is mostly decorated! I still have tons of organizing to do before it's ready for school, but at least the major decorating is done!

I teach 5th grade in Irving, Texas (which is right outside of Dallas). I am the reading/social studies teacher. It is seriously my dream job, and I can't wait to start year two! This year, I didn't go with a theme. I just went with bright colors. It's kind of girly, but I think it turned out cute!

The students will put their school badges in that chart. Those are our new hall passes below! They are zebra and super cute. :)

Our front meeting area!
My favorite part of the entire room- the classroom library! I have spent tons of money buying those books (and also got some great deals!). I made the pillows and painted the shelf to the right. This is my favorite part of the room!
Class jobs! Our class schedule will go on that blank poster.
Our back wall. The polka dots are hot glued to clothes pins. I will then hang student work from those clothes pins! I did this last year, and it worked wonderfully! It was so easy to change out student work. I painted those canvases on the little wall. They have some of my favorite quotes! The pink and blue baskets hold our reading and social studies notebooks. The colored trays are for different things, such as spelling tests, station menus, make up work, late work, and extra paper. :)
Our whole group meeting area. I got the rug at office depot for a pretty good price, and I love it! It's pretty girly, but I like it. That is our word wall on the bottom. Last year I had it up high and it was really hard for the kids to use. I'm going to buy velcro so that they can move words on the sheets. The paper is actually purple, and the letters are the same zebra ones that are on my homework board. That little table will hold my document camera (once we figure out where it is... got to love working in a construction site!)
My computer corner! I made those chair pockets and they will store their headphones in them. I had so many broken headphones last year! I'm hoping that these chair pockets will help to solve that problem. The blue bullentin board has a houndstooth border and I am in love with it!
We do the Daily 5 in my classroom, and I love it! But, since I only have the students for 90 minute rotations, we really only do the daily 3. I split the kids into 4 groups and they go to 3 stations that are 20 minutes long each. They are color coded, but I lost some of cards over the summer so I will have to make some more! It worked really well last year, so hopefully it will this year too!
My circle table, where I will do small groups. The shelves on the back need to be cleaned out and organized, so hopefully I can do that this weekend!
Our agenda/homework board. I thought it turned out cute!

Whew! I will try to take a picture of the class as a whole soon. If you want to see more pics, there are some on my facebook. There are lots of little things that I have left to do, but I will post pictures when I am officially done!