Come On In!

Hello there, come on in!

I am so excited to take you all on a tour of my classroom. I love, love LOVE baseball, and I always dreamed of having a baseball themed classroom (I was one of those weird people that knew what I wanted to do in life since I was 4); and it makes my heart so happy every year to see my baseball classroom come to life. I know a lot of people like to change up their theme every year, and I think that is awesome; but I really enjoy keeping the same theme and adding to it each year.

The first stop on the tour is my absolute favorite part of my classroom this year, the chalkboard!

The most important character trait  I try to instill in my students is kindness. I am a big believer in working hard and being kind to move forward in the world, and I expect nothing less from my students. Throughout the year, I work with my students to define kindness because it's kind of an abstract concept for seven year olds, but by the end of the year I'm happy to report they understand and demonstrate hard work and kindness every day.

I plan on hanging the four anchor charts from my super hero character traits unit on each side of the "work hard and be kind" motto once we work on them as a class. On the actual chalk board, I have my literacy station pocket chart, my four vocabulary words of the week and my calander. As the year goes on, I will also add my math stations chart and my writers' workshop chart to the right of the calendar.

Next, I have my bulliten boards for my anchor charts. I tried to keep these as simple as possible to draw attention to the actual anchor charts.

We are starting a new writing curriculum this year that focuses on the six traits. I put six baseballs on my writing bulletin board that will represent the six traits as we begin to learn about them. I made the baseballs somewhat small because I wanted to leave ample space for anchor charts modeling writing, and detailing our grammar skills that we are working on. 

Finally, under the writing bulletin board we have my second most favorite part of the classroom... the dugout! I have always, always, always wanted to include a dugout in my room, but in the years past I didn't have my classroom set up in a way that could accommodate the space. I purchased three, five gallon buckets from Walmart and flipped them upside down to create seats, and the carpets and pillows are from Ikea. Lastly, a sweet student last year gave me the adorable White Sox pillow as an end of the year gift; I'm a little obsessed with it, and it makes me think of him whenever I see it. I debated adding a pillow top to the buckets, but in the end I decided I wanted them to be authentic and I compromised by resting pillows on top of the buckets. I figured this way my students could use the pillow as a back rest, or lay it flat on the bucket to create a comfy cushion for their tushies. 

Next to the dugout I have my classroom library which I will share more of in another post about organizing my library. Next to the library I have my meeting table.

I intentionally left the wall behind my kidney table blank because I'm going to try something new this year, and hang up the anchor charts I work on with my small groups on this wall - I'll update on how that system works as the year goes on!

You can kind of see my cubbies to the left of the table, but here is a better shot of my student cubbies.

I have an adorable sign that says "The Locker Room" that will hang above the cubbies, but I need to wait for my aide to arrive on Tuesday to hang them. I'm what some may called vertically challenged, and I struggle every year to hang my high items. My sweet husband comes faithfully every year to hang all of my high things, but I forgot to pull out this sign while he was here... whoops! On another note, I like to just number my cubbies rather than putting students names on them mainly because I keep the same theme every year, so this saves me from having to replace the name tags on the cubbies every year.

To the left of the student cubbies I have my classroom sink and water fountain (I know, it's awesome!), and above that I hang my student jobs.

I actually used this bulletin board last year and it worked really, really well. I stapled the bottom and the sides of the mitts to create a pocket, then I hot glued numbered baseballs on popsicle sticks. I change the jobs once a week, and just rotate the popsicle sticks through the mitts until they've made it to each job, then they retire to the dugout to wait until it's their turn for a job again. Next to the sink I keep my hand sanitizer and Kleenex. I make my hand sanitizer into bathroom passes for my students, and this is one of those procedures that I love. The students don't have to ask me to go to the bathroom, when they have to go they grab the sanitizer from the back counter, place it on their desk and go. If the sanitizer is not on the counter they need to wait until it's back to go. When they finish their business they do a quick pump of sanitizer, then put it back on the counter. This seriously stops so many interruptions during instructional time, and I have found when the bathroom isn't such a hot ticket item that they have to ask for, they tend to forget about it and use it less #winning.

Finally, the last area of my classroom is a new arrangement I'm trying this year.

Don't mind my shoes in the background, I like to get comfy while I work, ha!

 I moved my shelf out next to my door, and I moved my teacher chair and easel close to my desk to create a meeting area. In the years past I put my meeting area where I have my dugout now, and I'm excited to see how this new configuration works out.

On one side of the shelf I keep all of my literacy station baskets.

These baskets are the absolute BEST ones I have found for housing my stations. I found them at the dollar store, and they have held up better than every other basket I have tried (three years and counting!). The thing I love the most about them is they are virtually indestructible, and they can be wiped out with a Clorox or Lysol wipe super easily at any time (hello flu season...). I put a tag on each basket identifying the station, and I tape the same tag on the shelf under the basket. This makes it really easy for the students to put them away in the correct spot, and I can really easily see who is taking too long during clean up time / who forgot to return their basket to the shelf.

On the other side of the shelf I keep my math tubs for my math stations.

I use these tubs for math stations rather than the red ones I use for literacy because my math games tend to be in baggies, and I like that these boxes make them look nice and neat. I have a weird thing about seeing the baggies poke out from the top of the red basket, it kind of gives me hives just thinking about it. I will share more about how I organize my math stations later in the year, since I typically don't start math stations until early October.

Lastly, on top of the shelf I keep dry erase markers, pencils, scissors, glue sticks, crayons, dice and a reward supply bucket. Basically, I try to keep everything my students could possible need at their stations open and available to them without putting them in my station baskets. I think this help keep the baskets neater, and it helps keep things from getting lost. I also put a box of Kleenex on top of the station shelf too because one of my biggest pet peeves is a student interrupting my small group to ask where to find the Kleenex... really!?

With that, we have completed the classroom tour, now I just need my new crop of sweet peas to fill this classroom with noise, laughter and love! Before I leave today, I wanted to leave all of you with a "Fantastic Friday Freebie!" The one thing I struggled with significantly my first two years was knowing what procedures to teach, and how to teach them. I knew I needed to teach procedures, I just really didn't know where to begin. While my first year was abysmal, I learned from my mistakes and set about making really solid procedures to teach my class the following year. The past two years have honestly been smooth sailing, and just delightful which is in large part due to the work I put in teaching my procedures in the beginning of the year. SO, to all you newbies out there or veterans looking to try something new, I have a created a complete checklist of procedures to teach AND examples of how I teach them. You can get this resource for free here on TpT.

Thanks again for stopping by, and have a fabulous weekend! I will be back Monday with my plans for the first week of school, but for now I'm off to go squeeze the day lights out of this cutie pie for the next two days!

Leave a comment and tell me...

1. What does your classroom set up look like?

2. What do you think are the most important procedures to teach at the beginning of the year?