#2getherwearebetter: Classroom Reveal

DRUMROLL PLEASE……it’s time for the 2015-2016 classroom reveal!

Hooray! One of my favorite parts about going back to school is getting to look at everyone’s classrooms! I just love ~~stalking~~ seeing pictures of all the classrooms out there! I mean, seriously there are about 8 billion classroom layouts out there! But ya’ll, that picture up there? Yeah, it definitely didn’t start out looking like that!

We’ve been in school for a MONTH already #yeswealwayslineupinABCorder and I’ve been dying to share what my classroom looks like! If you read my bulletin board post last month, you know that I’m co-teaching this year, and we have an extra large room! It’s so nice to have so much space, but it was also pretty intimidating to find a home for everything and make it functional.

While I love looking at everyone’s classroom pictures, I know that those gorgeous classrooms didn’t start out that way. For anyone who’s either not a teacher, or is in college and hasn’t had to set up a classroom, I thought I’d share the good, the bad, and *gulp* the ugly. #thisjustgotreal

These first few pictures show the progress made on the first day of working in our room. Our goal was to get the furniture in place, and that’s exactly what we accomplished.

I like to get the furniture arranged first, and then find a home for everything. I really think through transitions, and procedures and routines that are important to me…the arrangement of the furniture can either help or hurt the flow of a classroom.

Since we have one big room, we decided to make one big classroom library on one side of the room, and then put all of our computers on the other side of the room. Above is the beginnings of the classroom library.

This is part computer area, and part teacher area.

Here’s a little of what my teacher area looks like. Currently, there’s a kidney/horseshoe table sort of “attached” to my desk. It’s the arrangement I’ve used for the last 5 years, and it works beautifully. Not only has it been my go-to arrangement for the past 5 years but it’s worked in 2 schools and 3 different classrooms.

This is also pretty much where the end of the progress made on day one. The rest of the pictures are either somewhere in progress, or as finished as it got when I took pictures 🙂

Few things in life make me happier than an organized classroom library. It’s love.

How cute are those colored buckets on top of the cabinets? They were 70% off at Michaels (plus a teacher discount!). They were perfect for our aqua/lime green/navy classroom. I grabbed them and didn’t have a clue how we would use them!

I love the finished look of border around cabinets. I think it looks a little more homey.

The fan things came from Hobby Lobby. A little hot glue, a popsicle stick on the back, and a little more hot glue to adhere to the wall!

We tried to mirror almost everything on both sides of our classroom, and I think we were pretty successful!

The bookshelf on the left holds math workstations: math with a partner and math by myself games. It’s a hot mess, and in need of some TLC. Any volunteers? The table to the right of the bookshelf, is the writing center. It’s perfect for Work on Writing supplies, as well as other writing supplies we don’t keep in our desks.

I don’t know how or why, but we had an overflow of chairs!

In addition to our large whole-group gathering area in the center of the room, we have two smaller gathering areas at either end of our room. It’s perfect for smaller groups of students, or when we want to both teach something at the same time. Think differentiation 🙂

Our teacher areas are sort of diagonal to where the picture was taken, on either side of that little bit of wall where the door is.

End-to-end of our classroom. It’s BIG! And, check out that big pom-pom centerpiece hanging from the ceiling! I’ll be sharing how we made that in a later post! It’s still one of my favorite parts of our room!

The table by the door, is what you could call communication central, I suppose. Take Home Folders, papers for the teacher, homework, breakfast cards, mailboxes, and transportation cards are housed. It’s perfection. As with most other things, it’s mirrored on the other side of the room.

Sometimes I just stare at this thing, and think of just how awesome it really looks. #totalnerd

Here are the books in a series and fiction books. Labeled, beautiful, and ready for readers!

The tall bookshelf on the left houses non-fiction books.

This is definitely the heart of our room. It’s where the majority of our time is spent: morning meeting, mini-lessons, class meetings, read-alouds…and so much more!