My Classroom

My teeny tiny classroom in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a circus themed room.  I picked circus for my love for elephants!  While you are in my classroom, I sometimes feel as though it is super bright and colorful (correlating with the circus theme), but as I look at the photos, it does not look as bright!  That's okay... it's lived in, learned in and loved by my little five year old friends.  We start the year with pretty bare walls.  As we learn throughout the year, it is decorated with printable anchor charts and class made anchor charts.  Why put it all up at once when the students can learn it, and then refer to it as it's posted?  Therefore, we will continue decorating our room until the end of the year!  We will take anchor charts off that are mastered and replaced them with newly learned tasks.

Here is first a picture of the classroom from my desk.  As you can see, the room is definitely tiny!  Excuse the science kit boxes in the corner above the cubbies. We are waiting to remove them from our classrooms once our science closet is reorganized!

Here is right behind my desk.  I try to make new "sun catching" crafts each season to hang on the windows.  As you can see these are pumpkins made out of coffee filters (find them here).  We did not turn them into jack-o-lanterns with hopes to keep them up through Thanksgiving.  We used butterflies last Spring (when I started this personal love for window crafts) and the winter craft is TBD!

Next comes the student work wall!  I update this bulletin board frequently with "Star Work."  Hanging up there now is a note from the students to their parents for when they came to parent-teacher conferences.  The red pocket chart hanging on the wall is my centers map for students to locate which two centers they are going to for the day during Guided Reading.  Finally, the red and green bins are their reading book bags!  These are the high frequency word books that are printed off of Reading A-Z.  We read a new book each week and butter the sight words they know.  They then take them home to read to a family member, get them signed by mom or dad, and return to fill in their book bag.  I give them rewards for reading them at home each time also!  

Here is my guided reading table.  I put various anchor charts focused on different reading strategies around the table.  Inside the black bin I have organized lessons in file folders for each of my six reading groups.  You can see the yellow lei that I wear during Guided Reading Centers to remind the students to only interrupt the students reading at the table if it is an emergency.  It works MOST of the time. Ha!

Here is my circus themed behavior chart.  Last year I had a chart with only two opportunities to move students clip up and down.  I found myself constantly wishing I could move students up higher than two colors, so I created a new one this summer! I also have the rules posted directly next to the clip chart to refer to them at any time when needed.  You can find my set of classroom rules here.

Here is my Popcorn Word Wall.  It is still early in the school year to have a lot of words on it, but by the end of the year it will be full of words!  You can also see the listening center and the student library.  I put various Read-to-Self and how to read a book anchor charts near the library for them to refer to.  You can also see in the red bin our classes collection of classroom books: "KB (Kindergarten B) is full of authors and illustrators!"  I have four classroom books for each month and a bundled pack on my TPT store.  (Find the bundled pack here.)

This is my writing wall.  We will still continue to develop more anchor charts for writing throughout the year.  You can see we've already made a class anchor chart for stretching out words..  I made my Kid-Crown Helpers from Eileen Feldgus' Kidwriting poster to help students spell and find certain sight words.  I also have Superheros posted for each aspect of writing in Kindergarten as well as their Superhero writing hats stored below.  Learn about my Superhero Writing Kit here.  Find the "Earn Your Writing Superpowers sign here for free! There are popcorn bins full of Popcorn words that I make to play "Pop for Sight Words when there is some spare time occasionally."  Finally, my favorite parts: the NO WHINING sign and the "Believe There is Good in the World -- BE THE GOOD" sign. :)

Here is my B-E-A-UITFUL SmartBoard that my students and I love!!  I was so fortunate that my school purchased them this year.  You can also see anchor charts focused around reading for when I read to the students on the rug from the seat.  I post the sight words from the week on the SmartBoard before hanging them up on the word wall.  I also post the KidCrown helpers for the week and the word family for the week.  On the green and blue pocket charts are cards with pictures that begin with the current letter of the week and last week's letter of the week.  We use these to practice beginning sounds, using pictures to help figure out what a word says and we even clap out the syllables of each word!  They then stay posted to use as a sorting center during Guided Reading centers time.

You can find my pack of word families here.

You can find this alphabet chart here.

 Here is our calendar!  It's located in a semi-strange part of the room once the SmartBoard was put in, but we make it work.  Students sit on the rug every time as we complete the morning meeting.  Some skills we focus on are coins, place value graphing, counting, etc.

Thanks for stopping by! :)