Back to School

I am back to school on Monday and my kiddos come back on the 27th!  I love my classroom this year and thought I would share it with you! : )
Let me preface by saying that 1. our school is open concept, so think no walls and 2. I took the pics with my iphone quickly so they may not be the best quality:
Welcome to 2nd grade! I will be teaching Reading and Social Studies to 3 classes, so you may see a lot of green, blue and pink and this is because I am color coding my classes.

My front wall which is kind of hard to see from this picture says "The more that you read, the more things that you know.  The more that you know, the more places you go." Thank you Dr. Seuss! I also have the yellow brick road of retelling on the right side (it worked so well with my summer camp classes that I used velcro to place it on the wall for easy use with my class).  Thank you pinterest!

 I have always had trouble getting my anchor charts up right away and my friend, Carolina, had a great idea this year to put up clothes pins to hold those anchor charts, so I copied her.  I placed them far enough apart to accommodate a sheet of chart paper and can fit up 12 at a time.

 Next to my anchor chart wall is my desk

 I am in general an organized person, but when I get stressed or a lot is going on, my desk takes the brunt of it in the form of papers everywhere and sticky notes too.  Pinterest gave me two ideas 1- placing a piece of notebook scrapbook paper in a frame with "to do" at the top to replace sticky notes and 2- labeling my drawers "to grade, to copy, to file" to avoid piles of papers without a home. 

 My classroom library

 Another Pinterest Copy: a jar with highlighters next to the turn in tray that says "WAIT! Did you remember to write your name?"

 Last year, we had a lot of broken books, so I made a broke book tub.  I also have little containers to match their class color for the book shopping cards.

 I was able to hang my word wall (which is kind of far away in this picture) and it kind of gives me a wall.  There is velcro under each letter to attach high frequency words.  On this side I also have my "You have an amazing brain sign," a blank spot for our classroom expectations (I always make them with the students), a cabinet that has yet to be dedicated, an I Spy cabinet for words they find that fit their Words Their Way word lists for the week, a place for the skill of the week, a Reminder about RAH (Responsibility, Attitude and Honor).

 My "Parking lot" (each class has their own..no pink posterboard though, so theirs is white).  I will give the students a task some days in Reading Workshop and have them search in their books, write their response and place it on their name in the parking lot during independent reading.  It will give me the opportunity to do a quick check to see who understood the concept.

 Baskets under the table that are color coded for their class to hold their Reading workshop book bags and Reader's response journals. 

 Happy School year!!