In My Classroom

Here's my new home away from home...my classroom.  A blank canvas, ripe for learning.  In a past life I might have 'decorated' it more, 'set it up' more, but I purposefully left it this way for a couple of reasons.  One being that I am teaching older kids this year and I wanted the space to not feel juvenile, another is that I have come to believe that the posters/anchor charts/wall hangings that we create together hold much more meaning for kids than anything commercially marketed.  For me, recording and displaying our thinking is much more powerful than hanging up a cute poster.

As a teaching team, we also decided to do away with desks this year.  We stored them and bought tables from Costco, used tables we had and plunged into the first day of school.  I'm loving it!  We have kids moving from room to room all day, so doing away with the 's/he's sitting in my desk' was a high priority for us.

With all of that in mind, here's a few quick phone pictures of my room...

Standing in the doorway, looking towards my desk and the back of the room...

From the doorway, looking toward the windows and the BTI...

From the doorway, looking at the front of the classroom...

From my desk, looking towards the front of the room...

Like I said, nothing too fancy!  Lots of open space and flexibility.  Just to the right out of the frame of the photo above is a huge bookshelf.  I have been so lucky to have lots of books chosen for us by both my mom and my sister in law.  Just before school started my sister in law sent a huge of box of books.  The kids were SO EXCITED to open the box and see what was inside.  I thought I would find space for the books on the shelf, but for some reason they seem to love to choose them from the box instead!  Who knows?!?  So the box stays on the floor back by my desk...cracks me up!

Here's the 'hard space' area of the floor and you can see the box back there...and my *kinda* clean desk...