Designing the Classroom

Last year, I spent all day for a week straight turning my classroom from what was a 4/5 classroom into a Grade One classroom. Holy cow, did it ever take a long time. This year wasn’t as bad. I had to turn it from a 5/6 to a 3/4, and I found I could keep a lot of the materials that were left there (in other words, I have a great classroom library!)

Between Tuesday morning and late this afternoon, I spent my days transforming last year’s room into Ms. Lawrence’s Grade 3/4 classroom. I now present you, one before picture and several after pictures.

The Before shot. It’s always hard to know where to start. I just stared at it for a while until the ideas started flowing.

And now for the after shots...

Aside from being an optical illusion, this board will serve many purposes; mainly used for assessment with exit passes, but it’s currently all set up for a fun first day back activity.

I’m always so obsessed with my bulletin boards. Once I apply my vision for those, everything else seems to come together.

 The blue and green buckets (which were purchased with the colour scheme in mind) will be used for guided reading groups. The rest is a small but great classroom library.

My guided reading area. This year we are trying the Daily Café literacy program. It’s been around for a while but I never used it in Grade One. Looking forward to trying it out this year.

Math Manipulative Mania!

It’s hard to see, but those posters are kid friendly posters about Multiple Intelligences. That’s how we’re starting off our year. Thanks, Susan Morrow for the free copy via Teachers Pay Teachers!

The window behind my desk looks into another small room (a pod) so I will have to cover it with something. Best to avoid the distractions before they happen.

I still have to do something about covering that cord because someone is going to trip over it and that someone will likely be me.

Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. For me, I found my bulletin board trim first and based my colours on that. It was funky and I thought I could do a lot with it. I ran out of it when I was 90% done my boards and I almost lost my mind. Thankfully, my darling man made the third trek to Barrie with me to get more from the only store that had it in stock.

And that’s what the new classroom looks like! Comparing it to my Grade One room last year, I think it looks fun and inviting, and geared towards an age group that is a little older and more mature.

Now, I'm off to enjoy a weekend spent with family and friends, and of course, planning because next week is the last week of summer vacation and I still have a TON to do!