New Year, New Look! Classroom Reveal!!

Schools back in session here in Nevada!!! We just finished up our first full week of the new school year and I'm so excited to finally show you my 2016-2017 classroom!! 

When you first walk into my classroom, this is on the left. We are required to have our schedule posted by our entrance in my district.

If you look straight ahead and not to the left at our schedule, this is what you will see when you walk in.

This is the view from the front of my room. I have reading and math centers on the left sectioned off with book shelves, teacher table center is at the very back, and independent reading center is in the tent on the right, along with technology center beside that.

Here I have our writing wall, our treasure tree, and our scientific process posters displayed. I have used a treasure tree for the last 5 years rather than a treasure box. I love it! It provides a visual incentive for students and I no longer have to worry about students spending way too much time digging through a box, and breaking toys in the process. I'll explain my Treasure Tree system later in this post.

I also have my Scientific Process Posters displayed in this area. I wish I had gotten a better photo of the posters. You can get the Science posters from Oriental Trading here. We do ALOT of science in my classroom! It is my students' favorite part of their day! I have compiled all of our experiments into a Science Kit that you can find here. We just did 3 more experiments this week, that I will be adding to this kit next week.

This is our writing wall! We write a "Super Star Sentence" together every other day after reviewing what a "Super Star Sentence" is. I choose a student to choose a topic card from the yellow pocket chart and they get to verbally generate a sentence about their topic. I write their sentence on the board, purposely placing mistakes all throughout and my students have to try to find the mistakes. Once we have a perfect super star sentence, they copy the sentence into their writing journals.

This is our whole group morning meeting area. We focus on communication, number sense, calendar, weather, time, and money in this area. My IEP tubs you may have seen all over FB are on the shelf to the left and my pocket chart to the right now has vocabulary words in it that my kids have learned. You can find my vocabulary words here and read more about my IEP Tubs here. I have my rules posted above the board and we recite them together daily. I love that they are real photos. My kids have shown a much greater response and increase in understanding since I began using real life photos in my classroom a couple of years ago! You can find the rule posters from Kristen Smith here. 

This is one of my math centers! As you can see, I have a pink, green, and blue basket placed in each center. These represent my 3 groups. I have an aide at these centers and what I want them to do with each group is placed in the basket that represents their group color. You can read more about my centers here. 

This is one of my reading centers! Again, I have the color coded baskets where I will place what I want my aides to do with each group in their group basket. I change the basket activities up every Monday. The baskets are from Really Good Stuff.

 This is also a reading center....my independent reading nook. My students just love the tent and here they can stretch out, relax, and read a book. The tent is from here.

I just love the book banner hanging above our reading tent. The pennants are book covers of childhood favorites we actually have in our classroom library. You can get them from Danielle Knight on TpT here.

This is my "Teacher Table" small group center. 

When students come to this center, they grab their workbooks/materials that are in their color-coded group center basket and take a seat at the table.

This is my computer technology center. I am very lucky to have 6 student computers and 3 of them are touch screens.

I store my iPads beside the computers like this. I purchased this from Really Good Stuff here.

Here is our center rotation chart that students can easily follow to see what center they go to next. This editable center rotation chart is available here. 

I use this "Timed Timer" to rotate through my centers. I love it as it shows a visual  to students and teachers as to when each rotations is coming to an end. You can purchase it from Lakeshore, but I was able to get it from my Assistive Technology Department for nothing. Be sure to check out your assisstive technology dept. in your district first!  I had no idea the things I could get from them for my classroom. I also got the battery operated name selector from my AT dept. you see on the left of the timer. I use this to select students to perform random tasks in my classroom.   

 

Here is my teacher desk area!

This is the view from the back door and my desk.

This is my timeout, cool down area!

This is my break area! Students that don't feel good or are tired, can use this area to lie down for a bit!

This is at the front door when students arrive. Students place their HW, daily logs, and agenda in the appropriate place. One of my aides then checks them while we do our morning work. 

 Each student has a daily log that hangs in student view and is monitored throughout the day.

The daily log matches and coincides with the faces on my classroom clip chart, so it is very comprehensive and cohesive for my students. This picture also shows my job chart featuring real life photos, which you can get here. You can check out my clip charts and daily take home charts here.

These are my incentive Treasure Tree charts. Each student has 2 incentive charts. One for homework and one for classroom behavior that coincides with the clip chart. Homework is given 4 times a week. When students have filled in 16 days of turning in HW, they get to choose something from the Treasure Tree and they start a new HW chart.
On the other chart, students get stickers depending on where they ended each day on the clip chart.

If they end their day on:
SUPER - purple sticker
GOOD - green sticker
WARNING - yellow sticker
SAD - red sticker

Then, on Friday, students that ended each day that week on good or super, get to choose something from the Treasure Tree.

How I store my printable resource masters, assessments tools, and magazines that I order from. I have no more files in file cabinets! I store 1 master of each file in these binders.

How I store my themed activities we do throughout the year!

Some other favorites in my room this year!

 I love my new GOALS WALL Display this year!
My students recite their goals each day following our classroom rules. These are just simple classroom behaviors that they need to improve on. Examples include: chair legs on floor, keeping lids on markers, no blurting out, etc. You can find an editable file to use this goal wall in your classroom here.

 I also LOVE my Life Skills Word Wall, which you can find from Simply Special Ed here.

 I LOVE my Building Character Emoji Board! It brings some excitement to the classroom. You can find it here.

And lastly, I LOVE my new alphabet chart with real life photos from Sarah Gardner. 

Hope you enjoyed my classroom reveal and are geared up for #thebestyearever. Have a great year!