Take a Peek...

 Here's a quick look into my classroom. More pictures coming soon! (please excuse paper piles!)

We were celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday. We studied character traits from The Lorax and Yertle the Turtle. The kiddos also loved revisiting some of their childhood favorites they don't normally get to read. We have P.A.R.T.Y. Time (Pick Anything And Read To Yourself) at least 3 times a week for 15 minutes, and these went flying off the shelf each day!

 This is our Homeworkopoly station (courtesy of Ladybug Teacher Files!). The kiddos must turn in all homework assignments for the week to take a turn on the game board. Their game pieces are those school pictures we always get as stickers and I put them on card stock circles, then laminated them. They get to roll the fuzzy dice, move their token, and follow the directions on the space. They might get a prize (homework pass, sit in teacher's chair, prize box, pencil, etc) or answer a math or vocabulary question.

 Wall space is limited in my room thanks to cabinets and windows, so this is our word wall! Our words include high frequency words, word pattern examples, commonly misspelled words, and words that demonstrate word parts (prefixes, suffixes). Yes, I wrote on the cabinets! It's Expo marker and wipes off with Clorox wipes!

The fabric tubs hold clipboards for when students are not working at their desks. The clear plastic tub holds graphic organizers for independent reading, and the file basket is for my Saturday school kids to keep their papers (yes I said Saturday! FCAT prep).

Our classroom library is organized by fiction and non-fiction. All baskets are organized by topic or sub genre and have several levels within one basket. The top shelf of both bookcases holds my book club books and mentor texts. After looking at these pix, I desperately need some plants above the bookcases (real or not)!

This is our non-fiction section and my mentor texts. The big empty space usually holds The Lorax book and animal. The kiddos can sit in the beach chairs during independent reading, we also have a pillow they can use. I know some teachers make rotation charts for using items like this, but I haven't really had an issue this year. They know that if they've used one this week, they need to let someone else sit there.

We have daily reading meetings, where we learn and practice reading strategies. The kiddos love our meetings (and so do I!). We get to share out our ideas about what we're reading and the strategies we're using to understand and connect to the text. When I started teaching 5th grade a few years back, I thought "You want me to put them on the floor?! They're too old for that!"- boy was I mistaken. It's not about being "too old" or "too cool". It has built a much stronger community in my class and encourages them to collaborate and problem solve together. We've had many "ah-ha" moments on the floor!

Our math and science boards. We're a Learning Focused school and post our essential questions for each unit/lesson. Here we were working on geometry in math (classifying quadrilaterals) and forms of energy in science. The balloon was a reminder from an experiment we did with static electricity and attracting other objects o a charged item.

There is a great built-in unit in my room where I store all of my  math manipulatives. As organized as I try to be, I still hate to see a ton of clutter (piles of paper excluded ha!). I hung a colorful shower curtain to hide the tubs of math supplies.



Hope you've enjoyed the tour! I'll try to post more pix soon, especially of a few recent anchor charts!