Where I Teach Wednesday {and Technology Tip Tuesday}

 

 

Hi all!  Happy Where I Teach Wednesday! 

 

Since I missed Technology Tip Tuesday I'll start with that then get to the fun stuff.  I don't have a TV/DVD player in my room, so any movie I show is done from my computer using our projector.  I'm not a huge movie fan, but there are some days it happens.  Like the last afternoon before winter break.  Do you really think I'm going to get those little munchkins to do anything productive?  I didn't think so.  I promise I always at least try to connect it to what we're learning somehow.  Here's where my technology tip comes in.  There's a magic key on your keyboard that lets you split your screen.  So, I can work at my computer while my kiddos can still watch the movie.  They can see the movie, but not what I'm doing on the screen.  Assuming it's the same on all computers, you hold down the Fn key and click the F7 button.  Then choose Extend.  Just make sure the screen you want your kids to see is the one in front of everything else on your screen when you do this.  It's magic I tell you!

 

Now, for where I teach Wednesday!  I was bound and determined to finish my classroom the other day so I'd have pictures to share for this.  Talk about motivation!  Enjoy the tour!

 

Looking in from the door.  The first one looks to the right and the second picture looks to the left.   LOVING those chair pockets from The First Grade Parade!  Along that wall to the left is a door to our lab that I share with the other first grade teacher. No pictures - it's still a work in progress!

 The wall to the right of the door.  Tons of storage space which is awesome. 

Ignore my lunch on the table.  :)  It hold our book boxes, my teaching resources, and our mailboxes.  I'm trying those letter trays for mailboxes this year.  We'll see how they work out.  The crates under the counter hold our BEE Binders that the kids bring back and forth to school every day.

My new calendar wall.  The purpose of that birthday area was to make a new space smaller than the poster I had last year.  That new space ended up being twice the size of the poster!  Oops.  I'm going to take pictures of the kids that have their birthday during each month and add it to our wall.

 We have two word walls.  One for reading words and one for sight words.  It's a little word-wall-overload, but hopefully it will help my kiddos learn the words they need to know.  Plus, there's not enough space on either for both sets of words.  The other word wall {for sight words} is on our whiteboard at the front of the room.  Hiding behind those cabinets of math manipulatives and games are our computers.

 Book Nook heaven.  All of our books are categorized.  We have themes, authors, series, animals, and chapter book categories.  Color coded bins, color coded stickers, and every book has a place!  Doing a quick count in my head I think there are about 100 different bins each holding a different category.  That was HUGE project last summer.  {Thanks again to my loving future Mr. for helping!  I think I've forever scared him away from my classroom after that project!}  Our leveled library is over there too.

That's pretty much it.  Ready and waiting for 18 new fabulous kiddos!