Getting ready to INVESTIGATE another year!

I am SO excited for this coming up 2014-2015 school year! I got a new classroom (one with a WINDOW and I am SO excited!!) this classroom is smaller than my last one, but it feels more cozy. 

Our theme this year is detective/investigation. The 3rd grade team lucked out and snatched up the adorable pink panther for us. My classroom this year is completely in school theme, I went with bright chevron theme  (which you can grab at my TpT store) and with a few pink panthers scattered in there. 

Let the tour of Mrs. Teel's 2014-2015 Classroom BEGIN! 

First off, I am IN LOVE with my door this year! 

Isn't that pink panther adorable?!?! 

SO glad we got him!!

Here is the view from my door looking into my room. The sign hanging from the ceiling says "Welcome!" of course, you can purchase my pennants and have them spell out whatever you wish at 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Rainbow-Chevron-Labels-1374614

Calendar and jobs. 

I will write each students name on the Popsicle stick and rotate them through each job on Mondays. The sticks not in the rotation will go in the Job Names pail. 

This bookshelf is to the right of my door once you walk in. It houses dictionaries, textbooks, and the trays (with labels you can get at my TpT store) is for papers from office to pass out, a tray for things to turn into office, a spot for notes from home, and the colored ones are for my 2 classes (one blue, one green) to turn in any signed failing papers. 

Pencil Sharpener station!

"KEEP CALM AND ALWAYS RETURN MY PENCILS"

hahaha! So true!!

Filing cabinet labels!!

The cabinets above my sink. Love that all my storage bins above my cabinets are all labeled and I know exactly what is in each one! 

Here is another view of my room looking at the door and that bookshelf! 

My small group table and my WINDOW!! :) 

Love my bucket seats I created. Bought the tubs from wal-mart, and turned them upside dow, cut out a circle of memory foam and hot glued the fabric down! Easy peasy. 

The shelf behind my small group table.. label CRAZY!! 

A wide shot looking from my small group table. 

My back cabinets. I really wanted a spot for all the major topics we cover in 3rd grade reading, especially the ones that are important to the STAAR test!! 

Here is my bucks system that I will put the student names on and store their behavior bucks they earn. Next to that is "Text Features" bulletin display. Text features is one thing the 3rd graders must know. I will move the pink star to the text feature poster we are studying throughout the year so the kids know which one we are focusing on. :) 

Here is the adorable Figurative Language display and the Grammar display. Again, I will move the pink star to emphasize the skill we are currently focusing on. 

Here is how I keep track of where each student is at during the writing process. 

As you can see, each of my classes (the blue class and the green class) have a numbered clip that they will move up and down the process. 

Here is a peek into one of my cabinets... I clearly went LABEL CRAZY this year!! 

But I am SO excited to be SO organized! 

 I love this arrangement for my desks. Their supply buckets stay perfectly between the desks (the bungee cords help with that) and the kids are not pushing it to each other desks.

 Just pencils in their supply buckets for now!

I am also in love with my library. I bought tubs and labeled/organized my library by genres (labels available on my TpT store also!) I LOVE my crate seats too. Turns my library into a very cozy corner. 

I made these by taking milk crates and covering them with an old green curtain I had, the memory foam, wood and covering the top with fabric. 

 The inside of the crates. Perfect for those books that don't exactly fit in with a certain genre or over flow books!

I found this adorable Book Hospital label on TpT and just fell in love!
 Of course I have my EEKK! Framed and ready to go!
 Love framing different posters.

This year I am also going to try my hand at the popular library sticks we have all seen all over pinterest! 

One for each class of course!!

A wide shot looking onto my small group area and library. 

 Here are my prefix and suffix boards you can see above the shelving.
These are available at my TpT store at:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Prefixes-and-Suffixes-Mini-Posters-with-Banners-1279025

My MEGA desk. I have never had such a large desk area before but so excited that all my wires are hidden and I could decorate the from of my desk with my name!! 

A shot of behind my desk. Covered an ugly board with fabric. It is so bright and cheery!

Here I will write what we are doing each day in the my reading class! 

Plus the too cute rules I found on TpT! 

My promethean board, floor space and white board. I don't have any student backs to the board, and it is where our lessons take place! 

My Blurt chart. You can read more about this behavior tool I use here:

http://www.terrificthird.blogspot.com/2013/08/two-classes-one-classroom.html

This is the side chalkboard directly to the left of my door. Here I have this board broken into 2 parts: Writing and Reading. Each with different important skills we learn throughout the year. The pink star will be pinned to the type of writing we are currently doing. 

Here is the reading side. Again, the pink star will move next the skill we are focusing on that week! 

Next to the chalk board is a bulletin board that I have created into my genre board. I bet you can guess what I will use that pink star for huh?? :) 

I have created a working on words station next to my desk for students to spell out spelling words.
On top of the magnet desk is their turn in bucket.

 On my campus we each get 6 Chromebooks. I am so excited to use this niffy charging station I created!

 Here is that back shelving unit by my library. It holds my stations/buckets for daily five. I am missing my tape recorder for my books on tape!

 Here is my big books station for daily five. It is underneath my big whiteboard by my Promethean board.

 This is also apart of my daily five stations. I use this for creative writing.

 Also on that back shelving is my colorful pens and revising/editing pens for students to use during the writing process.

 I also have their paper stored here...

and different supplies they need during their time with me!!!

I will blog again once I have all my Daily Five stations up and running!

UNTIL THEN...

Happy Teaching Friends!!!

Third Grade is OCEANS of fun!

So our school theme this year is all things "oceany" and I am super excited about how the theme worked into my neon/bright room and especially how it turned out! :) 

I only teach ELA and Social Studies so you won't see any math or science gracing these walls but you will get your fair share of reading, writing and word study! I do teach two classes, one the blue class and one the green class and everything is color coded. I will post later how I manage 2 classes and 1 room! 

This is our library, or the "Reading Resort" (yes, I know the sign in the frame says Reading Cabana, but my husband nicely pointed out that all my other spots have alliteration and both words should start with the same letter) and I am over the moon with how it turned out. It is to the left of the door and begins the reading part of my room. The door with the netting is where I will hang up our "Daily Five" choices. The buckets will hold different daily five activities. I will post more about this when I am finished! 

Here is our "Behavior Bay" with our Whammie (a wonderful term I stole borrowed from my AMAZING mentor teacher while I was student teaching) Menu and our Behavior Strip. Look for my post about management to read more about this! 

Here is our "Reader's Reef" bulletin board which houses AR signup and will also host our "Story Elements" bulletin board set. I like to hang that up bit by bit as we discuss each element.  :) 

My white board is a central part of my classroom with a lot of information for the students. It also separates the Reading corner of my room from the writing corner. My white board is really just a wash board that has seen better days. To cover up the old yucky expo that won't come off, I put up contact paper and sectioned off my board into: 

Schedule, What Do I Do?, Table Points, and Genres. 

The four frames will be where I write our schedule for that day. I also stole borrowed this wonderful idea from a fellow teacher friend! Next to it, under the yellow sign, I hang up that week's assignments that are for grades and need to be turned in as a visual reminder. My classroom is very fast paced since I only get a little over 2 hours with both classes each day. They don't get much time during instruction (my time) to work on assignments. I usually give them around 5 minutes just to get started and make sure they understand the directions. Then they put it in their I/C folder and work on it during workshop (their time). Displaying the work keeps them from interrupting my small group instruction. 

This is the "What Do I Do?" chart. We use this throughout the day but especially during workshop time. Workshop time is about an hour long at the start of the year, but gets longer as the year progresses. I display here exactly what they need to do, in the correct order, and their options for when they  have finished everything. I write all the possibilities on  sentence strips so it is easy to change them out or rearrange the order. On the bottom I can flip the card to turn AR Testing On or Off and open or close our library. This seriously helps the kids and me during workshop time. No one comes up to me to ask any questions or what they should turn in or if they can do a certain activity. The chart gives them all the directions they need! 

My have 6 tables, each a Continent so I use the world poster to keep track of my table points. I started this at the end of last year and it helped some much during our Continent unit. We all know how students obsess over table points (or at least mine!) so I figured with as much as they look up to count their table points they can also get an eyeful as to where the continents are! My reading table is Antarctica because it also has my "cooling off" bucket for students who need to just chill! 

Below my table points is where I display the genres we are focusing on. Under "reading" is the genre of the story we are reading and under "writing" is the genre of the paper that we are currently taking through the writing process. 

To the right of the white board is our "Writer's Wharf" and begins our writing corner of our room. Here I display our colorful word of the week and also where I display my example of the writing paper we are currently taking through the writing process. 

Here hangs our writing process. I use this to keep track of where each of my 44 students are in their writing. 

 I keep their writing portfolios here. Inside the spine of the binders will be a blue (my class) or green (partner class) strip with their names on it. In their portfolios they keep all the pieces they have taken through the process including the piece they are currently working on. We use tabs to separate our fiction and nonfiction writing along with having tabs for the writing process and helpful hints to use while writing. 
They use the revising and editing pens while, well, revising and editing! :) They use the colorful pens during publishing to write any colorful words they used. 
(I'm sure all of you have seen that on pinterest. It is amazing. Kids love it!) 

Next to their portfolio shelf is the writing table, or "Imagination Island" which I will cricut out, frame and put on top of the white tubs. The white tub keeps paper, construction paper, foam shapes and other craft items for them to use while they are writing. Here they can write and create anything. This is one of the Daily Five choices. 

Two pinterest inspired items on my back cabinets are our "Boggle Board" and our "Classroom Rules", decked out in bright colors and sea animals!

This is my reading/small group table and our word wall. A lot of my organizational tools and planning items are here since this is also where we (the ELA teachers) meet to plan! The rulers are stapled up for when the Fire Marshall shows up! 

Next to my reading table is our "Computer Coast" and our "AR Points" bulletin board where I keep a bar graph of how many points each student has. The two classes compete against each other each 9 weeks and the class with the most points gets a prize.  

This is the front of my classroom and where we meet for floor time. 

Underneath the whiteboard is our "Buddy Beach" where students read to someone during the daily 5 and afterwards discuss what they have read by filling our a story map.  (JUST noticed that it says Beach Buddy instead of Buddy Beach... grrrrrrrrrrrr......) 

Underneath my Elmo is our "Listening Lagoon" where the students listen to reading during the daily five. 

This is my teacher area. I love using curtains to hid all the books and binders on open shelves. 

See my next post to read about my blurt chart and how I handle management and having 2 classes! 

Which brings us full circle to our bulletin boards where I post the posters that relate to the topics we are currently learning about. Above it is prefix/root word/suffix information because that is something we really stress all year long! 

........and.......
 I'm DONE! So excited about this upcoming school year!! :) 


Happy Teaching Friends!