Time for a classroom tour! I've made a few upgrades that I'm excited about for this school year, but the basic setup of my room has stayed the same. First here's a quick video tour:
color coded seating
classroom jobs
MUSIC letters
ukulele
small percussion storage
circles
teacher desk
rainbow patterns decor set
And here are some highlights of things that have changed this school year:
I added a new classroom job this year: warmup leader (currently in the yellow box in the picture above)! Read more about why I made the change and what I have planned for them in this post. I also added a few more minions to my walls, mostly to cover up some ugly walls with peeling paint and graffiti I just haven't been able to clean off- you can see one of them peeking out of the top of the magnet board, but you'll see more in another picture below :)
I added the strings of colorful balls (from the Target dollar spot) to the wall above my instrument storage- those posters that I had up before looked a little lonely and out of place before. The music pennants I added in the middle of the school year last year (also from the dollar spot!).
Another element I added to those same open shelves are labels! These are clear adhesive pockets I got at the Target dollar spot. I just cut up some strips of paper, wrote the instrument names on each one, and stuck it on the front of the shelves.
I used to have a plastic milk crate to hold my books, but I upgraded to a wooden one. It looks a lot nicer and it does seem a bit sturdier. I'll still have to keep students from sitting on it though- I tried and it definitely is not strong enough to hold anyone's weight! I also got that little rainbow pillow from the dollar spot (are you sensing a theme?...) to add to my pillow collection.
This is probably my biggest change to my classroom: I have now replaced my word wall with these condensed posters that list all of the major skills, concepts, and topics we cover in each grade level. Get them here if you want your own copy :)
Another minor change, but I found those colored mechanical pencils on sale at Staples this summer so I'm excited to try them out. Last year was the first year I used mechanical pencils at all, and it went pretty well. My main issue was dealing with students who would try to get more lead and would end up dropping the entire piece of lead out of the pencil and onto the floor. Once they got used to them they handled it pretty well, so I'm hoping for another good year with these slightly sturdier ones (the ones I got last year were from Dollar Tree).
This may seem minuscule but I turned my hanging files under my desk sideways so I now have better leg room under the table! Small change, but it makes it so much more comfortable for me to sit and work at my computer there.
Last but not least, here's a better look at some of my newly-added minions! :) This wall was the spot with the worst marks on the wall so there's a higher concentration of minion population in this spot. I love that the stacked up minions have the sign saying something like, "caution minions at work"! Perfect for the classroom!
I think that does it- the school year just started this week and I'm so excited to be seeing my students again! I hope all of you are off to (or getting ready for) a great start this year. If you have any questions or comments about anything you see, feel free to ask away in the comments! :)
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Such a fun room! I love your little down-sized desk. I never thought to use a table like that for my desk. My desk is small, but that would save me even more space in my very small room. Maybe next year! :)
ReplyDeleteI was so excited when I finally got rid of my giant teacher desk a few years back, I wrote an entire post about it, haha! It really does make a difference. https://caldwellorganizedchaos.blogspot.com/2015/08/teacher-tuesday-getting-rid-of-my.html
DeleteWhere did you buy your red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, green candies for your supplies? I use the same colors but I'm finding a lot of sets of 6 I see don't have orange. Also I like that you have cups in them to hold pencils and markers.
ReplyDeleteI got them at the Target dollar spot, but I'm almost certain Lakeshore also has them in those colors this year... The cups are from IKEA!
DeleteHere is the link to the ones at Lakeshore: https://www.lakeshorelearning.com/products/teaching-resources/bins-organizers/classroom-supply-caddies/p/PP506
DeleteLittle confused on how you run the warm ups. Are your lessons longer than 50 minutes? Also, how each class has a leader. Guessing that changes every week? So if I have 12 classes at 50 minutes each, every week I need two new leaders. How do you present all that without killing trees and track those who have done it before?
ReplyDeleteHi! Using warmups at the beginning of class is new for me this year- I wrote all about how I'm doing it in this post: https://caldwellorganizedchaos.blogspot.com/2018/08/class-openers-for-elementary-music.html
DeleteMy classes are 30 minutes long. I keep the warmups short! They take longer when I'm introducing a new warmup and showing them how to do it, but once they know it is a simple and quick activity that usually takes about 2 minutes.
I have student jobs split up by color team (there are links to my blog post on jobs and my post on color coded seating above). Rather than having individual students assigned to specific jobs, I have small groups share the job. Since there are 6 groups, I split the school year into half trimesters and they keep each job for one half trimester. As I showed in the tour here, I have a tracker up on the wall next to my front door to help me keep track of when to switch jobs and who has done which ones.
Hope this helps! It can be a little bit cumbersome to explain but it's actually pretty easy to manage. Let me know if you have any other questions :)
I'll re-read. I'm understanding that each taped area on the floor is a section, but I can't work out how you keep individual tracking of each group and whether or not they repeat a job. Do you have organised seating for every class? I love my versatile space, but there's not enough room for roughly 25+ kids and chairs and manoeuvrability. I envy your classroom.
DeleteMy classroom is definitely the best one I have ever worked in, and I'm lucky to work in such an awesome space! Yes, I have seating charts for every class so each student is permanently assigned to a color group for the year. If you're wanting to do something similar with the jobs, you would need to assign the students to a color team, even if they don't sit that way- treat it like the Harry Potter houses :) You could use those groups for small group work etc as well. Sorry, it can be difficult to explain without being there in person! Please keep asking away!
DeleteHow are your boomwackers hung up? Love your room!
ReplyDeleteThank you! It's velcro. I got this kind from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2MNlBK2
Deletehaving the velcro on the boomwhacker.....does it affect their sound?
DeleteAndrea- no, I have not found that it affects the sound at all.
DeleteWhat do you use to hold your tambourines?
ReplyDeleteI have ended up using the same system I have for my hand drums- I use those dish / pot lid storage racks and they work perfectly!
DeleteHey! Can you tell me what measurements the shelves are that you use to store your xylophones? I'm looking into storage for those this coming year and love something like that. Would you change anything about it?
ReplyDeleteI wish I could tell you the measurements but unfortunately I don't have that information on me and with no access to the building I can't measure them for you... I love everything about the shelves but the one thing I would and actually did change is to have some shelves that are split horizontally- as you can see in the photo there was a lot of wasted space where I was storing things like glockenspiels and keyboards that aren't very tall. One of the custodians in my building was able to add additional shelves to split a couple of them and give me twice as much storage space, and that made a huge difference!
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