Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Whooo Likes OWLS!

Creating a Welcoming Environment Around

the Common Core!

One of our favorite parts of being teachers is creating an environment that fosters learning. We have dreams of decorating our room and spend hours researching just the right products.

Ouch, Ouch, Ouch...the lovely entrance to our room and the dreaded hot glue gun. We're known around our school by the Fire Marshall. But, each year we beg to allow this. It is so welcoming and the kids love being associated with whatever theme we choose.  This year we are the Owl Room! If we could be hired out to decorate doors, we would be in 7th HEAVEN!

 
 
Our lockers!
 
 


Whoooo......whoooo.....whooo.....loves owls!!!! Us crazy girls.  We really like to make curtains to cover all our built in shelving.  We found the perfect fabric; however, not one store had the exact yardage that we needed.  We drove all over the Twin Cities to get enough to cover all our built in cabinets!  We're very glad we did!
 
 
 
Providing students with many books at their individual reading level is a very high priority in our room.  We bought this great shelving system at IKEA!  We love having white in our room.  It makes everything so much brighter!  The owls are pretty cute too!

 
Some school supplies we use more than others.  We always collect and share the supplies throughout the year. This year we have the supplies very accessible to students.  It has worked out great!
 
Rah, Rah, Rah.....I love these pom poms!  They add so much color to our room!
Having clear expectations is the only way to manage a classroom.  We have 3 Levels of Behavior at our school.  When students show level 3, they get to FLY HIGH on our clip chart!  We believe in praising students for working hard!

We have our Power Goals posted in our room so that all the students will know what the Target Skills are going to be and what we are going to do to get them there.  We post our goals all over the room.  We also feel it is extremely important to have vocabulary walls so that students can refer to them while working in their journal or at stations. 
  
 We love word work!  Here are some of the fun ways we provide our kids hands on learning.
Word Wall
Write-it, Hide-it, Show-it, Chant-it

Word Work
Digging deep into words.

Word Work Stations
Power Words, Vowel Patterns, R-Controlled
 
 
Kids Working on Decoding Words

Math Stations that Work!
 
 
Organizing Our Bundle Games
Each bucket has games and skills that we use to teach during Guided Reading and during Daily 5.  It is a great way to organize all the Action 100 resources that we use daily.  Don't forget to check out our bundles!
 
Daily Practice
Each day we have the students read all our Blends and Digraphs that we have posted in our room.  You can find these in our 2G Foundational Skills Bundle!
 

 
We hope you have enjoyed taking a closer look at our learning environment!  Life long learning for ALL!
 

 

 


1 comment:

  1. Oh my goodness, I need you ladies to come decorate and organize my "classroom"! Yours looks GREAT!

    ReplyDelete