It looks like it will be a great year!

Early this week I posted that Ms. Jessica @ A Turn to Learn  was having a huge giveaway of some of her top items. I am beyond ecstatic to tell you all, that I was one of the lucky winners. I still can't believe it. I must of ran around the house a couple times like a total looney toon. I did mention that I was totally stocked!

Now to my classroom. I have been a busy, busy bee for the last two weeks trying to set up my room. Every year I seem to change themes. I do everything around the class, my newsletters, folders, no homework passes, you name it, with the same theme. This year I decided to do tiger paw prints/college bound theme. My school mascot is a tiger and it will be the last year my kiddos and I are together. I wanted them to have many lasting impressions of their elementary school days.

When I first started two weeks ago, I could not fully visualize my room. I kept moving things around and around. I finally have it the way I like (I do move things throughout the year though). Here are some pictures:

Too Plain!

Tweaked it a little more:

This is how I keep track of who met their monthly reading goal. Those students that meet the goal each month will receive a medal at the end of the year...hence the hanging medal. Great motivator!

This is my library. I have the bins labeled by genre, author, or series.

Early I posted about trying to be organized. Jodi, over at clutter-free classroom, does such a great job at decorating and organizing her classroom and materials. I love to "borrow" her great ideas. This is the before and after picture on her site:





I used the labels provided for free to do my homework boxes, but I did my own labels for my subject boxes. I really like the way they came out.

This year I am going to use the clip chart system. I have been hearing great things about it and it seems simple enough to implement and maintain. I really like that students can move up no matter where they are. ( I am still missing the clothespins.) I got the labels from another site, but I can't remember from where. If you know, please let me know so I can give them credit.

This is the beginning of my college bound board. It will be interactive and constantly changing as we learn about a variety of colleges and universities.  I will add more photos about this bulletin as the year progresses.

This is the one bulletin that is up and running from day one. My calendar board is a critical and integral part of our math block. I have to change some items tomorrow morning to align to CCSS.

Wow! It was never my intention to be so wordy, but I hope this helps.