Slowly, but surely my classroom is coming together

Another HOT day in the classroom.  Today I feel that I got a LOT more accomplished, but after looking at it when I was leaving it didn't seem much different at all! :/  I still have to get my HUGE desk moved and have two tables taken out.  Hopefully, on Thursday we will be able to get this accomplished.

So here is what I'm working with today...

I began by punching out my letters and spelling everything one million times to get every letter!  :) I wanted to try out my cute EQ picture frames. (Link about those here.) Well, I decided that I didn't like them hanging on the ribbon because it actually took up too much board.  So I'm going to find a way to hang the frames like the one under science.  For the picture I had rested it on push pins, but that is not stable at all!  In fact, I probably should have taken this down before I left school today! EEks!

 I set up my computers today, too!  The back green wall is going to be used for vocabulary that we are currently discussing.  An upper grades "word wall."

To the left is where exemplary work will be displayed.  It is actually a requirement for our walk through to have this area.  I will use my cute clothes pins that I redecorated with scrapbook paper here!  The back wall is an area to hang posters and other information that pertain to the focus that week.  Last year I had no room to hang my actual informational posters that went along with the topic, like the Civil War. I'm excited about it! ;)  Oh, and this big ol' empty space is going to house my big ol' desk!  

Another DUH moment that I had this summer was, "I teach SS, but don't have a map!"  I found this map in my classroom last year, but didn't think to use it! Over the summer I knew that I would pull this out and put it up!  Once we begin our units, I will use yarn to point and highlight certain areas!  

 I cleaned out my supply closet and decided that I did not need 2 million sheets of construction paper!  I will be rolling this down the kindergarten and first grade hall next week!  When I moved into this room last school year, there was a HUGE rolling cubicle cart full of paper.  The PreK teacher actually came and got two rolling chairs full of paper and I STILL had this and more left over!!  I don't know what the previous room owner did with fifth graders and construction paper, but I'm missing something!! 

Here is the storage closet, much nicer from yesterday! :)  

 
And this my friends is what I was MOST excited about all day today!!  I've been eyeing these classroom Twitter boards and wanted to find a way that would work for me. Here is what I did... 

These pocket charts came from Target from the $1 bin! :)  I was so happy that they were the perfect size!!  So each slot already had white cardboard strips.  I took out three of them to use and threw the rest away.  I decided to hot glue these to the back of the pocket charts because I was hot gluing the charts to the wall.  I didn't want the glue to be showing through and look a hot mess if you know what I mean! :)

I have created and laminated my own twitter profile and students will be creating theirs during the first week of school.  My friend suggested that I take a picture and type their names on them, but for now I'm sticking to this method! :)

Each class will have a different color pocket chart and my question that I ask them to tweet about could change.  Below you can see an example of just a generic idea I had.  The hash-tag represents the classes homeroom teacher.

I'm still developing my official twitter classroom idea, but I know that I will select different students throughout the week to do it.  I will not select the same ones because their proflie picture will not be put back in the bucket (or whatever I use to hold them) until everyone has went.  I laminated the sentence strips to create the wipe on and off system. Once I have my ideas together I will post about my Twitter board and link it back to here. :)

I'm probably going to move this, but for now it is hanging by my door.  This is from my brother who went to Japan for a little over 2 months this summer on business.  He brought me back several brochures and took hundreds of pictures for me to use in my classroom.  He visited Hiroshima (5th grade SS standard in GA) and left a paper crane in honor of my class! :)  This is another blog post that I'm working on! Once I have it complete, I will link back! :)

I painted this towards the end last year at a painting party.  It actually served as an inspiration for the colors of my classroom this year! <3

We participate in 4-H, which requires students to complete extra assignments, plus they need to remember certain dates, like the next meeting or a 4-H event day- so last year I created this handy board to post the information as we receive it!

I just wanted to use the awesome feature on my Windows phone! :) It is a panorama of what I left my classroom looking like today!

And lastly, our head custodian at my school is awesome! She loves me and will do anything for her teacher friends.  She let me borrow the fan today that is used to dry the floors! :)

I hope you enjoyed taking a peek inside my classroom!  I'm getting excited about the finished product! :)