Charts Galore!

Since last year, I have made SO many anchor charts to help my kids... unfortunately I purged all of my ones from previous year (after all, I like to make them WITH the kids). 


Here are a few so far this year:

 One of our standards this year is to write a narrative using details including thoughts, actions, and feelings. So Ms. Austelle and I came up with this little graphic organizer. The thoughts refer to the head, the feelings refer to the heart, and the actions refer to the feet. We have used it a couple of different times, and they did an EXCELLENT job with it!

Post-its might be my favorite invention EVER! We were reviewing short vowels, so they posted some words under the different word families. Word families are great for the EL kiddos. It gives them a place to start.

And this week, we talked about text features that help us understand a text. Since we read a book about tarantulas (yuck), I decided to use that topic. After we made one together, the kids chose an animal to label by themselves. I have to show this one, because it is a skunk. Not sure why she chose a skunk, but maybe she has a lot of knowledge about skunks (that was a prerequisite).

And yes, spelling may not be a strong point for this youngun' (see title). We're working on it. 

Roaring into Second Grade

Every year as I walk back into my classroom, I think "Where do I even start?" and "Who can I coerce into helping me set up?" But somehow we get there. So here are some pictures of our room this year. 

Here is our listening station. 

And our word wall. 

This is our whole group area as well as calendar wall.

Class job chart. I did it by number this year, saved a little bit of hassle.

The back of our room. Our writing station is back here, so I have dedicated all the blank cabinet space to writing posters and anchor charts. It will be pretty much covered soon.

Had to make these adorable crate seats. It's all the rage in teacher blogging world. They are the perfect height for this table and the kids really liked them! 

 Here is our guided reading and small group instruction area. On the wall are our decoding strategies. 

My favorite area of the room, our library station. The kids LOVE reading to stuffed animals. I hope they don't outgrow that too soon. (Poor Sam I Am over on the bench, looks like he need a rest from this week too)

My teacher sanctuary.

Our standards wall. 

And an idea I copied off of Pinterest. Writer's Glasses... more will be added to it as we focus on different things.

Our computer station. Always a favorite of the kiddos...

Our behavior clips. This year I added some positive levels. Seems to be a hit so far!

And last, our door. Going with our jungle theme, I HAD to include a lion. Thanks to Lindsay and Kristin for the cute pun and RAWR on the door.