North Plainfield has recently built beautiful additions to our schools. Our Kindergarten class is fortunate to be housed in the new wing of West End School. The wing is filled with light and houses the gorgeous new community room as well as three new classrooms. Below you can see photos of our new room. These photos were taken in January right after our return from break so there isn't a lot of children's art or works in progress visible but you can see our beautiful classroom! (There are some details about things in our classroom that I describe on my page about my classroom in the trailer previously. Please visit that page for more information.)

As you enter our classroom this is the wall immediatly to your left. You can see shelves that are placed back to back on the wall. On these shelves I store my personal books which I organize by theme in gallon size bags. The book shelf on the other side is filled with plastic tote containers that hold all types of manipulatives,etc. Next to the cubbies you can see a very nice teacher's coat closet that also has shelves and I store boxes of bulletin board paper standing up inside the coat section.

The castle is a cardboard display that Walgreen's used in the summer as part of their sunglasses display. I convinced the manager to let us have it. I had to put my name in and wait for weeks till summer was over to get it. I'm looking forward to bringing it out as a treat when we do fairytales.

Next to the front door is a poem on pink paper that we use as part of our end of the day ritual. At the end of the day I meet with the students on the carpet and we squeeze in a little more learning with chart poems and pocket chart activities. One pocket chart activity that I learned from a colleague is to make silly sentences using our sight words (all the words of the sentences are on index cards so that I can shift them around easily) and picture cards that come from our reading program's phonetic component. A sample sentence might be- "I see the boat," (picture card) said the goat (picture card). The boat and goat are picture cards that go with the "b" and "c" sounds component.

While we are doing these activities the aide places papers at their seats for them to put into their folders to go home. Then the students get their coats and return to their seats to put away their papers. I call them to line up. In line we sing a good-bye song and then we say our poem. See sample lines below. I say one line and the students "answer" me with the next line and we alternate in this way. I start this right at the beginning of the year. As their rhyming abilities improve they start to improvise.

See you later alligator.

In a while crocodile.

Give a hug ladybug.

Bye Bye butterfly.

Toodle loo kangaroo.

Out the door dinosaur.

 

You can get a closer look at those storage shelves in this photo as well as our sink and counter area. I have some nice cabinets above and below this area. On the right you can see our easel and pocket charts that are stored against the piano.You can peek into our restroom and see our facilities are child sized! Our walls in the bathroom are decorated with pictures of roses and violets that the children colored at the beginning of the year. These go with the poem(see below)that is posted as a reminder to the students. I got this idea from an online colleague.

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Flush the toilet when you are through!

I use the overhead quite a bit in the second half of the year. The students' favorite overhead activity is reading the Houghton Mifflin Read Alone stories (such as "To Sam" and "Winter Surprise") that I have copied on to transparency. The students use pointers to go and point to and read the books.

 

On my desk you can see a jar with cotton balls. When the children do something really nice for each other like share, or help pick up dropped crayons they get a cotton ball. When the jar is full they get a treat. I generally prefer not to use this type of reward ( preferring intrinsic motivation) but I am trying it out this year.

 

This is our easel and area for Morning Meeting. Behind this you can see the table we use for reading groups and a smaller table that I use for a listening center. On the easel ledge you can see a chime that I purchased at a Responsive Classroom workshop. I use the chime only to call students to Morning Meeting. The children enter the classroom and hang their stuff up and go automatically to the carpet. I am at the carpet recording answers to a daily question or reading a story depending on the time of year. I may also be conferring with my aide about what is scheduled. The students are allowed to sit quietly and chat; and then I ring the chime as our signal to begin. To learn more about Morning Meeting please visit my page on this topic.

 

Next to the listening area is our block area. The Lego table belonged to my own kids and is a big favorite. I purchased the wood block shelf from K-Mart a few years ago for $20.00. I covered it with masking tape and traced the block shapes on to it. This way the students are able to neatly organize and store the blocks away. I got this idea from an online colleague and I really like how this teaches the students to be organized and gives them incidental practice in matching skills.

 

On the right hand side of the housekeeping area you can see our computer center. These two are not used at the same time. Currently we have no computer so this center is working as a writing area.

 

We've circled around the room and are back to the entrance of our classroom. I have a huge whiteboard on the wall you see here. Although I like the resistance of chalk on the blackboard I love being able to use different bright colored markers on the whiteboard.Our classroom door is adorable!

You can see our counting pocket chart hanging on the whiteboard. Once we reach the number 100 I play a game with the students in which each day I turn over and hide some numbers. The students have to identify the hidden numbers with their knowledge of the sequence of the numbers.

We have three huge windows in our room that I love to decorate with the students' artwork. Thanks for visiting!