A New Year in a New Room at a "New School"

I did not have the typical "end of the school year" this past year. Our school merged with another elementary school in our area, and it all happened within the last month of school! It was crazy and chaotic, but I honestly believe it was the best decision for our community! Union Grove and Grassy were two PreK-5th grade schools outside the Arab, AL area that fed into Brindlee Mountain Middle and High Schools. Union Grove is now Brindlee Mountain Primary with our PreK-2, and Grassy is now Brindlee Mountain Elementary with our 3-5. EVERY TEACHER within these two schools had to move either to the other campus or to another room at the same campus...yes, it was insane!!! I only had to move to a different hallway in the same building, but it was tough nontheless. I moved, cleaned, painted, cleaned some more, arranged, and decorated my new room all in one week! I LOVE MY NEW CLASSROOM! Anyway, with all the changes I thought it would be a good time to start a blog...it's kind of like a new start, so why not???

Now, I am extremely new at this blogging stuff, so be patient please. It may turn out to be a disaster, but I have to at least give it a try. Since I started off by mentioning our big move, let me show you some pictures of my old room, my new room before I changed it all up, and my new room now. I still have a few things to do, but I think I'll wait on those finishing touches when we go back in August!

Here is my old room (I usually have my desk in groups of 4, but these picture were taken during state testing week while they were in rows). This room is only 21 ft x 22 ft! I "lived" in this room for 6 years and grew very fond of my little cracker box...I was a little sad to leave it.

Here is my new room before I painted and decorated...look at how much bigger it is!!!

This is my room a week of long days and late nights later. I went with a black and white, with splashes of bright colors, theme. It was a little scary at first as I began to put the white paint on the walls because it looked so blah, but I love love LOVE how it turned out when I finished!! Oh, and I used a lot of Pinterest ideas...LOVE PINTEREST!!

My door will have our schedule, newsletter, and monthly events calendar on the top. I used the bottom for Boggle, one of my Daily 5 Word Work choices.

Our reading program takes us around the world on various rivers. I use this wall for minor map skills and to show where we are in relation to where we are visiting at the time. We start off in North America and finish the year in Australia, my favorite!

"Around the World in 180 Days" fluency wall. This wall also discusses our DIBELS benchmark goals for beginning, middle, and end of the year.

Daily 5 Choices...posters from Pinterest.

Yes, this is also from Pinterest! I loved this for my clock, and it will come in handy when teaching time!

Reading strategies we study throughout the year.

Math focus wall for our new Common Core Math Standards and new math curriculum, Go Math (it isn't finished because we will add to it throughout the year).

I spray painted my filing cabinets black, finally weeded out some old files, and organized each drawer. Loved how they turned out!

Title for the wall to the right that will showcase student work throughout the year.

Homework board.

Student "Spot"light wall...I laminated scrapbook paper and hot glued a clothespin with a name on top to hold the papers that will be displayed.

We will be using the Clip Chart Management System this year. I'm excited about implementing this!

Look how much room I have to move around!!! Black polka dots are my husband's idea. He made them as well as arranged them on the wall! :)

My new favorite thing ever...contact paper!!! I ordered a roll of black from http://www.discountschoolsupply.com/ to cover my cabinet doors. It worked perfectly! Highly recommend for things you cannot paint.

My husband and a friend are making some shelves to go the length of my whiteboard for more storage. I cannot wait to get those installed. I also need more black dots...yeah, my husband is often recruited for classroom projects.

Well that is it for now! I will update pictures when I finalize and perfect everything before school starts. I'm excited to start this new year in my new classroom!