Our Classroom

This is a tour of my first grade classroom.

Click here to see my old kindergarten room.

Click here to see a printable layout of our classroom in PDF form.

Welcome! Here is a picture of me, Mrs. Palmer. Here is a view of what our first grade environment looks like. I hope you enjoy the tour.

Here is our door. There are four first grade rooms, all in the same hallway together. We're in room D107. The large bone is for spirit day. Every Friday we wear our school colors, blue and gold. If we have 100% spirit participation, we get to add a letter to our bone. Once we spell out B-U-L-L-D-O-G, our mascot, we get a special reward and our name on the announcements.

Here's a view of the student cubbies and our sign-in table. Students walk in and drop off their daily take home folders, mark the attendance and lunch charts, and proceed to their desks. After our morning routines, This table becomes the listening center. You can see a small table by the window that has our GeoSafari on it too.

Here is a view of our word wall and math manipulatives center. The mailbox is for messages and "creations" that the children invent for me. The gerbil aquarium is by the window, and the second table serves as a space for groups of students to read together, or complete folder centers.

In the back corner of the room is our reading center and our reward ladder. (To find out more about the ladder, check out my rules and policies page under the "for parents" tab.) During Thanksgiving, a teepee appears in the reading corner. At Christmas, our tree goes there. In the spring Iset up a kiddie pool; and in May, I plan on erecting a two-man tent.

Here is our student computer center. Various programs are in the small pink basket, and sometimes children are assigned a specific project to complete. I keep the center chart to ensure that all children rotate through each center at least once during the week, but I also allow special "free center" time where everyone gets to choose one of their favorite. The blue crate is full of folder centers for children to take to their desks when they finish work early.

Here is our class dictionary wall. As we come across words we use for writing, we put them on the laminated pages with a dry erase marker. I love this word wall method becuase it's so easy to use year after year. The kidney-shaped table is for my small guided reading groups.

Here is a view of my teacher's desk and files. I am fortunate to have a second computer in my classroom, and during centers students are allowed to use this one to investigate teacher-approved websites and use programs that are on our school's network.

Here is a picture of our math wall. Each morning I appoint a line leader that is my helper for EVERYTHING that day. I have found it's a lot easier than assigning 10 different jobs to 10 different children. The leader uses a pointer and leads the class though our calendar, weather graph, days in school, hundreds chart, sentence chart, skip couting, geometric shapes, cardinal and ordinal numbers, tap and tally numbers, money, estimation jar, etc. The large yellow chart is a story log. We read a new book during story time each day and fill in the columns that say, "Title/Author, Setting, Characters, Summary." I xerox and reduce the front covers of the books we're going to use for the first column. On the floor I tape each student's name so there's no argument about where to sit.

Here we are back at the door. The green cards are on a behavior chart. This is the second half of my rewards and consequences system. The reward ladder is for good behavior. If students break rules, they have to move their card on this chart. Each color has a different meaning, but they can earn their way back up again as the day goes on.

Here is a view of the student desks. They are grouped in sets of 5 or 6 to facilitate cooperative groups during some activities.

Here is a view of our story carpet and math wall. It's all set up for the first week of school with a poem and story called "The Kissing Hand."



Our class pets are a pair of gerbils. The children named them Salt and Pepper. (You can probably tell who's who.) Sometimes I place the gerbils in a plastic exercise ball to roll around the room as a special treat for the children.

Graphics on this page provided by: