Teacher Week: Where?

Linking up again with Blog Hoppin' Teacher Week for: Where?

I posted last week revealing my classroom, check it out here. Today, so I don't seem too repetitive, I will show you what I find to be the 3 most important parts in my room...

First: our meeting area...

Here is the meeting area in my classroom. This year I moved it to a more centralized location within the classroom. I felt it needed to be at the center of our community as it is such an important place during the day. Our meeting area is where we have our morning meeting, read alouds, lesson introductions and brain breaks. It is also where I meet with small groups of students, especially during math. Students can also use the meeting area as a work area when I do not have a group there. It is probably the most important part of our room!

Second: my "desk"/ group table

I went deskless last year since I almost always spread out on my reading table to get any work done anyway. My desk was more or less a "dumping ground" for papers I was too lazy to file. I can't stand clutter so getting rid of my desk not only created extra space in my room, but forced me to file papers rather than dump them on my desk. Myself, parent volunteers and my paras use this table to meet with groups of students during different parts of the day. When there isn't an adult meeting with a group, kiddos are welcome to use this as a work area. They love the crate seats (that you can't really see in the picture) and it fills up anytime it's free.

Third: our classroom library...

I mentioned when revealing this year's classroom setup how proud I am of my library this year. My chapter books were pretty well leveled with handwritten labels last year. This year I made chalkboard themed tags that are velcroed to the book bins. I also organized picture books by themes and created labels for picture book bins. I have SO many picture books between those within our curriculum to all the others I have been accumulating since I knew I wanted to teach. The past 2 years my kiddos probably only had about 1/4 of those books available to read throughout the year. This year I plan to not only display books on the wooden display I have (I need to take a picture of it!) but also rotate picture books through the book bins as well! On the top of the white book shelf (next to Garfield) I'll display books I've read aloud that students can read on their own.

There are tons of other important, cute & fun areas in my classroom but we certainly couldn't do as much learning without the 3 areas I shared today. What are the 3 most important parts of your room?