Sorting out my classroom

When I went into school on the first day of the holidays I was so excited to finally be in what was now my classroom and get things how I wanted. Boy did I did that enthusiasm drain away when I got in there! Here is what I found....

When I saw the state of the room I was, to be honest, ever so slightly horrified. I thought how could it be left like this for me to sort out? I did what I could that day and went in the next day to find that all my chairs had been washed but there was even more on the floor! Again, I did what I could but couldn't face it so thought I'd leave the cleaners to it that week and when I went back in the next week it was a lot better, thank god!

I've done what I can with the room so far, I've covered my display boards and put up my obligatory VCOP display...

The plan is that the children will be 'writing detectives' and will have to search their work (and others during peer assessment) to decide if they've done the best job they could and where they could improve. The bit in the middle is our boring word jail, we'll add in boring words as the weeks go on. Those are stuck there forever and can't be used in writing. All the other words are on velcro so they can come down for the children to use. There are blank kapows and clouds for the children to add in their own suggestions.

And a birthday display...

Yes I know, bit of a cop out but it helps fill one of my million or so boards... ok there's 8 but still, that's a lot! This will probably get replaced with their work at some point but until then, it'll help me to not forget anyone's birthday!

I've got some work from the transition morning that I might put up on a board as well for when the children come back so that they've got something of their own on the wall.

Here are a few other photos of my classroom.

 Ah beloved Ikea! Those magazine files are one for each day, my planning, photocopying etc. will all go in that and those coloured boxes were from Ikea too, absolute bargain! Helped me organise the masses of staples, paperclips, pins etc. that were in my drawer.

 Cutlery trays also from Ikea to organise coloured pencils into. I've decided not to put them on the individual tables as they just end up a mess so going to trial this system instead. The children would just end up going around each table looking for a specific colour, distracting everyone so thought this could solve that. We'll have to see how it goes.

I'm sure every teacher has their weird bug bear that they just can't shake off... mine's sharp pencils. I didn't realise how obvious I was about it until my placement teacher wrote in my leaving card that I'd be a great teacher and that she was sure that soon I'd have my own classroom with very sharp pencils! I don't know why but blunt pencils just annoy me, especially as the children then faff about sharpening them when they should be working. So there'll always be a pot of sharp pencils and my daily PA will have the job of sharpening pencils, which they'll love as I have an electric pencil sharpener.

Table storage was a tricky one but again, Ikea had all the answers! The plastic tubs were only £1 each and are the perfect size for storing the whiteboards. The metal contains are actually plant pots and are great for stationary, I've actually cut out cardboard dividers to separate the pencils, whiteboard pens and scissors now and they work really well.

Drawer labels - these took FOREVER! I stupidly designed them myself as I didn't like anything else I could find that would fit my strangely sized drawers. I like them though.

So, that's my classroom, or as much as I've sorted so far anyway. I'm still struggling with the layout of the tables because of the shape of my room - it's an L shape with a long thin upper bit. The only way I can see to do it is to have grouped tables but even then some are quite far from the board. Any suggestions? Let me know!