I am very excited to be working with a mentor teacher who is extremely organized and creative! I feel like our classroom has so much to explore but not too much to where it is overwhelming. This highlights post a few of the key elements in our classroom that I feel are important.
Sign In Station: To the far right you can see our sign in station. Every morning, our students sign in by writing their first name. There is a clip board and a laminated list of their name printed to the left. On the right, there is a sheet of paper with boxes for each student. The paper is replaced everyday and we keep track of how students' names improve throughout the year. We also change the task from just first name to first and last, and eventually first and last with proper capitalization.
Tool Box: There is a wall of cubbies where students keep their tool boxes in the back of the classroom. The cubbies have their first and last name labeled on the bottom with their poem folder and a white board. In the tool boxes are markers, glue stick and bottle, 2 pencil, behavior sheet (where 5 star stickers go), a box of basic crayon colors, a sock, and a dry erase marker. Students can carry these tool boxes to their centers or just go get tools out of them for certain activities.
Word Wall: This is pretty much your basic word wall. It has all the letters on a board and we add our site words to it each week. The idea I really want to remember about this wall is how my mentor adds the students' names to the wall! We print their names and cut them out with high and low letter tracking. We then put their names on construction paper and put their picture beside it. This helps because they can really connect their names to the letter it starts with. It also makes them feel cool to be part of the word wall! 
Date and Daily Agenda: This element of the room is a key part in our morning routine. The white board in the middle has the day of the week, date, and short hand day (08-10-12) written on it. This is the first time we talk about the date each day. The pictures around the board show what our daily schedule looks like. It has each part of the day including lesson times, lunch, specials, recess, silent reading, and 'see you later'. We talk about this each day so that students can get ready for what is ahead.
Star Super and T3 Wall: Each week we select one student who's work will be displayed all week! Also, our school's mascot is the tornado so when we do really great work, we call it being a T3 because T3s are highly powerful tornadoes. There is a lot of emphasis on being a T3 in the older grades so we like to introduce concept early on. We change out the T3 work pretty frequently and always talk about what was so great about it so that everyone can see what good work (a.k.a. T3 work) looks like.
Daily Jobs: Each one of our 8 tables have a fun character on it and these coordinated with the characters in our 'lead families' for the job rotations. So for example, on Tuesday, the Dori table will be the 'lead family' and will all have jobs. The jobs are line leader, paper helper, calender helper, sanitation manager, and caboose. There is a new 'lead family' every day. This type of job rotation is what I grew up with but some of the other teachers in Pod 2 just have 1 'teacher's helper' each day. This might be easier to keep up with but the students won't get to help as often.
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