This view is from the front door looking straight ahead. You will notice her kidney bean guided reading table with  her word wall bulletin board behind it.  Also, the right, behind the reading table, is a small round table without legs (a la Debbie Miller) for students to work at.

On her guided  reading table, Mrs. Nelson keeps her lesson plan binder, as well as a bucket of stuff (pens, scissors, pencils, stickers, etc).  Behind the table she keeps some of her resource binders.  To the right of the table are large blue bins labeled with each day of the week.  This is where Mrs. Nelson stores her activities for the week.

To the right of her blue bins is a brown shelf of math tubs.  These tubs store math manipulatives and they also are used for Math Their Way tubs.  These tubs are a great way to develop student number sense.  Students create different combination of ten with manipulatives.  Click here to read about this wonderful program.

Here is a close up of her word wall and the guided reading area.  Above the bulletin board is her alphabet line.  Mrs. Nelson uses a commercial alphabet line, but she also personalizes it with her children.  Each child is given a picture to paint to replace the commercial picture.  For example a student painted the picture of the cat to match the letter c.

You can also get an idea of how this whole area is arranged as well as see her calendar board. Her calendar is to the right of the word wall.

This is just another view of the same area.

This is the view from the front door looking slightly to the right. Here you can see how she has her work area arranged.  While I have my meeting are to the side of the room, Mrs. Nelson has hers in the middle of the students table area.  All of the student's tables surround the meeting area.

Mrs. Nelson has create a "hallway" effect when entering her room using child sized desks and cardboard shoe organizers.  She covered the shoe organizers in blue contact paper.  The organizers are used as student's cubbies for papers to go home in the Friday folder.  To make labeling the cubbies easy, she has written each child's name (blurred out) on a sheet of construction paper, then laminated the sheets.  These papers stick out just far enough so you can still see the names when filing!

Under the desks are crates of clip boards to work around the room.  The inside of the desk is used for white board storage.

You may notice the very large wooden loft in the background.  These lofts were build several years ago by the school's PTA.  These rooms have very high ceilings and can easily clear the ceiling.

On each of the student table are small white baskets of crayons, a beta fish tank (yes, there is a live beta fish in there!) and a blue tub of supplies.

Inside of the blue supply tub are these really neat "cheat sheets' for the students to use. The sheets are on red construction paper and are front and back.  They are great reference sheets for the kids!

Here is the other side: