My Classroom Doors

I have two doors in my classroom that are "growing" as we march through the year. I thought I would share their progress with you as this first semester ended.

My front door is a year long record of our classroom learning. I call it the "Graffiti Door" and at the end of the day, I ask the students to share something they learned over the course of that school time. After listening to a few, I choose one of those students to add what they said to the door.

This serves two purposes. One, it gives all of the students a chance to remember what we learned that day, so when they go home, they can actually share something with their parents who ask. Two, it allows the students to contribute towards are growing set of learning. They LOVE being the one to write on the door (with our fancy markers that write on black paper), so they are very eager to share an idea. Even the typically shy kids will get in on this action.

You can see how this has grown.
The second door I have in my room is our "book shelf". This is just a brown piece of butcher paper I painted to look like it has "shelves" (ok, brown lines every few inches.) I then leave out book spines that I found on the web doing a search of 'book spines'. What happens here is simple. Every time the kids finish reading a book, they put a spine up on the wall. Since we have silent reading time every morning, that is when the kids actually do this. The kids write the title of the book, the author, and their name on the spine. Then, using tape that I have out, the kids tape up the spine.

I also have a little sign where I write how many book spines have been added to our door. I update it at the end of the day (if I remember, which I do occasionally forget ;))

I really like these two growing parts of our room. They make the room a living, breathing, learning space.