Friday, September 2, 2016

Classroom Tour 2016



My room tour this year is coming a little later than planned. We've been back in the classroom for four weeks now, and I have yet to hit my stride. That's okay... you guys get to see what my classroom looks like after four weeks of wear and tear. This is the real Eat.Write.Teach. classroom. ;)

If you would like to see my classroom setup from years past, you can find those here!


Here's the view from the door.




If you've been following the blog for a while, you know that I love to switch around my desk arrangement and that I almost always go back to the face-off desks (seen in the 2015 tour). But as I mentioned in this post, I'm basically throwing all caution into the wind and trying new stuff this year. So we'll see how this seating arrangement goes. Four weeks in and I'm liking it so far! (Oh, and see my tape lines on the floor? A colleague of mine came into my room and I suffered quite a bit of good-natured abuse over my tape lines. Seriously, though, I love them!)

You'll notice in the third picture that I did not create a giant whiteboard calendar this year. When I still had the March calendar up at the end of the school year last year, I decided it had maybe outgrown its usefulness. We'll see... I might miss having it.


Here's the view of the area by the door. My information board is pretty much the same except...


I added these this year. Right now this isn't working out so well because we've been having some problems with our Wi-Fi at school. Once the Wi-Fi is up and running, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to use these.


Since I changed up my classroom rules and consequences this year, I made a new poster and hung it up beside the door. I do not love it. I'll probably try to print a nicer version at some point, but it does the job for now.




Moving on to the back of the room...

I did the magnetic bulletin board thing to my filing cabinets like I attempted a couple of years ago and it looks SO MUCH better than it did then! Black wrapping paper and lime green duct tape did the job nicely. I didn't get a close up of it, but you can see it in the first few pictures.


There are my homework drawers, which are one of the few things that have remained consistent for the past few years. (Note that when my classroom is in use, sometimes random theatre costumes show up, as in the above photo.)


The Yellow Sheet still has a home on top of this filing cabinet too.

Here's a view of my classroom from the back of the room.





Here's my super messy space.



I added a little paper organization to my life this year. I put drawer stacks in one of the cabinets in the back of my classroom to house many of my commonly used or collected papers.



The green papers that you see on the shelf are the letters home to parents that are part of my consequences this year. They just require the student's name, the date, and a check mark by the infraction.

The magazine file system is an idea I saw on Pinterest and I haven't been able to find it again or else I would give credit to the teacher and the classroom. I make my copies for the week ahead and put them in the holders. This has truly been a game changer for me where classroom organization and paper management are concerned.


I keep a second set of my own desk supplies in the front of my classroom, so I'm not constantly needing to run to my desk in the back of the room. You can see Edgar guarding my stuff. You can also see my classroom library here, which is slowly but surely growing.



I taped up my white boards this year in the hopes of keeping my board information better organized.


The left side of the board has a place for announcements and the date. My two primary preps (Honors English 9 and General English 10) have spaces designated for the day's skill, the week plan, and an agenda or notes.


The right side of the board includes space for my Theatre Arts/Advanced Theatre agenda, Remind text codes, and a QR Code for the classroom website.



This is what the board looks like on a daily basis.


Sometimes my students are allowed to use their cell phones and other devices in class for things like research, listening to music, or reading. I got pretty tired of constantly fielding questions of the "can we have our cell phones out?" variety. I made these tags this year that hang on my board. They are also posted on my daily slide on the Smart Board. A red day means cell phones must be silent and put away. A yellow day (like above) means that students will be allowed to use the device at some point in class, so it should be facedown on the desktop for now. A green day means that students have already received instructions about use of the device and they have free use of the device (unless, of course, it becomes a problem). This has cut back on the questions considerably and I haven't had to take a phone yet this year.

So that's my classroom this year! It's not the prettiest room on the internet, but it is highly functional.

Feel free to post links to your classroom tours in the comments section!

Happy Teaching!