Classroom Tour

Thought you all might like a tour of my classroom this year.  Things changed up for me a bit.  One of the other teachers in our department volunteered to trade classrooms with me.  If you'll recall (or maybe you won't recall) I've been in an "open" classroom for the last three years.  My room led to two other classrooms, a third also opened up into my room.  I think I had a pretty good handle on classroom management with that, but it was hard to manage other classes as they passed through my room to get to their class, or as they came in and out to use the bathroom, etc.  Last year was just a crappy school year all around, but I was also really struggling with the open room.  So I asked my department chair if I could get a room with a door for this year, if at all possible.  And bam!  One of my fabulous co-workers volunteered a switch.  Have I told you before that I work with awesome people?  Because I really do.  I feel like we all look out for each other, and if any one person is having a problem, we always work together to help try to solve it.  So here is my new room -- with a door!

This is looking into my room from said door.  Sorry the chairs are up, so you can't really get a good idea of the room arrangement, but it was the end of the day, and I wasn't taking down chairs just to put them back up again.  I've got two rows on each side facing one another, then a row of seats along the back that faces the front of the room.  So far, it's working.  I'll let you know how it's really working once this honeymoon stage is over.  Ha!  :-D

And this is from the opposite corner of the room, by my window and door to the outside.  Yes, a window AND a door to the outside.  From here you can see the nice storage in the room (our wing is painted a very interesting shade of lime green as an accent color...), and my back board.

And this is from one of the back corners of the room looking towards the front.  You can see the door to the next classroom.  I'm in the far back room of our little area.  So you have to go through my old room, and then my friend Emily's room to get to my room.

And here we are at the other back corner.  You can see my window and door to the outside world.

My objective and homework board.  The posters are convenient, but I may end up going back to the old chalk method.  My dry-erase markers are not very easy to erase this year for some reason...

This is my "What did we do today?" area.  A few years ago, I purchased large desk calendars and used them to track the work we did in class every day.  I had them posted on my bulletin boards at the time.  It was a great way for kids who were absent to see what we had done that day, and then they could pull the appropriate worksheets from the extra handouts bin, or get the materials from wherever else they needed.  It took a lot of stress off of me, because I didn't have them bugging me for their absent work at the beginning of the class period when I was trying to take attendance and what-not.  This year, I got smart and picked up these calendars from JoAnn Fabrics for about $1.50 each.  I laminated them and poof -- dry-erase calendar.  I'll list the work we did each day, and then I'll have extra copies of handouts in the blue bins under the calendars.  I've told all my kids that after an absence, "check the calendar, check with a friend, check with Mrs. H."  We'll see how this works out this year...

On the front board, I have these "class schedule" posters.  I'm a fan of posting the "agenda" for the day in a visible place so the students can see where we are in the day's lesson, and it helps keep me on track as well.  Again, my dry-erase markers are not erasing well, so I may just end up using the tried and true "write on the board in chalk" method...

And finally, my information center.  It's kind of sparse now because it's the beginning of the year.  This is also the homework collection station and sign-out area for leaving the classroom, and I have a container up there for extra pens and pencils, hand sanitizer, tissues, and a stapler.  The homework collection area is easy -- just some plastic drawers that are marked with each class period.  They put their homework there and that's how I collect it.  Easy peasy.  As for the sign-out area... In the past, each student got a "passport" at the beginning of each quarter.  There were 10 or 14 blank spaces on this, and if a student wanted to go somewhere (bathroom, drink, locker, nurse, etc) then they filled it out and we signed it.  It worked in theory, but it wasn't the best solution.  Kids used up their spaces pretty quickly, they lost them, some never got them because they didn't hand in the appropriate paperwork to begin with...  So this year, under the direction of our new principal, we got rid of them.  There's been some confusion on what we're supposed to do now -- issue a "green" pass to every student as they request to go... use generic hall passes that the kids just take with them... hand out x amount of passes to each kid for each quarter...  I went with the generic hall passes.  My kids sign out on the sheet, take a pass, go, come back and sign in.  They don't have to bother me or ask if they can go -- if the pass is there, they can take it.  They know they can't be out for an extended period of time, because others may have to go.  And so far they've been pretty good about signing out and being respectful of time out of class.  Hopefully that continues...

So that's my room this year.  I forgot to get a picture of my desk area and front table stuff.  Silly me.  As this weekend continues, I'll probably update with a better "back to school" post, and all the other posts I owe.  Stay tuned...