Category: Decoration

Classroom Setup Part 2

mathtastrophe7 Comments

While far from done I did want to post some pictures of the progress I made in my room last Friday! The more I’m in this room the more I think I’m really going to like it despite the fact that there are no windows.

View from the door to the back left corner.

They still haven’t taken out all of the history stuff, I’m about to put the smack down! Also if you notice I have 6 pods of 4 and then 2 pods in the back of 2 because I didn’t want to have to move everything up in the room to make room in the back for another pod. Is this a good idea or should I say goodbye to my personal space upfront?

View from the door to the back right corner: My command center. I would have loved to do an L-Shape but it would have blocked drawers and cabinets. Plus I like that my desk is in the back so when they are taking a test I can easily spot and trouble makers.
My first bulletin board. (I need to get some kind of fabric to go on these but I just don’t foresee that happening in the near future as I’ve spent WAY too much on school stuff)

The idea for this came from Sarah (thanks so much I steal everything from you) Rubin over at Everybody is a Genius. My mom works at an office where they have a GINORMOUS printer, only downside is it only does things in black and white, nice thing is that if I decide I want to change these I can have that puppy spit a new one out on demand.

The “Student Corner” of my room.

This is where all the info they need can be found. The two black baskets are where I will use hanging files to put any print outs/ homework worksheets/ etc inside so if they are absent they can just come pluck one out. Or if a student comes in late in the year they can go and find all the important stuff – AND it also will be good for me to keep track of original copies. I’m also going to have things like hand sanitizer, a stapler, a pencil sharpener, etc here (is that too much? Help me classroom feng shui people).

I plan on making the bulletin board into something similar that I saw here for when students are absent and they need to find out what they missed.

The little table I’m going to put commonly used papers (no homework form, graph paper, college ruled paper, warmup sheet) and I’m also going to have 4 little bins to serve as Algebra 1 & Math 3 – LHS & RHS. Funny story about this table, I was walking thru the hallway around my room and spotted it just sitting there all be his lonesome. I decided since I couldn’t find any soul around to ask, I would drag it into the very back corner of my classroom before anyone came looking for it. (In another life I was a hunter/gatherer/scavenger) Later that day one of the maintenance guys came around and asked me about if I had seen a table in the hallway – I played coy saying “OH RLY? A TABLE YOU SAY? IS SOMEONE LOOKING FOR IT?” Once he told me he was just going to taking it to storage – I fessed up :)

These are where I will store my INB supplies as well as things we commonly use, so I have whiteboard markers and sleeves there currently. The little blue buckets are an idea I saw on some elementary teachers blog as well as several others (I’m talking about YOU @msrubinmath) and they are for when the students are cutting to put their trash in them instead of getting up every two seconds to put it in the real trash can.
Inside of my INB store caddies.

Any suggestions on how to get the cups to stay stationary? I was thinking about using wall mounting tape – that stuff you get with dry erase boards that when you take them down you take part of the wall with you? Any other ideas? I’m also going to stick some #2s in there, anything else I’m missing? Is this too much? GAH.

Buckets to keep their INBs in – each class will be assigned a color and I will make little signs. There are two for each class. I don’t have the $$ or the wall space for any more.
My desk area!

Yay look at my little Bee!!! Anyway – the circular table I think I want to use at the “turn-in” station. So this is where they will plop their quizzes/tests/ and any other forms.

So Yay or Nay people? Help me get my stuff together before Wednesday!!!

Made 4 Math #7

mathtastrophe9 Comments

Things you should know about me:

– I love sports

– I love arts and crafts

Being a fresh off the press teacher I don’t have much in the school decoration department. Last year when I started my first year teaching I really wanted to cover up the white walls. I spend so much time in the classroom that I wanted to make it feel a bit more homey. At the same time though my decorating sense when it comes to the classroom tends to be a bit more 4th grade classroom than high school. If it were up to me I’d have pompoms hanging from the ceiling and a pendant flag border. As a compromise I decided to make a school spirit banner to 1) take up a bunch of wall space and 2) show some school pride.
Here is the banner I made last year:

It looks like it might have taken a lot of work but it really didn’t. All I did was take a piece of clip art and blow it up to the size I wanted (pixelation doesn’t matter) and projected it up on the screen. I then took a plain white twin bed sheet that I got from Walmart for like $5 and traced the image with a sharpie. From there I just put it down on a flat surface and painted! I even added a pi and an infinity symbol to make it more mathematical. Unfortunately since I was laid off I gave the banner to my bestie in the math department figuring that should would get more use out of an 8ft tall spartan than I would.

This weekend I went through the same process but only used half the sheet to make a banner for my new school’s mascot.

Here is my helper during the process. As you can see where she goes destruction follows.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get him hung up this weekend and will post an updated pic!