I found these pictures the other day and realized that they were from the beginning of this year. I enjoyed looking at how my room started at the beginning of the year. I can look back now and make notes about what worked well and what I ended up changing mid year. Due to my developing interest in blogs and pinterest, I’ve got LOADS of ideas for this coming year. I hope this post helps me to keep track of what I’ve decided to change.
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| This bulletin board worked great all year! I was able to use the schedule and the “secret song” cards were great puzzles for students who were waiting to come into music. |
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| I don’t have much wall space in my room, so I decided to put my musical elements just outside the door. This actually worked better than I thought it would. My students waiting to come in or waiting to be picked up regularly referenced the material and it wasn’t prohibitive to have students reference this material as needed during class. |
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| “cool off spot” and student stash area. My students are often coming to and from lunch or library, so it is nice to have an area for them to stash their stuff. |
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| This area didn’t really work at all because this is where my students line up to leave. I need a different adhesive if I intend to use this area as a display area. I’m thinking about pocket charts on over the door hooks for next year…. we’ll see… I’m still planning |
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| Since this picture was taken I got even more books from donorschoose.org AND organizational stuff from LAKESHORE…. my library is a work in progress that I hope will be a more involved post very soon. I also have VERY little board space, so I experimented with ways to best utilize the space…. stay tuned for new and improved ways to use the space. The pocket chart was used all year. |
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| Ultimately this area ended up being my “real” desk. I ended up moving my “real” desk into this corner by October |
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| This desk area has become the “student traffic” area. I want to organize it differently, but it has turned out to be the best area for things like recorders and pencils and other student materials. |
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| I didn’t end up keeping my chairs there. for very long. This corner still needs lots of work. It’s my “I don’t know” corner. I’m hoping that I’ll be struck by inspiration this summer. |
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| This is my “real” desk. Ultimately I put this desk under my computer and then I put a long table in it’s place because I still needed the desk space to work. |
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| I have a centers chart and a job chart. I experimented with different ways to use these charts and I think I’ve finally gotten a handle on how to use them. I look forward to a future post that includes an improved way of mounting these charts in a way that they aren’t so easily disturbed….. maybe hot glue….. 🙂 |
How do you use your centers chart? What does it say?
On the chart there are shapes that are attached by velcro.
On my activeboard, I have flip charts for each class that divide my students into "shape groups". I was able to maintain the shape groups throughout the year for when I did small group acitivites and like it, so I'm looking forward to improving it next year and being able to more fully implement centers. The jobs chart has the same shapes….. I was able to use the jobs chart for longer than than the centers chart because centers are hard when they don't do them every day! I think that now that I've lived with our macbooks for a year I have a better idea of what is realistic. My campus has an "extra block time". I want to have enough "always" centers to be able to do that each time students arrive…. the problem is that I typically end up using that time for "catch up".
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