Innovating the Wheel: Everything is so SHINY!!

This year I am so lucky to be able to move into a brand. new. school. Can I get a WHAT WHAT!! In my almost nine years of teaching, I've had the opportunity to do this two other times. BUT, each time I ended up leaving the school right before it opened. This time I was staying put. NOTHING and NO ONE could pry my fingers away from this school this time.

Genius

My favorite part of teaching is getting my room ready and for the last three years, I haven't had a chance to do diddly squat because I wasn't moving rooms. So, this time, I took all my previous experience and built my perfect classroom. The best part is I actually had room to do everything I wanted.

The first is a dedicated turn in station away from my desk. It has a place for papers as well as buckets for when the students turn in their composition notebooks.

Most excellent

Then, of course I had to have a place for my rules. You can get these rule memes here. And, I love to sew. SOOO... if there are bare windows, I am all over it.

Informative, yet still funny.

Moving on, we have a GIANT wall that I really didn't know what to do with. I had hoped they would just put another white board up and call it a day, but now I'm so thankful they left it blank. I have my Writing Icons wall that we will add to all year and a place for storing notebooks.

I made those shelves from crates I found at Wal-Mart. I had the stain and paint at home already. I didn't have enough of either to do all the crates, and I'm glad for that. The two-tones together looks very sophisticated if I do say so myself.

My agenda board is the only thing that I brought over from my old school. The letter are dicuts that I laminated. I don't think I'd be able to live without my giant agenda.

On the way out the door, we have my cell phone station. My principal (aka Mrs. Principal) bought these for us this year because we are doing a BYOD pilot program. During tests and on days when having their phone is a no-no, the student can turn them in to a neutral location and take the numbered card. Mrs. Principal stressed that the holders are clear so the students can glance over and see that their lifeblood hasn't been harmed.

The desks here are different from anything I've ever had before. First of all they kind of link together to make a flat table which is great because I use a lot of group activities.

Each group has a little tool box of assorting things like glue, crayons, colored pencils, highlighters and sticky notes. Of course, I have freshmen, so I had to give them a little warning.

Finally, the class points wall. It's much more colorful than it has been in the past. This system has helped me so much in the years I've used it. My kids actually compete to be the best behaved class when there's a sub. If that's all it got me, then I'll take it.