Third Year, Third Classroom

So in the 3 years I have been teaching, I have now had 3 different classrooms. I've gotten good at the moving thing. It also helps cut down on letting things accumulate as I either have to move it or can trash it.

I have been blessed with unusually large classrooms for the last two years and while last year it was a struggle getting my students to stay on the correct side, this year most of my students are on the computers all period so it's not so bad.

I know I always go searching for ideas of classroom layouts and decorations so I thought I would share what I've done in this new classroom.

View from my desk of my classroom.

I made the pennant banner over the summer with some leftover fabric I've had for years. It took forever to make but definitely adds a little touch of "home" to my classroom.

I have 3 doors to my classroom. The building used to be a hospital and when they took out walls to patient rooms to make our classrooms they didn't take out the doors. So having extra doors to the class are a temptation to my students so I've had to block the 2 we don't use. This one became my student information center. I have the class rules posted, the lunch menu, throughout the year this is where I post flyers about things happening in school. Our doors are made of wood so I just staple all of these things up. On the table I have white boards, markers, pencils, and pens. As well as one of the pencil sharpeners and some scratch paper and formula charts in the trays.

This is the other door that I must block. I laminated some of the things my students have given my throughout the year and put others on this maroon bulletin board my mom made me. My husband made me that wonderful name plate for Christmas. I am amazed by his talents! My students also can't believe he actually made it, they think he lied to me and bought it off the internet. Haha!

As you can see the pennant banner goes all the way down the length of the room. This is the area behind my desk. I was lucky enough to have this metal closet as well as a coat closet in my new room! My storage nightmare from last year was fixed! I got the posters here from Sarah at Math Equals Love. (If you haven't read her blog you should! There are a lot of good things on it!)

This is my supply bookshelf. All the markers, scissors, glue, and textbooks can be found here. We don't use them as much this year as last but the students know where to go to get supplies.

My desk area. I use the table to have small group pull out sessions during my computer class. On the other side of my desk is the table with 5 crates where my students leave their notebooks and folders. If they take them home, they'll be left on the bus, forgotten, taken to the park and left, so on and so forth. Since our school doesn't allow backpacks for safety reasons, we find it easier just to have the students store their work in class.

I have 15 computers in my classroom. Some may think this as a blessing, but the majority of our curriculum is online for credit recovery. However, I have more than 15 students scheduled in most classes and on any given day I might have 1-3 computers not working properly. I also only "direct teach" 1 block of true freshmen who have never been in high school but age wise are still behind (most of them were held back at some point in their school career and were too old to repeat 8th grade). 

Here are some problem solving strategies that I got from Sarah as well. 

I have 3 whiteboards in my giant classroom, but I only have power on two walls which happens to be the two that 2 of the whiteboards are on. That being said, I have to block my whiteboards with computers. I'm not losing much because the teacher before me had used them as bulletin boards so there is tape residue all over them making them impossible to write on anyways. I have turned this whiteboard into my word wall. I typed up and printed all the words that were common to Algebra, Math Models, and Geometry and will review one each day in each class and then put it on the board.

The little blue square is my graduate board. When a student finishes all of their classwork and are test complete they will get a special star on the graduate board. It's pretty common for Math Models to be their last class they need to graduate so my hope is that this will motivate others to finish and graduate as well!

My awesome magnetic graph board! I put my objectives up there and teach off of here. 

I used the calendar numbers from the teacher store and stapled them to a shoe caddy to make my calculator station. I have since assigned each student a number and they take their calculator when they enter class and we don't leave until each one is put away. I have also started storing a pencil in each pocket. This seems to have the least pencils go missing. I might only have to refill 5 a week now instead of like 20 a week.

During PD before school started, the principals told us we had to keep our doors locked and closed at all times so I put these posters on the back. Each time a student opens the door, my hope it that they'll think of something positive.I also took this from Sarah. Each week we go over how we can take one of these negative thoughts (in gray) and think more positively (the corresponding poster in color). 

Having the schedule in a pocket chart is helpful because on Wednesday's we have a different schedule to include a 20 minute Activity Period between 4th and 5th. I have a student just switch out the times 1st period on Wednesday.

This is the view of my class from the door. As you can see I have 4 circle tables that I used for my direct instruction time, but they didn't end up lasting long. It was really hard to keep already really unmotivated and distracted kids on task when they could easily look at each other and be readily tempted to talk to each other. I found a teacher who had too many desks in her classroom and traded out by tables for desks.

The outside of my classroom door.

The outside of one of my other 2 doors. I liked this quote because many times my students have bad days and I wanted them to realize that everyday is a new day...no matter what!!

This has since been written on and ripped down by some students passing in the hall :(

Our students get course completions with every half credit they finish and so when this happens I write their name on a star and staple it on this board in the hall. It is November and I have 8 stars now, some with more than 1 course.

We are required to post our class schedule outside our rooms. I decided to print them big and make a bulletin board out of it. I bought a twin size flat sheet at Walmart for like $4.50, folded it in half, and stapled it on the wall. It's at eye level up to the ceiling and surprisingly the border and  hasn't been torn down!

This isn't my creation but one of my fellow math teachers decorated the outside of one of her doors. Her and her friend actually wrote this out by hand!

Thanks for reading!

DIY: Desk to Coffee Bar

So when Andrew moved into his old duplex, the previous owners left him this lovely piece of furniture. They used it as an island in their kitchen. 

When we moved into our duplex together, we simply had too many kitchen appliances (thanks to our many generous friends who got us cool things for our wedding!). We have a pretty good sized kitchen for a duplex, but we couldn't fit everything on our counters and still have space to cook. I remembered that this desk was sitting at Andrew's old place and was most likely headed to the dump. It sat in our house in it's original glory for about 2 months and then I decided that it needed to be painted.

I did some research on the internet and I found that chalk paint is really awesome to paint old furniture with. It doesn't require sanding or priming (unless you only want to use one coat of your chalk paint) and it looks good!

I found some recipes to make your own chalk paint, but I knew that I only needed a little so I bought some already made from The Home Depot. I used some old brushes that I already had and bought a plastic tarp for $2.

Chalk Paint   I got the 8 oz jar of Serene for $8.50 and used about half of the jar.

Creme Wax I got the 8 oz jar for $12 and only used about 1/4 of the jar.

The finish on the top had been sanded off at some point and I noticed that when I started painting with the chalk paint that the brown was showing through. I could have done two coats, but I'm cheap and remembered that the tenants before us left two bottles of cream spray paint. So Andrew helped be carry it outside and I used a bottle of spray paint to prime the desk.

 It was pretty warm out that day so this dried in 15 minutes and we carried it back inside to be painted.

It is hard to tell in our awful lighting that we have in the house, but it came out a nice light blue :)

 It only took about 15 minutes for the paint to be dry enough to put the wax on. Honestly, by the time I was done painting, the first side I painted was dry. This stuff dries quick and doesn't smell very strong AT ALL! I did all of the painting in my dining room.

The waxing was fairly easy. I used a microfiber towel and just rubbed it all over the desk.

 Here is the almost, final product! The knobs that were on the desk were just awful (I'm sad I didn't take a picture of them) so I ordered some glass knobs from Amazon and two days later we have this...

... a place to hold our Keurig, bread maker, and bread box! The drawers come in handy to store all of our coffee, soda mixes for our Soda Stream, and candy! 

Not bad for $20 and about an hour and a half of time :)

Classroom Pictures

So I never took pictures of what my classroom looked like at the end of the year (I should have because it changed a lot throughout the year!), but here are some pictures of what my classroom kind of looked like at the beginning of the year.

 My desk area. I actually ended up moving it a couple of times but for the majority of the year it was in this vicinity.

This bulletin board became my "star" board. When my students made an 80 or higher on a test, I would put their names on a star and put it on this board. They really liked it and would compete to get the most stars.

This is a actually a magnetic graph board. It came in handy when we were doing slopes!

My Algebra Wall. I don't remember where I bought the posters but they came from a teacher supply store in a pack. I referenced them many times throughout the year. This wall eventually also became a word wall of sorts.

My second white board and projector screen. I really loved my window- it allowed for us to turn the lights off while we were doing stuff on the projector. As you can see I started the years with tables, which I was so excited about. However, my students didn't quite get that you aren't supposed to talk to your friends, cheat off of them, or do silly things during class and the tables weren't really helping me out to stop that. I found it impossible to separate students who had conflict with each other. They would try to fit like 8 people around one table. I also think that it's best for students to have their own space. So I convinced a teacher to switch out his desks for my tables. The desks had their own issues (like being moved around the room) but they worked MUCH better than the tables. [On a side note: my husband was "helping" me move and decorate and found my giant tub of Tangrams and made this lovely design on one of my tables. He was so proud of it!]

I went with a very colorful theme this year. This bookshelf was my "supply" center. I had supply bins for every table with markers, pencils, scissors, and glue in them. I also had all sorts of colored paper, notebook paper, and graph paper for them to use. When I got my textbooks half way through the school year I added them to this bookshelf as well. Behind the pink curtains to the right is a door that leads to a mechanical closet. I covered it up so that they wouldn't be tempted to break into it.

Another picture of the Supply Shelf. The table by the door has the "turn in" trays, a bin for all work that we did for the week, and in the magazine racks are white boards for students to use. The calendar on the wall was kept up my a student in my 8th period and he would write what we did that day so that we had quick access to see what someone missed while being absent. I would also write upcoming test dates and holidays on there.

Two filing cabinets pushed back to back with a curtain over the sides. I had some inspirational quotes that I had laminated on it, but those got destroyed/stolen throughout the year. I also had to move all the stuff on top of the cabinets because my third period liked to mess with all my stuff.

I'm kind of mad at myself for not remembering to take pictures of my classroom before I took it all down in June. I moved to a new room which is even bigger than this one, has like 4 windows and is in the middle of the school so I won't be alone like I was this last year. Our building is closed for some renovations until the beginning of August so I can't start setting up until then :( 

What A Year!

What a year this has been!

I was inspired by some of my friends to start a blog about my teaching adventures. So, I decided to actually keep up with this blog. We'll see how that goes.

So, I was the Algebra 1 EOC teacher at my school this year. At the beginning of the year I had about 80 students total in 7 periods. Two of my periods were for remediation so they only had 5 students each in them. Now before you get jealous, this meant that in some of my other classes I had 18 students. (Remember I teach at the school where many of our students are the class disrupters-talkers, non-workers, discipline problems) So having 18 of them all together for 45 minutes was a challenge. Many of my students had taken Algebra 1 at least once before, some twice. They have given up on school, have trouble with authority, and just flat out don't think education is important.

The first couple of months were rough with a principal change, many rule changes, and having three teaching positions unfilled (they were temporarily filled with IA's and long term subs). I think that most of us were just barely surviving day-to-day. We were treading water trying to keep our heads above. Most of my class time was not spent teaching math, but dealing with discipline and teaching them some pretty basic social skills. 

However, come January things were much, much better! After some rearranging of classes and other weird events my class sizes shrunk drastically. By the end of the semester my biggest class only had 7 students. I think because the classes were much smaller they got the 1-1 attention and help that many of them are craving. I had way fewer discipline problems and when I did they were to a slightly less degree than the fall. I actually had students tell me that math was fun and my class was their favorite (1 out of 8 is pretty impressive!!)

I was a little bummed out when the EOC test results came back because only 20% of my students passed it. BUT we sure did celebrate those students who passed! I had a couple of them that this was like their 6th time to take it and they finally passed! I made them certificates, gave them stars, and we celebrated. This was one of those moments that make all the terrible, awful days in the fall semester worth it! I made a big deal in all my class periods about my 20% who passed- maybe the few that were close will work hard for it next time. I also made a big deal about the students who passed my class. While some of them didn't pass the EOC, they earned the credit all by themselves and for some of them that was actually a challenge. Can you tell I LOVE when my students can find success?!?

Anywho, I hope to post soon about the coming school year and the challenges that will come with some of the changes we're having. Also, we moved classrooms again to be grouped with our departments instead of being randomly placed throughout the building so I've been working on some new classroom decorations and set-up ideas that I will share.

Last Day of Summer!

So tomorrow we start our inservice at school and I am not looking forward to waking up early again. I am lucky in that I only have to be there for the morning because I have comp time from my summer training, but I will probably stay and finish up the rest of my room. I hope to post pictures tomorrow of my classroom. For now, here are pictures of the before. I am lucky and have a fairly big classroom, but it started off really white and boring.

I get 6 computers in my class for projects and stuff!

This is a view from the door of my desk.

And a view of the left side of the room from the door.

I have circle tables this year and I am excited about the 

group environment they will lead to, but am nervous about

individual work time.

The TV doesn't work and the door leads to a mechanical closet.

The view of my class from the front board

And the door from my desk.

I am excited that I have a bulletin board in my room. Now

I just have to decide what to put on it...

The trays were leftovers from last year. Most of them were

a little broken or roughed up and teachers were throwing them

away. The magazine holders I got at a thrift store for a quarter each.

I bought two bottles of spray paint and turned the ugly black and green

into blue and pink. $10 project! I'm all about saving money :)

I bought myself a laminator this summer and haven't used it yet.

I found some things on the internet this year (mostly from the blog http://mathequalslove.blogspot.com/) 

and took some time to print and laminate them. This thing rocks and I think I'm addicted.

I spent most of last week in my room setting it up and organizing the math department closet. I am the unofficial math department head meaning that they don't have money in the budget to give me a stipend, but I am in charge of the math department. I don't really know what to do with this. There were only two of us last year and we had the same planning period and I would just go talk to him during that time. This year there are four of us, each teaching a different subject and I have more experience by one semester. 

I get to teach Algebra 1 this year! I am so excited since this is my favorite type of math. Originally, there were going to be two of us direct teaching it, but many of our students have already passed the EOC and just need credit recovery so the other teacher will be handling those students with the computer program we use. I will be direct teaching and I couldn't be more happy. Don't get me wrong, not having to prep every night like last year would be awesome, but now I actually get to TEACH EVERY DAY! I am planning on doing an interactive notebook that closely follows the district curriculum. I have gotten a lot of ideas from Sarah and her blog (I linked above) and I feel really good about this year. 

I am currently planning my first day of school activity and revising my syllabus that I made at the beginning of the summer. I am looking forward to school starting, but I am sad that summer is over. 

By the way, I booked my wedding venue and bought my dress this weekend. June 14 can't come fast enough.

It's been so long...

So it has been a while since I have posted anything. It has definitely been a busy summer. We had graduation, I attended my friends weddings three weeks in a row, my mom took me to NYC, I got engaged, I've been packing to move and I've been busy doing school stuff. I just realized today that we only have 40 days left until school starts..where has all the time gone?

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching (CAMT) in San Antonio. I was a little nervous to attend at first because I was the only one from my school going and I'm not one to be real outgoing in new situations but it actually turned out to be a lot of fun and I have many new resources that I can share with my math department. This conference has really made me excited to teach next year. I have come away with different perspectives of the math classroom. I would highly recommend this conference to anyone who teaches math- even elementary teachers can get some ideas.

This next week I am attending a professional development series through my district about relating to students. In my spare time, hopefully I can start setting up my classroom. I have about a thousand projects I need to do for my classroom decorations and will try to post them as I get them completed. 

My New Classroom!

My school is expanding next year and in doing that we are moving buildings. Some of the staff is less than thrilled about the change, but I am super excited. I don't know if it's because I will have a "real" classroom or actually get to teach structured lessons or even because it will be my first whole year of teaching, but I am counting down the days until next year starts.

This year, our entire program is computer based, self-paced with the exception of some supplemental direct instruction. For me, this was a wonderful first job since I never actually did student teaching. The environment was really relaxed for the first month and then things started changing. We started shifting our focus on TAKS and EOC prep and it was a back and forth as to what we were actually supposed to be doing- computer or direct instruction. In the middle of all of the chaos, I learned that next year Algebra 1 would be completely direct taught. I couldn't be more excited. I have spent the last month researching and creating my interactive notebook for next year. In addition to the complete direct taught approach, they are hiring 2 more math teachers!

With the expansion of our school, we are moving across the street to a bigger building (more than 6 classrooms) that actually feels like a school. Donna and I have been bugging our Principal for about a month now to go over and see the new school and finally she let us go yesterday! It was very exciting!

Let me tell you, I love my room. It is nice and spacious. I have a window, TWO white boards and tons of shelves! I also have circle tables which I'm excited to see how I'm going to incorporate them into my classroom arrangement. I had already planned on doing a lot of group work because I want to give my students every opportunity to be successful, I just wasn't planning on them always sitting in a group setting.

I got some good ideas from the teacher in the room now about lay out and she gave me some decoration ideas. We have one more week of school and then I have the entire summer to come up with awesome ideas for my classroom. I'll post about my interactive notebook and if I ever complete any of these decoration projects :)