Sunday, August 23, 2015

#CraftWhenIHaveTo Classroom Update

This summer I had big plans for all the things I wanted to accomplish both personally and in preparation for the coming year. For the first time since starting my teaching career, I already knew where I would be teaching, had a contract, had a classroom that was mostly set up, and had a skeleton of curriculum from the previous year that I could actually completely repeat if I wanted to. It was also the first summer break since Joe and I started dating that I didn't take on the usual SAT and PSAT boot camps, meaning I'd have time to do other things like read books for pleasure, plan for Baby, and get things done for the coming school year.

Mostly, I did crafts for my classroom.

This is A Thing because I am not the craftsiest of people. When an 8th grade teacher once offered me craft supplies during a long-term subbing stint, my response was, "Why the f*** would I need craft supplies to teach English?" I'm more of a craft-when-I-have-to kind of girl.

Because of the whole cycle of pink slips, subbing, and less-than-ideal placements that was the beginning of my career, this is only the second classroom I've had to myself. I had one year 1, subbed for years 2 and 3, was a rover my fourth year, got a shared desk station (which we couldn't even personalize with a framed picture) for years 5 and 6, and finally moved into "the cave" last year. Despite my colleagues sympathy at my being assigned an interior room with no windows, I LOVE my classroom.

Here's what my classroom looked like when I got to it (basically):


I was able to liven it up with some bulletin boards, but I never had the time to really do all the things I wanted to with it last year because I was too busy, ya know, teaching.

My desk is in a nook to the right. This is one of the things I LOVE about this room - the teacher area doesn't encroach upon the student area. I also added a second station in the nook for my collab teacher and TAs this year.

This summer I had a few new goals: create a piece of string art, finally put together a display of novels from around the world (almost as good as traveling and way less expensive), put together a place for student-use supplies, and update my other displays so that they were neater, better labeled, and just overall more interesting.

Here's what I ended up with:

The view from my desk

Left Wall with student supply center. My string art piece is in the middle. The other posters I had last year. The supply center includes the drawer unit with paper supplies (notebook paper, index cards, post its), the hole punches (Polly and Jeanine), the staplers (Aaron Burr and Guy Fawkes), the pencil sharpener (Joel), and flower pots with pens for students to borrow. The feather pens are one of my favorite additions to the room. White feathers for red scoring markers, blue feathers for regular pens, and green feathers for highlighters. Students can borrow but not take my stuff and they're already using them! (Feathers from Amazon for about $4/10 attached with washi tape.)

Back Wall: Read your way around the world board. I found the cork board map at Michael's, painted the water to make it more interesting, got suggestions for books set in different countries from lots of friends, and created half sheets for each that are connected to the map with multi-colored yarn. I'm kind of in love with it, which is good since the back wall is mostly what I stare at all day and it was BLANK last year.

Left side of the board
The Library isn't new, but the printed labels are.
Some are too big, so I may re-do them... next summer.

Front of the room, right of the board. The posters I created on postermywall.com last year.
The quotation is new. I cut the extra butcher paper I had into sheets and ran them through a regular printer.

All posters I created on postermywall.com covering (by accident) the major areas of the ELA standards: read, write, listen, speak. The labels and the middle poster are new this year. I finally got the courage to test out the die-cut machine we have in the staff room and I LOVE it!

The crafts included:

I've wanted to do a string art piece for years, but couldn't find the right home for it.
I mostly used this DIY tutorial but I may still do a post of my own since no one seems to
have any out there for how to do the actual stringing. 

I had extra paint and my feather pens needed a cute home.
These were 78 cents each at Home Depot and the paint cost less than a dollar.

Loving my feather pens! No excuses for not having supplies and no stealing! Win win!
ugly oak clock + extra paint = quickie art project
If you can't tell, I like art projects that are hard to screw up.
I'm really pleased with how the room has come out. I may not have managed to complete my wedding album, year abroad album, maternity-leave sub plans, or complete my goal of reading 10 for-pleasure books this summer, but damn, my classroom makes me happy.