Before this school year began, I did a lot of research into how to set up my classroom in a way that is coherent for middle school students. I barely remember the haze of middle school -- partly because organization was my greatest challenge, as it is for most students, and what I do remember is living in a wound up ball of stress most of the time because I had no idea where anything was or what I was doing. That's why I am so fascinated with researching how other people design their classrooms. There is plenty of work ahead of me still, but here is a virtual tour of some of the features I added to my classroom that I think help make it more fun and user friendly for my students:
First Stop: The Front of the Room!
For every unit students have a longterm learning target and a longterm guiding question as well as a few supporting learning targets. I write all of these in bright colors in the front of the room to keep us grounded, and to refer back to when students are wondering why we are learning a particular concept.
Next: The Weekly Schedule
This whiteboard hangs out behind my desk and stays updated every week with the main goal of every day. I also have a little advisory collage with pictures of my advisees and a collection of art from various students.
Math Concept Mapping
I just started doing this this week and I hope it sticks! For every concept we do in this unit for math I am making a poster and hanging it up on my window. The idea is that each poster will flow into the next one to highlight connections between topics. Also, note my BRIGHT ORANGE sign indicating where to turn in handwritten work!
Pete's Dragon Filing Cabinet
The 8th Grade Humanities teacher, Pete, gave me this giant origami dragon. I named it Pete's Dragon and now it holds this sign reminding kids they can file any work they want to keep in a safe place here in this filing cabinet.
Quote of the Week
Throughout the week I keep my ears peeled for great quotes I hear students say. When I hear a good one, I write it down and every Friday I put up a new quote above the No Name Graveyard on the whiteboard in the back of the room.
Student-Generated Guiding Questions
We drive our lessons at Mountain with guiding questions. I like for my guiding questions to be student-generated. At the beginning of every project, we do a brainstorm session where students pick the questions that we will use to guide the learning throughout the unit. Next to the posters are the classes' manifestos that they wrote at the beginning of the year to provide a purpose for being here.
Math Mistakes Posters
We kicked off this year's math curriculum with a week of inspirational math by Jo Boaler. These posters came from an activity where students tried to cut specific shapes out of one piece of paper with only one cut, using the Fold-and-Cut Theroem. Math can be a scary subject to make mistakes in, so I made these posters to celebrate the mistakes from that lesson. Then, when a student makes a mistake I try to encourage them to view it as an opportunity for their brains to grow...
Math Tessellations Closet
At the end of the first unit in our math curriculum we made tessellations! I collected the students' work and used it to decorate our supply closet. It's a great reminder that math is a creative process!