classroom tour

My third year of teaching starts this week. Is it strange that I am super PUMPED for this year? It is truly awesome to get to do what I love every day, even if it is exhausting as the year goes on. My room is just about ready, so I thought I would share some ideas. Some of these ideas I borrowed from friends and colleagues.

I always arrange my desks into groups. We do a lot of group work in Spanish, so this way they're already grouped and don't have to move around too much.

The map in the back says "Live a life of adventure" above it (in Spanish). Taped around it are pictures that I have taken around the world. I want students to be able to add their own pictures of their travels to my wall. I plan on keeping this up until the wall is full! We'll see how it goes!

Here is my word wall (or word cabinet :)) for this year. I grouped them by words that students easily get mixed up or by opposites. This will always be available to my kids and that way they can glance over to it when I am speaking in Spanish. I use my laser pointer to point to words they may not know.

These are the drawers where students turn in assignments. I'm teaching all 7 hours this year, so I had to add an extra tower of 3 drawers. I used the last two drawers for make-up work and no-name papers. I used to just hang no-names on my whiteboard, but now I will put them here so they aren't cluttering my board.

This is the early finishers corner. I wasn't super great at enforcing this last year. That is definitely a challenge I have run into. Some students like to go back and pick out a magazine or book, or they can do Spanish crosswords or word searches. There is also a list on the wall of other things they could do instead of trying to get on their phones :)

There isn't much to look at here, but this was huge for me. When I first started teaching, I didn't know when students were turning in work late, because they would just drop it in the basket at the end of the hour. Now, they turn their work into the basket, and I move it here right after I ask for it. If it's not in the drawer by the time I take all the work out and move it to my bookshelf, I know it's late when I find it in the drawer later.

Another issue I ran into with late work was mixing it up with make-up work. At the end of each day, I write the student's name on the work they missed and it goes into the make-up work file folder (with their hour written on the tab). They know to pick it up there the next day. When they're done, they staple a pink slip to it, fill it out with name, dates absent and date turned in, and turn it in. If something has a pink slip on it, I know not to mark it late.

I thought it would be a fun idea this year to see what kids find in everyday life that is written in Spanish. The sign says, "Spanish is everywhere." Students can bring in pictures to put on the door for a couple extra credit points.

This is my keys to cognates wall. Each key has a typical grammatical pattern you will see in Spanish. We study cognates early on in Spanish 1 so that students know to look for them in their work throughout the year.

This is my objectives board. It is at the front of the room right next to my door. When students come in, they can easily see what we are going to do that day. If I forget to fill it out, they notice! It helps because my students also know when I am getting to the end of my lesson. The bottom half is where I write assignments that are due that day.

On my large whiteboard, I have a phrase of the week section on the left. Second semester to add something new, I let students earn tickets for using the phrase of the week in context. Each ticket they earn goes into a drawing for something like a bag of chips or Skittles. The bottom section on the left is where I write extra credit opportunities. The little face at the top happened my first year of teaching. I had a sub and two of my students taped pictures of their faces around my room and had me find them when I got back the next day. Ha! Turds! :)

What are some things you have in your classroom? Any ideas for anything you see in my room?

#classroomorganization