My Classroom

I am back to work these days. I went back on Monday and have meetings all week, and then kids will come back on the 24th! I will be starting my 3rd year teaching, and I'm just thinking it's going to keep getting easier!

I went back to work on things a week early, and of course when I showed up, everything that was movable was sitting in the middle of my room....I hadn't intended on rearranging, but for some reason, when everything is out of place, it just makes sense in my head to change everything! So, I did. I didn't change everything, since there's only a few things you can do when most of the big furniture is glued to the wall! But, for once, I actually rearranged my room based on the logistics of where kids are and where the traffic will flow in and out so that they don't have the opportunities to touch everything laying around! So, here's what I came up. I'm very pleased with the result, and hope the layout works out well.

My door. Since I have 2 doors, I have decided to use one door as the "In" door, and one as the "out", mostly because of where the instruments are and where kids line up. We'll see if it works.

The view when you walk in the door.

To the right are the Orff instruments.

A little bit over to the left, I have my cabinets that store all of my other instruments and supplies. My whole room is color coordinated for each grade level. One of my reward systems in my class is to earn a "game" day. Each group has a staff on the back cabinet, and it moves up or down depending on their performance for the day. When they reach the top of the staff, they earn a game day the next class. I also name a "star" each week for each grade level to reward the kids that are doing an exceptional job. I will then draw names at the end of the 9 weeks to get a prize from my prize basket. So basically, these cabinets are a reward system! :)

A little further from the cabinets, I have a word wall where I put the vocabulary words up as we learn them. I also have a new drum table, so they are out and accessible for the kids to get them, instead of me having to put them away all of the time. I moved my piano across the room. I really like it on this side of the room anyway. The boxes in front of the piano are my grade boxes. Kids put tickets in their grade level boxes to determine their grade for the 9 weeks. I have blue tickets for an "N" and pink tickets for an "E". If they don't get a ticket, it's an "S". A much easier way to keep up with grades than actually having to write grades for 300 kids!

This is my board, which is opposite my back cabinets.

This is my desk, actually organized...:) (We'll see how long that lasts!)

And this is the bulletin board next to my "in" door. I was so proud of this! I have been known in my school to come up with very cute and creative bulletin boards! Best thing about it, I made the whole thing myself, so it cost me nothing but paper and ink! :)


So there you go. A lively music classroom! I'm looking forward to a great year! I have a few changes that my kids are going to have to adjust to, but overall, I'm sure they will be great!