Here we are, bound to our homes during this COVID-19 crisis. As teachers we are balancing the inconsistent sleep and work schedules, family needs and online distance learning with our students. I am fortunate our district is streamlining the daily lessons through a weekly website that offer daily lessons for each grade level. This leaves me some time to start thinking about next school year!
I know for some that may be a bit overzealous, but for me it usually starts within the first two weeks of summer. My brain is a bit confused with all this time at home and not getting up at 6:30 am every morning, so for my brain the summer schedule has begun, despite the additional online learning and meetings I have. Logically my brain knows school isn't out but honestly, I would rather be in school teaching than sitting at home meeting online, amid the tons of other school related weekly activities that I am assigned to do. At least the activities keep me fairly busy.
So, I have changes coming this year. Two years ago the biggest change of my life was uprooting and moving to Hawaii to teach. I regret leaving Hawaii a lot, but here we are back in Oklahoma and making the best of it. I taught kindergarten for two years when I got back including this year amid the COVID crisis. However, I am leaving kindergarten and headed to first grade in the Fall. Additionally, I am changing districts and schools. I am moving to my old district and to an old school building which has it perks, starting with huge classrooms! So let's take a peek at what I am walking into. Note that the video of the new room is during this school year so the teachers stuff is still in the room. You will see how big the room is and the painting that needs to be done!
Some of the great things about this room besides the size is the amount of cabinet space, the large bulletin boards and white board space the room has. I also love all the windows and the built in book cases! I have been looking at this room over and over and watching this video enough to put a layout on paper. I have managed to locate a few plug in's, which we as teachers know, there never seems to be enough! Here is the floor plan I have created. I didn't save the basic layout, I just started creating my room as you will see. This year I am going to go back to alternative seating, an option that wasn't supported at the school I am leaving. Here is the new room layout.
You immediately notice that there is only 3 large circle tables in the room. One will be lowered as a knee pillow table. I believe most of the areas are clearly defined. The unusual three prong icon next the the lamps is the icon for a wall plug. The other lamps are all battery operated, but we will get to that. I have to admit that is the most detailed I have ever gotten with room planning. I usually draw something basic out but this year with having so much time at home to ponder, I really went all out on planning.
Let's take a walk through. When you walk in, you notice the big bulletin boards. Looking at the map it will be the north wall or the top of the map. There is a small whiteboard in the middle of these two bulletin boards which I felt is the perfect spot for the guided reading table. The first bulletin board closest to the door will be turned into a word wall. Before I show you the photo, let me say this. I have an inspiration room almost always when I starting thinking about classroom design. I am a big fan of schoolgirlstyle and this year I found a room from another teacher, createandeducatebydesiree.
My word wall was inspired by hers and this is her photo, not mine of her room.
I love the way she converted this old chalkboard and incorporated it into her theme. I have decided since I don't have a chalkboard I am going to create the look of one. I have ordered black fadeless paper to cover the bulletin boards and I have ordered pink fadeless paper to use instead of the yellow. I have also found my own chalkboard theme border to use. Here is my mock up of what mine will look like minus the words and letters.
My word wall will be much longer in length that this mock up depicts. The border shown here is the border I ordered. Moving on, the the bulletin board on to the other side of the guided reading table, that board is going to be used for any district requirements for posting lesson objectives and goals. I am not sure exactly what is required yet, so my mock up is a general guess. Here are the colors though and the general idea.
Backing up, let's take a look at the planning of the whiteboards on the left side of the map. You can see there again, are two large long white boards and in the middle between them is the smart board which is where the meeting rug will be. This new year my admin fully supports the Daily 5 and so one of my boards will be Daily 5/Cafe Comprehension skills. I haven't figured out where I will post the Daily 5 yet, but here is what I have so far. I am planning on using some black fadeless paper on this board.
The last white board is where the math/calendar set up wall will be. I am not familiar with the math curriculum they have adopted so this is put together with research I could find about their curriculum and using the knowledge of the current curriculum I am using which is Bridges and it is very good. Here is the mock up of what the math/calendar area may look like.
The calendar pieces are not the actual pieces this was just taken from a screen shot of a calendar. However, the rest is from products I own or will purchase.
Now that we have covered the walls, let's take a look at some of the other features I am planning to put in the room. Let's talk TREES! Every year except for my year in Hawaii and my first year back from Hawaii, I have had some kind of tree in my room. As the years have gone one I have gotten more elaborate with the tree concept. This year I had a tree that was very cool, here is what it looked like. (sorry for the poor quality photo)
I was inspired from a tree I saw on Pinterest and then expanded the idea. The biggest issue with the tree was I had to hang each pom from the ceiling. That won't work this year and I wanted something free standing. So I came up with an idea. I created a frame using PVC for the current tree so I decided that I would use wire to create branches attached to the top of the frame and then hot glue the poms on the branches. I am going to use fabric for the trunk and I am going to make a cave/cove inside the tree trunk for reading with a bean bag chair and hanging fairy lights inside. I have not built this year but I am in the process of working on it. I have two frames built. I will share the progress as it comes long. Here is my drawing of the basic concept. The branches will look more like branches but this was a quick sketch for mechanics. Oh, I also decided the nix the pool noodle, the wire won't hold it.
So from here we can talk about tree placement. The wall with the windows and the built in book cases are where these bad boys are going to go. I have several more bookcases I bought that are white that will come out from the current bookcases to create a divider between the reading spaces. Each space will have bookcases on all three sides and a rug, and some form of seating. Here is a very rough mock up that I have been working on, but I am not finished yet.
On the right side you see book boxes and baskets for supplies. Behind the trees is the white bookcases that will come out to divide the spaces. More book boxes and some battery operated lamps and some animals will adorn the bookcases. The rugs shown are the actual rugs purchased. The beanbags are not. Above the bookcases are the windows, if you refer back to the classroom map. On the windows I will post a WOW wall. Work on Writing which will show the students monthly writing sample. I did something similar this year which worked out great. I was able to take advantage of the light from the windows but block out some of the distraction and it looked nice. Here is the drawing of what this could look like. The scale is a bit off. I anticipate not having some much space left over.
Let's talk space. More specifically I had a problem to solve, believe it or not! The problem was where the kids will store their backpacks! If you watch the video and you look at the room and my plan there is no storage for backpacks unless you keep all tables and chairs so kids can put backpacks on chairs. If I do that then I have to give up alternative seating, which I wasn't prepared to do. So, I am pretty proud of this solution. When examining the room you can see there are some cubbies in the back corner. They cubbies start at the floor but after about 4 high they are too high for the kids to reach, so that wouldn't work unless I had more cubbies that were only 4 high. With that though in mind I went searching for something that would work, and here is what I found!
Looking at this you are thinking...that isn't enough. No it isn't but if you look back at the room and stop the video where it shows the cubbies you can see a space in between the cubbies with a hanging rod. If you count from the bottom the rod is the in 5th cubby space. That means anything 4 cubbies high, you can fit under the bar, (and given the cubbies are a standard size) I counted cubbies and found I had just enough room to fit this in between the cubbies on the left and the middle side. Using the 4 cubbies on each of those sides plus these cubbies gives me 24 cubbies!! Problem solved (unless we have more than 24 students and then we will have to use the other 4 on the right side, or double up. I am going to keep the hanging bar on the right side of the cubbies open for hanging student jackets so the only thing that will go in the cubbies in a backpack! This past year I made a purchase from Academy of a wagon that I use for lunch boxes, which I have to say was ingenious! It's not a pretty mock up but here is the idea.
Now, this purchase was $70. Not one that most of us may be willing to make but I was in order to create the space I needed. Plus anything I buy is mine, so it goes with me. I found this on amazon after shopping around. Amazon had the best price for what I needed. These cubes also come apart and you can re-stack so if for any reason they don't all fit I can take a row out and put on the other side. I don't anticipate that but we will see.
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