Classroom Tour

Welcome to my classroom!  I am super excited to show it off to the world this year.  I have been working and planning all summer and when it all came together the way I wanted it, I was just overjoyed.  There are a lot of Pinterest ideas at work here and I am so thankful to everyone who shares on blogs and Pinterest.  I have been so inspired!  Here are just a few pictures of my room.

This is looking at my classroom from the door.  My classroom is small compared to most of the classrooms that I see in blogs, but it is my little corner of the world and it works just fine.  My curtains are world maps in bright primary colors, so that is the inspiration for the color pallet in my classroom.  The bowls are trash bowls that go on each table when we are making things.  One person from each table will empty it into the trash when we are finished.  There are also sturdy plastic plates that I found 4 for $1 at the dollar store that will work great for dry erase boards.  The drawers hold small group role cards, "stoplight" cards to do self evaluations, calculators, rags to erase dry erase boards, post it notes, and anything else I decide to add to them.  I found great little frames at IKEA after seeing them on Pinterest to be my table numbers.

I do have a goal to write down the objectives each day for students.  Another Pinterest inspired project lead me to buy wood frames at the dollar store.  I bought the wood frames thinking that they would work with the woodwork that I had in my classroom.  After deciding I didn't like the wood frames, I bought a can of spray paint and  made the frames black.  Not a horrible mistake, just could have saved time painting.

The plaid strip on the right is my calendar.  I found it at an estate sale years ago.  The black box slides down the row and highlights the date.  I really like that it takes up hardly any space in my classroom.  The students like changing the date.   

Here are my supply boxes for each table group.  Each box contains markers, colored pencils, scissors, glue sticks, tape, and a mini hole puncher.  In years past, I just used the three drawer box on top for markers, crayons, and colored pencils.  I am keeping that box around for the days we need crayons or a brown colored pencil is suddenly missing from the supply box.

I am keeping scrap paper, graph paper, and loose leaf paper in the stackable trays.

The table to the left hold my absent work folders, no homework binder, rulers, three hole punch, stapler, and my extra copy files.

The cabinet on the left has art supplies.  The magnetic body parts are to make silly faces. 

This is my favorite new thing in my classroom.  I read in a blog, and I didn't pin the picture, about how a teacher organized her units into plastic, modular, stackable drawers.  I liked the idea, but I just didn't quite know if the modular drawers would work for me.  Thanks to some awesome deals this summer, I was able to afford three of these rainbow drawers.  I have been organizing games and activities into them.  They work so well.  Everything is organized by topic and my file cabinet has room again! :)

The crates to the right will hold corrected work and anything that the kids will leave overnight to work on the next day.

This picture just shows some of the things that I have blogged about this summer.  My homework question board and small group role assignment boards are hanging.  Also, my NOISE sign is there too.

I teach Social Studies too and the world map is going to be for my Geography class.  We are going to play "Where in the world is (insert student name here)".  The students will write clues to where they are and others will guess.

The last picture is of the front of my room as you look from my desk.  I realized that I took this picture before I put the books in the bookcase.  Opps!

Well, there it is!  My pride and joy right now.  I am ready for Tuesday and the kiddos coming back.  I am excited for them to spend time in the space and for me to see if all the planning created the environment that I wanted!

Comparing Real Numbers

I have noticed in the past that there are some students in algebra who can't set up the real number line correctly.  With that, I have noticed that placing numbers on a real number line is challenging for some students as well. 

For the lesson that reviews ordering and comparing real numbers, I was thinking that it would be a good idea to make a number line and do some ordering of real numbers.  I wanted something that would be compact and fit into the ISN. 

I thought about using a piece of paper folded in half because I liked the idea that zero would be on the fold and in the middle of the line.  From there it was just a matter of putting positive and negative numbers on the number line.  I also added tick marks for every tenth.  I thought that this would help to place the numbers more accurately.

I then used some colored dot stickers cut in half to mark the position of two sets of numbers on the number line.  The stickers were a bit too big, but ultimately did the job.  I just made sure that the straight cut lined up with the numbers position on the number line. 

The lesson also deals with adding and subtracting real numbers.  I layered some sticky notes so that I could highlight two things:
1) The procedure the book uses for adding and subtracting real numbers with mixed signs, and
2) Reminders about fractions needing the same denominator and about lining up the decimal points.

I have been finding a lot of uses for sticky notes in the ISNs that I am trying to put together for the students.  (I hope I'm not alone in saying that I use sticky notes for everything and could probably join a 12 step program if one existed.)  I have been using them to highlight steps in procedures and to save space by layering ideas similar to the picture at the left.  Does anyone have other ways that they use sticky notes in their ISNs?

Comparing Expressions

Most of my algebra kiddos are pretty good at evaluating expressions.  So, the lesson on it in the textbook should be a review.  To review, I wanted to do a quick game that wouldn't take too long and would be a good way for me to do a quick check in as to who remembered from the summer and who didn't.  The text does a lot with comparing expressions after evaluated.  I like this because it reviews two skills at once and it causes a moment of pause for most students.  They just can't whip through to the answer.

The game that I developed to review is pretty simple.  Students roll a number cube at the beginning of each round to determine the value of the variables in each expression.  Each partner draws a card with an expression on it, evaluates it, and then compares the values of the two expressions.  Finally the students write the expressions, not the evaluation, as an inequality.  I did this to match the book a little bit and to get them to stay abstract with their comparison.  We'll see how it goes when they play it for the first time.  Maybe I'll change the rules midway.

Here is the game if you would like to have it.

Converting Measures

I am going rogue with my lesson on measurement conversions.  I am leaving the book's explanation and doing my own.  I always try to be fairly consistent with the textbook.  I know that students and parents will reference it.  So, I don't want to create frustration between "the way I taught it" and "the way the book says to do it" when parents are trying to help.

My decision to go rogue started last night when I sat reading the lesson on converting measures and I was having difficulty designing anything.  A foldable didn't seem to fit the lesson, a graphic organizer didn't seem quite right, and just a page of plain notes didn't quite work.  It was just one of those lessons where it felt like the pieces didn't come together exactly.  So I slept on it.

This morning, I realized that what didn't seem to connect for me was the equation that the text was using.  There were a lot of subtle concepts that the students had to understand to make the equation work well.  Students had to understand which units are being canceled and understand how units increase and decrease numerically when you convert in order for the equation to work out right.  I know that their will be questions as to why we wrote the conversion as 3 ft = 1 yd and not 1 yd = 3ft.  Proportions seemed like the natural course to teach these conversions.  So I designed the chart below:

I decided that WKU (Words-Known-Unknown) would be a better way to get students to correctly set up and solve these conversion problems, introduce proportions, and set them up better for how the book will later work with proportions.  I also decided that this was a good time to get them to notice that the units line up, hence the color.  Highlighting the measurement words in the problem will assist then in figuring out the known conversion to use and to set up the order of the proportion.  The only concession that I made using this was that I will just teach them a procedure for solving the proportion verses setting up the algebraic equation.  We'll emphasize that later in the text.  Right now it is about correctly converting between measures.

If you would like this, you can download it here.