It’s been too long and I didn’t do much worthy of a #teach180 tweet today so I’m doing a #teach180 blog post instead. Going to try to blog at least once a week during this school year, we’ll see how it goes. Be forewarned that there are a lot of pictures in this post!
I’m traveling between three classrooms and two offices this year. It’s a pain. Thankfully the classrooms, my students, and my co-teachers are generally awesome and so far it’s been worth it. The first classroom is really long! When you walk in, you’re in a small entryway. On one side of this entryway is a supply table which has calculators and anything students leave behind. Don’t freak out too much, the keys are mine.
Right past the supply table is the weekly schedule board and the teacher space. I didn’t take a picture of the board, but it’s broken down by day and each day has two parts to it:
- broad topic (this week’s is probability)
- daily question we’re working toward being able to answer (“what happens when events depend on each other?”, “what happens when probability changes based on given information?”, “how many different outcomes are possible for this experiment?”, etc.)
On the far left of the board I also have the weekly homework assignment posted. On the far right of the board I have my weekly paper holder. Our copiers are unreliable, so I try to only make copies once or twice a week for all of my classes. I also don’t take work home during the week and rarely on the weekends, so this helps me keep organized.
Currently students are in sets of two or three facing the front of the room. The teacher I’m sharing the room with and I have developed four seating patterns that we think we’ll be using regularly throughout the year:
- black, which is individual seats (for standard assessment days)
- green, which is the sets of two or three that they’re currently in (for notes or partner work)
- green, which is two teams facing each other with students in pairs (for debates and games)
- red, which is groups of four to five (for small group work)
In the front of the classroom there’s a cabinet in the corner, which is where we have supplies that students can always use. Right now it’s pretty empty and only contains scrap paper, scissors, pencils, colored pencils, and highlighters. There’s also my “student of the week” trophy and two dinosaurs that I occasionally give to students who need them.
Immediately to the right of that cabinet is our school rules bulletin board, which currently has the schedules, tardy policy, and electronic device policy. My classroom-sharing teacher is planning on changing the tree scene with each season.
On the far end of the classroom are two boards for student use. One has the 2016 Challenge thanks to Sarah Carter at mathequalslove, and the other has Sudoku thanks to Christie Bradshaw at Radical4Math. Students can use these during our study hall time or if they finish something early in class.
Finally, in one set of cabinets in the corner my students have personal boxes. This is where students can keep personal supplies, papers they don’t want to lose, etc. from day to day and it’s also where I put work when students are absent and where I pass back 98% of papers to. All of the cabinets are built into the wall and a lot of my stuff is in electronic form so this was a good way for me to utilize that space!
So that’s my current AFDA classroom. I’m in there for first block every day from now until the end of January, when my schedule changes and I’ll be moving again for the spring… sigh. Bonus pictures below of decorations on our math department office windows. A handful of quotes I’ve collected over the past few years that are school-appropriate and potentially teenage-worthy as well as a collection of photos from Sara Van Der Werf’s Math Wall of Shame.
More Than A Math Teacher 