Classroom Set Up

Tomorrow is our first official day of inservice.  Though all music teachers in LISD met on Friday for our inservice with Shirley LaCroix.  She was incredibly knowledgeable about technology and was extremely helpful in showing us ways to use our Macbook Pros.

During the last two weeks, I've gone into my classroom several times to prepare my room and get everything settled.  The only part that was complete when I walked in were the wall-sized bulletin boards.  I put paper up at the end of the year to save time.  My bulletin boards are all 8' tall and several are between 10' and 15' wide.  That's a lot of board to prepared!

1.  Borders
I read a post on one of my all-time favorite classroom style blogs about using double borders in the classroom.  I love the idea of color schemes and patterns in the classroom.  The blog:  schoolgirlstyle.com.  After almost 4 hours, my double borders are up on my boards and a triple border is up on my largest board.  It really adds a great texture and depth to the board.  Doesn't look wimpy!

2.  Interactive Bulletin Boards
A new idea that was shared at the end of the year was to have bulletin boards that were not so prepared and finished.  This would give students the opportunity to add to the boards and make it interactive throughout the year.  I took the idea of organizing clipboards on one of my front boards so that I can hang written work from students, activities that we do in class and pictures of our musical experiences.  Check out a great example at:
clutterfreeclassroom.blogspot.com.

Mine is still in progress.  I found a great way to hang the clipboards straight and I'm very pleased with how orderly and neat it looks.  Can't wait to get students pictures and work up on it!  Plus it's easy to change the look by simply unclipping old work and clipping up new work.

3.  Color Scheme
Again, took the idea from schoolgirlstyle.  I wanted things in my room to coordinate as much as possible. There are certain things I can't change the color on so I decided to use the color scheme:  black, white, green and blue.  Working on a budget (my own personal budget) meant that I only had the opportunity to impact the larger items in the room.  Would love to paint the carts and change the color of the bins that hold my small percussion instruments, but that will come in time.  I could afford to coordinate border, paper, and decorations.

4.  Poofy Poms
For my niece's birthday party two years ago, we were looking for a fun way to decorate our play room at our home.  We needed something that was more tween and less little girl.  We spent some time looking up ideas to decorate when I came across the idea of using tissue paper to make poofy poms.  Website:  http://www.marthastewart.com/265163/pom-poms-and-luminarias-how-to.  It looked great in the playroom for the party and I got to thinking about how I could use them in the classroom.

I have a long pull-down screen from the 'old' days at Ethridge when I used to pull the screen down so students had a flat surface to see what was being projected.  The screen is still up above where my SmartBoard now hangs on the wall.  To cover up the rolled screen, I have several poofy poms hanging to add some color and take away from the bland roll.

Last year I had them in multiple colors and my room was more rainbow.  It was too much color.  This year I stayed with my color scheme and hung the poofy poms using fishing line.

At the end of the year last year, fifth grade students that wanted a poofy pom to take home put their names in a bucket.  I drew their names out and they were able to take one home!

5.  Word Wall
I have an overly large board on the side of my room where I have my computer center.  I've tried multiple ways of decorating it.  Last year I took an idea from an iPod billboard that was used by Apple.  Coming out the of the iPod was musical screen shots of artists, album covers, songs.  I changed it a little bit and put iPods on the side of the board and had music pictures coming out of it.  It was time consuming to put up, but I also found that the scale of everything needed to be large which became difficult to do as most everything I had was on a smaller scale.

This year I am using this board as my word wall.  I looked up several images online to get ideas.  I found many, many variants of word walls.  Some are full of words that are tilted all over the place with no order.  It was a decorative board, but I don't know how students could learn from a board that just has words sideways, diagonal, and straight.  Too much for the eyes.

I created headings and then wrote down words that fit with the headings.  For example, TEMPO would be a heading and Allegro would be one of the words under that heading.  Each heading and the words below it are the same color.  All of the words are lined up and easily accessible for me to point out to students.  My husband formatted the words using the program Pages.  We printed them on cardstock that we got from Amazon.

6.  Instrument Storage
There are a wide variety of instruments in my classroom so I'll narrow it down to categories of instruments.

Small Percussion:  I organize my small percussion instruments into bins at the front of the room.  The cabinet was originally in the work room and anyone interested in having it in their room could put their name in a basket.  Mine was chosen!  I was super excited.

I have labels on the bins and have them organized by wood, metal, shakers, etc...  It makes it easy to pass out instruments and students can put them away easily as well.

Drums:  Djembe, Tubano and Doumbek drums are stored in the storage room on the right of my room.  I have 20 drums that students use and they are stored on shelves.

Xylophones:  I have 20 xylophones.  I do have stands, but they are for two xylophones to face one another.  When they are all on the stands, there is absolutely no room left in the classroom to move.  Students are facing one another and it just doesn't work for me.  I have my xylophones stacked in three's and while I realize this is not ideal and isn't the absolute best way to store them, it does allow us to easily use them and easily move them back.

Rhythm Sticks:  I found these metal containers in the music storage room and they were all scruffed up.  I hot glued yarn around the containers and designated each one for a purpose.  One for yarn mallets, one for rhythm sticks and another for wooden mallets.  Again, easy for students to put away on their own.

7.  Choir and Orff Information
One board in my room is specifically for my choir and orff students.  I plan to put updates and pictures on the board as our groups are formed.

8.  QR Code
Outside of my room, I have a board where I can hang the QR code for my blog.  It allows students to access it as they walk home or on their way into school.  It's also great for parents wanting more information.

9.  Desk
My desk is very simple.  I have a board hanging above my desk where I have my main calendar.  I still love a paper copy of my calendar so I can see visually what my week and month look like without having to open my phone or computer.

On my desk I have a three file rack from Ikea to hold papers and to-do lists.  I also have pictures of my family.  I'd love to say that it's neatly organized all the time, but it is often neatly stacked in the rack and I have to dig around the rack to find where I put papers.  It's one of my goals this year to actually organize the papers on the rack!

10.  Seating Arrangements
Every year my room looks a little different and I try to stay up on the current technologies available.  As a result, my room has changed so much in the last ten years of teaching at Ethridge.  My first few years students sat on risers on the side.  There was no screen or projector and they read music out of books and paper.

A few years later, I had a screen and a projector.  It was great!  I loved not having to print everything and being able to have students see the projector.  The risers then went away and students sat in three rows in chairs.  This way they could all see the screen.

Then I got my SmartBoard and students all needed access to come up to the screen to manipulate objects on the screen and write rhythms.  I then set up chairs in a U shape with a large space in the middle.

Last year I kept this seating arrangement for when we needed to sit in chairs, but I also added three lines on the carpet for students to sit closer to me.  Our seats varied and we would often transition from one to the other.

Of course, we have a lot of transitions: floor to chairs to stacking chairs and sitting in circles or dancing in groups.  We move a lot in class and flexibility in seating and moving are absolute necessities.

10.  Final Touches
Posters:  I have posters from Ikea, Walmart (the music poster that I love with the guitar on it), Thinking maps, and various pictures that my two girls have drawn for me.  Or that students have made for me!

Still working on more final touches...