I took these on Tuesday, but just haven't had time to upload them from the camera! These are all of my new classroom. First, a little background on me for those just joining me. I teach 9-12 grade in a rural community in Arkansas. My classes this year are Housing & Interior Design, Digital Layout & Design, Digital Imaging, Computerized Business Applications, Advertising, and Fashion Merchandising. Quite a variety!
That'll help explain this huge room, with both a fabulous computer lab and classroom seating area. And I mean it's HUGE. I may have to invest in one of those Britney Spears mike's after all. :-) I took all of these photos with my ipod, so the quality is not as good as my camera! I think you'll get a good idea though. Are you ready? Let's start our mini tour...
This is the front of the classroom, a small whiteboard on the left and my Smartboard on the right (that's my podium peeking out from the right too). The walls are cream except for this front wall, which is a rusty red. (It looks a little more orange in this photo than it is in real life.)
Hopefully those cords and things will get covered and tidied up when they finish hooking everything up. The projector is ceiling-mounted, but I forgot to take a photo of that part.
Next is my bulletin board, and the first corner of the room when you enter:
My "art cart" will usually be wheeled into the middle of the classroom area, because we use scissors and glue sticks every day for collage and other paper design work. The bulletin board is 12 x 12 scrapbook paper. We were in a mad dash to get the school presentable for our first open house last week, so I never got to finish. I thought it was cute enough "as is" to get me by until I had breathing room!
My plan is for this board becoming a Word Wall or possibly a display for student work. I'm hoping I get my request for a 60" table to fit under the bulletin board, so I have a place for my magazines and other reading materials, and for handouts, sign in sheets, etc.
This is the same wall, a wide view past the bulletin board.
I made the bunting from colorful fat quarters and grosgrain ribbon. They're attached to the wall with 3M removable hooks. The two large B&W posters are from Hobby Lobby (50% off sale!) and all others are self-printed from things I saw on Tumblr or Pinterest. (I'll link to some great printables at the end of this post). I also picked up some wall decals at the $1 store and scattered those into my "collections" of small prints.
I can only print 8.5 x 11 at home, but if you cluster several "like" things, they make a great display together. The wall decal quotes really tied these together nicely. I printed on a textured cardstock from the scrapbooking area, so they look like canvas, even after laminating.
This is the view of the back of my classroom, including the regular classroom seating. I have 7 groups of 4. The back right corner is my built-in storage cabinet, and that ugly grey thing behind the rolling stainless steel cart (which will NOT be staying in my room, it's just waiting for the storage closet to be cleaned out so I can roll it down the hall!) is the breaker box. It will stay and be an eye sore. Sigh.
The 2 large posters are from Hobby Lobby also. The hanging paper lanters are from Hobby Lobby, in the party section. The table on the left corner holds my polka dot cubes I showed last week, and turquoise flower pots filled with colorful Sharpie's and colored pencils. The 4 small prints I'll link to below, they were all freebies.
This is the other long wall with more bunting. I'm lucky enough to have big, beautiful windows for lots of natural light! The middle section has a WONDERFUL poster from the 1940s of boys at a movie theater laughing. It's my favorite. The Keep Calm and Carry On poster is technically a wall decal, but I put it on a large sheet of paper and laminated it so that it's just a poster now. The two pieces between the window sets are student "mood boards" from Fashion Merchandising in previous years.
The left edge shows my printer table with the scanner and turn in baskets. The gigantic printer is out of view. That chair is in the wrong spot too. I have 2 extra chairs that I need to take to storage when the closet clears out!
The bright yellow poster in the back corner is a beautiful freebie from Joy's Hope. Here's a small preview, but please go to Joy's Hope blog to see the original and download it. Very inspiring and the bunting goes so well in my room!
(I printed the "Write" poster above on cardstock using my printer's "Poster Print 3 x 3" function. Then I trimmed the pieces so they fit like a puzzle, glued together, and laminated. Presto. Large poster from a small printer. If you don't mind spending $7 or $8, Walgreens will do 16 x 20 prints.)
On the opposite wall next to the storage cabinet I have this poster hanging (you can't really see it in the long wall view):
This is large also, about 15 x 18", and I used the 2 x 2 poster printing, the same as above.
I have a couple of vintage poster prints too, this one and one that is a close match in color (probably the same artist):
I did tweak the color and texture of both to match what I personally wanted. This one's available as a large scan all over the internet, so I won't link to it. If you'd like a large format of the one I did (this one is my tweaked version and not the original I downloaded), let me know and I'll get a download ready for you!
I created some colorful tags to number my computers for a seating chart. I made these in Photoshop using a free damask background (I did the color changes in PS) and a
free PS brush from Pixels & Ice Cream.
I numbered them in Photoshop so I can reuse the same numbers over and over, but here is a free blank set of tags (large file size!) if you'd like to print your own! If you have an image editing program like Paint.Net (free for PC) or Photoshop, feel free to add whatever you'd like to the tags and use as you wish!
I also made a weekly "calendar at a glance" for my white board. It's viewable above, in the first photo of the front of my room. There are 3 separate weeks, for the 3 classes I teach. I'll jot down brief notes or objectives for each day (hopefully on Monday, or better yet, Friday afternoon!) so that the students can see at a glance where we will be going that week.
I printed these (individually) on cardstock, taped each day together and then ran through the laminator twice, both for durability and to make sure they would withstand plenty of white board marking and erasing. I used sticky back magnets on the back to adhere them to the white board (you can see I need to add a couple more strips of magnet to keep them in place though...the bottom one slipped out of place!)
I created these all in Photoshop. Here are the links to download each day individually. Since they are 6 x 10 inches, you'll need to print them individually on a regular printer.
Ok this is turning into a super long post, so I'll stop there! I did want to link you to one of my favorite places for classroom printables though, Sweet Blessings.
Visit her blog for TONS of cute printable freebies! My personal favorite is this one:
Have a GREAT weekend! I'll be adding buttons to a certain mustard yellow skirt... Photos to come on that one too!
