Why I Decided to Re-Vamp My Classroom in the Middle of the School Year.

As a first year teacher I really WANTED to focus on my classroom. I did. But I also had to focus on my lesson plans and get my act together with my curriculum. So I did what I could to make my classroom welcoming and presentable and focused all of my attention on my lessons.

I don’t have a lot of before pics (other than what you see in a  previous posts on The Devil and Tom Walker Activity) but we’ll just leave it at “the world’s most okayest classroom” and go from there. The walls were all but bare (save a few posters that were contributed to the new English teacher who had NOTHING from a few fantastic co-workers). There wasn’t a lot of color…at all. I did my best to make it work with what I had but by mid-year (January to be exact) I was over the dull and dismal classroom I was HOPING to engage my students in. I looked around and asked myself, “is this a room you would want to learn in? Could you have been interested in all things English in this classroom when YOU were a teenager?” The answer was a flat-out NO.

*Note: you will see pictures that “change” as I have been updating the room as I go and I take new pictures from each new addition.

You’ve seen my Quote Wall and how amazing that looked right? I added a few touches of yellow to that to add a little pop to it.

I then added a few brightly colored (yellow and gray) pieces of material (on loan from a fellow awesome co-worker) to spice up my bulletin boards on each side of my white board.

I don’t know WHY I had never thought to put material up there instead of standard bulletin board paper. I am an avid crafter…this should have occurred to me.

I added yellow die cut letters (found at the Dollar TREE)  that spell out the “10 Min of Silent Reading” because this is an activity we do every single day. And the yellow “Post It” board is for their reflections from what ever they were reading that day. I collect them and keep them in a folder for later review.

The wooden frame is now gone and I added yellow duct tape to contrast the gray. MUCH better.

I also added some bright yellow pom poms (also found at the Dollar TREE)  to each group setting.

As viewed from my classroom door.

The two desks that sit alone have since been removed. Is it me or does that look like the perfect place for a nice yellow area rug?!

The view from my throne…er…I mean desk! 🙂

The view from the front of the room (the Whiteboard wall)

I painted an old shelf that was donated to my classroom a bright yellow and it instantly draws your eye in my classroom. (Okay….HUBBY painted and I supervised but it was a team effort!)  I planned it to be bright and eye catching for a reason. It holds my classroom library!

Stay tuned for a DIY chair painting on these two red chairs! 😉

The fantastic book page repurpose was done for me by one of my students in her art class and it’s one of my FAVORITE decorations in my classroom.

Now, ordinarily I wouldn’t advocate for the destruction of books. In fact….no….just NO. BUT…these books were already falling apart and they were cheap dime store romance novels…ehhhh….nobody will miss them!

I updated my Student Center and the kids LOVE it. It’s MUCH more organized and easy to maneuver through!

I scored that beautiful and bright banner on Teachers pay Teachers from the Creative Lesson Cafe HERE (along with quite a few other printable goodies!)

The yellow “bulletin board” is actually an old canvas picture that I covered and stapled in yellow material until the bulletin board I requested comes in (I will update the pictures when I have it up and going) Hanging on the make shift “bulletin board” are my “Remind 101” codes for each of my classes and two inspirational quotes for my students to see each day.

*If you don’t have Remind 101 (a safe method to “text” parents and teachers without giving your personal phone number out) I HIGHLY recommend it. I keep my students and parents informed on the important goings on in my class with Remind and I am SO glad I did.

The pencil and pen cans are actually Christmas Kleenex tubes that I re-purposed and covered to match.

Also: I covered to classroom table with contact paper I scored at the Dollar Store for cheap to match!

I only have one student computer but that’s all the kids need to check their grades on their “FOCUS” (our school district uses this platform for our grade book and parents as well as students have the option to stay updated on what assignments or tests they are missing or what their current grade is for a particular class.)

I re-purposed an old filing cabinet to match my room with yellow spray paint and left over contact paper.

I have since added a few additions to the filing cabinet. The watermelon basket was a gift from our culinary teacher and I normally keep a fruit of some kind in there for those students that just can’t make it to lunch because they are, to quote a teen, “starving”!

The picture I printed from a free printable site (sorry can’t remember where) but my kids know….Mrs. Burkett NEEDS her coffee to be human! LOL

The lemons were an after thought at the dollar store because…yellow!

This a shelf that the last teacher graciously left for me that I DO plan on jazzing up a little bit but just haven’t figured out WHAT yet. I am open to ideas 😉

 

Those AWESOME file boxes… I scored at the Dollar TREE and I LOVE them. I keep my classes submitted assignments turned in for the semester there so that I can quickly find them if I need to.

I covered four squares of cork board with bright yellow and gray material (fat quarters for .97 at Walmart) and use it to pin up important or not important things that I run across to remember. They are now currently covered in tidbits of important (and not important) notes and dates.

The Pencil Art “B” is a Christmas present from one of my students!

I know that this orange and blue color scheme does NOT go with my lovely yellow and gray but those are our school colors and I am fiercely proud of our teams so I proudly display this on my classroom wall! A friend made it for me for decent $45 (it’s rather large)

Proud display of my family and the lovely notes my students leave on my desk for me! 🙂 (and yes….they are TWINS! 😉

 

Also: I am a HUGE Doctor Who fan. As you can see here…

The Tardis. If you don’t know what the “tardis” is…well…we just can’t be friends. Sorry.

And here….

This shelving is built to the wall of the classroom and I haven’t quite figured out WHAT I could do with it. It holds our class set of dictionaries and a few classic novels and non-fictional books. The bottom shelves are gone but I think I could really do something with that space so I’ll update when I get to it. 🙂

On the left side of my room is a row of hideously ugly metal shelves that house my students literature books and class sets. It’s so rediculously ugly that I refuse to show you what it looks like until I can do SOMETHING with it. It’s bolted to the wall (it is HUGE and HEAVY) so I can’t spray paint it but I think I will add some bright yellow and gray Washi tape or SOMETHING to pretty it up.

 

All in all….this is my new and improved classroom. I have to say I have seen a distinct improvement in moral in my classroom since the new additions started showing up. They are teenagers so they are VERY opinionated on how it looks, with the majority of the comments being. “Mrs. Burkett….your classroom is bright and it feels like HOME!” Have they all miraculously started turning all their assignments and acing all of their tests? Nope. LOL BUT….there is a marked improvement in the participation that is reflected in my grade book. It was ALL worth it for that alone.

I’ve had people as me why I would do something so drastic and different halfway through the school year. My answer varies but the most emphatic reply I have is that I wanted to! If “I” need to see a change then I was convinced my kids did too! And I was right! They LOVE the changes and now eagerly show up each day to see what new little (or big) addition Mrs. Burkett has made!

 

Encouraging the Non-Readers

Today I had a student approach me for permission to go to the library. On a typical day I am usually asked to go to the library about 3-5 times a day between 6 class periods. On this day, with this student, my heart sang. The student requesting permission to go check out a book had made it implicitly clear at the beginning of the school year that he was NOT interested in reading. As a high school English teacher I am aware that there are going to be students that just don’t like to to read. Of course this is disappointing, as I am an AVID reader but not everyone is drawn to books. I accept that and do what I can to encourage reading as much as I can. Halfway through the school year and it’s clear, reading is on the bottom of the majority of my students “fun things to do” list. I have done everything but stand on my head to encourage my kids to just TRY.

My speech is something like this, “You guys, you don’t know what you’re missing!” I make sure to use grand sweeping hand gestures as I implore my students to just….read! “Just think about it. You can scale mountains, sail oceans, time travel and even travel to another universe…all while sitting at your desk (or on your bed at home)!” The kids usually give me exasperated eye rolls and grumble about how stupid reading is but at least I tried right?

But today…today I had a child…a teenage boy, ask me to go to the library because he wanted to read a book! I valiantly held back my tears as I said, “Of course you can.” and handed him my classroom pass.

You are likely wondering how I achieved such a monumental task and I am happy to share. Indeed, I hope you can incorporate my idea (after a fashion, I did tweak someone ELSE’S idea) into your classroom. If just ONE child is encouraged to read then all the hard work (and paint) was well worth it!

Let me rewind a little bit and give credit where credit is due. I recently found an interesting post on a Facebook post shared by Jennifer of Teaching to Inspire with Jennifer Findley. I’ve found several of her posts to be extremely helpful as a new teacher and if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading her Blog yet, you should! I digress, this particular “share” was from ANOTHER Blogger, Jordan Robertson of The Half Full Chronicles.  Her post “Reading Graffiti”, inspired my “Quote Wall.”

Jordan’s wall looks like this 🙂

Photo Credited to : Jordan Robertson “Reading Graffiti” http://messyjofu.blogspot.com/2013/03/reading-graffiti.html?m=1

 

I won’t show you my before photo because it wasn’t really all that spectacular; just a set of shelves that had LONG since seen their day. But THIS is where my mind took me when I envisioned how I could use “Reading Graffiti” in my classroom!

The wall I painted with Disney’s Chalkboard Paint. The bench was contributed by Mr. Meek (our wood shop teacher). I covered the bench in a curtain I found at the Dollar Store and the cubes I found at Walmart on clearance! The pillow covers I scored from Amazon for about $4 each and the wooden letters were another Walmart find that I had my students take to Art class and paint for me! The students write their quote with a silver sharpie.

There are rules to putting your quote on my wall:

1. The student has to have read a BOOK (no…song quotes are NOT acceptable)
2. They must then give me details from said book that can’t be found on Google (in other words no summaries from Google please)
3. I must approve the quote (high school, we have to keep it clean!)

The kids have taken one look at my “Quote Wall” and absolutely jumped ALL IN. Keep in mind that they ARE high school kids so they are very nonchalant about it. But their enthusiasm is very apparent as they swagger up to my desk and ask for a pass in that “oh so cool manner” they all think they have.

It has been very encouraging to watch my kids go from ho-hum eye roll to actual interest in books. Are they ALL reading? NO. But….there are more reading now than when I started the school year…and I’ll take that any day of the week!

 

Please feel free to use my “borrowed” idea in your classroom! If you have any tips or ideas to share with me that would encourage my kids to read, PLEASE SHARE THEM WITH ME!