My room finally is ready for me to set up; yeah! All the problems I was upset about are OVER. So today I spent the day getting started - here's what I've done. My "theme" for my bulletin boards is Art is Fantastic - I'm planning on finding ways during the year to incorporate fantasy stuff - castles, dragons, and lots of shimmery shiny stuff. I've chosen this because it's likely that I'm retiring this June, and I want to go out with style - and especially with lots of dragons!
By the way, you can see my rules above; the kids all know the #1 art room rule is NO WHINING. The art room should be a happy place.
The middle photo is my class reward chart. After considering several options, this year it's a castle. The left-hand photo is of colored stickers that I will be using for bricks. Every time a class has a good day, they will get a colorful brick added to the wall. The class that reaches the top first earns a "pop-pop party" (popcorn and popsicles). We usually get through the chart twice in one year, so the second time around I will use star stickers instead of the bricks.
On the right is my word wall, as yet empty, though my recycle box (paper) is full from June cleanup.
On the left - the empty space will be filled... just not today. And I'll talk more about "the 6th grade zone" another day. On the right - the principles of art - I've posted them for Mr. E, who has been discussing the various incarnations of these principles. These are the ones I chose for some reason or other... And of course there's the wonderful Mr. Brush posters.
I haven't hung these up yet - but on the left is a list of all the elementary classroom teachers. I like kids to see them for proper spelling. On the right, is my schedule for the upcoming year. Note that we are on a 6-day cycle. It's a great way to schedule, very flexible. And if there's a snow day, we pick up where we left off, so nobody misses a class.
This bulletin board used to say "Artist of the Month", and it's where I display the artist we are currently studying. But I changed it this year because I wanted more flexibility, so that different grades could be studying different artists, and it doesn't have to be a monthly thing.
On the left, inside my storage closet I have shelves for each class. And what's that on the right? (oops it's sideways) It's a box of sheet rock scraps and you'll have to check in probably later this fall or winter to see what my 6th graders do with it. Hint: I think I mentioned this project as a newish blogger a year and 1/2 ago.
And here's more views of my storage closet, full of random junk and what-nots. Our wonderful school building is 11-1/2 years old. Prior to that, the district existed in 3 tiny buildings in 3 towns. One was a primary, one a middle school, and one was a high school. I taught in both primary and middle. All the casework in my closet came from the other buildings. When you have something that works, why not re-use it?
I forgot to get pics of my super-duper color wheel table, but I posted about it here last year, plus you can see it, along with my "it's always sunny in the art room" window shade, and more at my "My happy art room" tab, though I still need to work on this page.
