Cool Classrooms!

Last year, we hosted our first annual "Tour of Classrooms," and since it's time to do some serious thinking about bulletin boards, calendars, sub crates, and absence binders, I thought it would be fun to revisit and share the coolest things we saw in our teachers' classrooms.  (Since I am a floater teacher, I did not get to decorate, but I went on the tour.)   I think some high school teachers get accused of bland classrooms, but not the one below!

The tour served multiple purposes:

• Teachers were able to "show off" their classrooms.  (And our principal donated office supply gift cards to the winners.)
• Administrators were able to visit rooms in a completely non-threatening way and recognize teachers in their departments.
• At the beginning of the week, we gave teachers the rubric for how prizes would be awarded (based on supplies, organization, etc.) so some teachers created new "spaces" in their room for those items, calendars, schedules, word walls...
• We conducted the tour on the Friday after lunch (school started on Monday) so some teachers said the contest motivated them to be more organized and ready to go on Friday, rather than spending the weekend at school.
• Our school is large-ish, and I think some teachers rarely leave their own spaces to visit other classrooms.  We sent different administrators to tour different hallways and everyone took pictures, and we compiled all photos into a slide show.  We sent the link to the entire faculty, so everyone had the opportunity to see all of the cool things in all of the classrooms.

The grand prize winning room belonged to an ELA teacher, who is also our girls' basketball coach (thus all of the sports stuff on her board above.)  Find more pictures of her room below.

On the tour, we found...

The math teachers (and a few others) were all about board calendars, and they used duct tape and fun borders to create their agendas.

Loved, loved, loved this make-up work folder, and the teacher left it propped by her "Information" bulletin board.

A science teacher made wordles for each unit of study.

Great classroom and writing rules:

The zebra print belonged to Coach Holly and her winning room!

 

 Great door signs, especially if you are frequently out of your classroom:

The tennis coach never has trouble with his desks squealing across the floor!

To change the look of your teacher desk, try these tricks:

Need to borrow a pencil?  Please return it to its velcro holder when you leave!

A few creative word walls/vocabulary displays:

And a shoe holder for the calculators!

Japanese class, obviously

For those fortunate enough to have windows...

 And finally, a few other creative walls and bulletin boards:

In an AVID classroom

ELA projects from recent years

Social studies collages

It is so much fun to peek into other classrooms.  Hope you were inspired!  Did you see any ideas that you can duplicate or use for your room?  Happy decorating and organizing!