Something you need to know when trying to set up a classroom is that it is important to recruit help and not try to do everything on your own. This way you can get a lot more done in much less time.
I already wrote about my recruitment of Architect Dan to help arrange the furniture last week, and since then I have received a lot of comments from coworkers about how nice my room arrangement looks.
Yesterday I recruited my mom, Nurse Kathy, to help organize my classroom library. That was a big job, and she spent the whole day on the task, which freed me up to work on organizing some other things around the classroom that day. There are still a couple more small things to do with the classroom library, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on that yet.
Today I tackled the last of the really big jobs. First I finished organizing my files in my filing cabinets. That was one of the least exciting tasks, but at least I got everything sorted out so I should know where to find all the important papers that I will need throughout the year, as well as having a place to file papers that come in.
The other big job I conquered today was repapering the bulletin boards. If you refer back to the "before" pictures of my classroom (Setting Up My Classroom, part 1), you will note that the paper used to cover the bulletin boards by the previous teacher was mostly red and yellow. Personally, I've never been a big fan of the red/yellow color combination on anything--it reminds me too much of ketchup and mustard. Also, the walls in this classroom are already painted a pale yellow, so I felt that the addition of the yellow paper was just too much yellow. I felt a cooler color was needed to calm down the atmosphere of the room. Debbie Diller also talks about the effect of color in her book Spaces and Places. So here is what I came up with:
My color scheme was inspired by the star bulletin board seen in this picture. That is actually a weird sort of bulletin board that you can't actually staple things to, so a teacher several years ago had decorated the board with star-patterned contact paper. Sticking with that color scheme, I chose blue as the predominant color for my bulletin boards.
This bulletin board in the back of the room was quite large. Part of what I dislike about decorating bulletin boards is trying to cut all the paper to fit as well as possible, and then trying to staple the giant sheet on there. So for this bulletin board, I recruited the assistance of my Trusty Assistant. She helped hold up one side of the paper while I stapled, and then we switched.
Another thing I would like to point out about this bulletin board is that I stapled the number line low enough where the students can reach it. This is quite different from what I have done in the past, and what you generally see in classrooms--usually you see the number line running along the ceiling. The reason I hung it lower was so that the students will be able to interact with the number line, which is encouraged in Math Investigations. It also goes along with Debbie Diller's advice about hanging resources at a level where students can interact with them more easily.
On the board behind the classroom library, I used a slightly more brightly-colored border to add a little bit of excitement.
Next to the SMART Board, I have hung up my pocket hundreds chart, but I haven't put the numbers in it yet. Like the number line, I tried to hang this in an area where students will be able to interact with it.
I think this looks pretty good so far!
I don't have pictures of my hallway bulletin boards yet, but I will mention that I did get the paper up on those as well. For those, I recruited the help of the daughter of my neighboring teacher. She is in 5th grade this year and has a lot of experience helping put up bulletin boards, so when she asked me if she could help with mine, I said "Yes!" Teachers that have children often have to bring them to school with them while they work on their classrooms, and you will find that the older ones (about 3rd grade and up) are usually looking for something to do while they are there, and tend to be very good helpers. In fact, I think they actually enjoy putting together the bulletin boards!
How do you feel about bulletin boards? Do you actually like putting them together, or do you get someone else to help you? How do you decide on colors to use when decorating?
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