Our Classrooms: A Work in Progress

Blogging Challenge Day 5:

Post a pic of your classroom, and describe what you see--and what you don't see that you'd like to.

Mrs. Diamond's classroom

 Jamie-
I see a classroom in the early stages of development. It is after all the beginning of the school year--right? There isn't a ton hanging on the walls, but there is a reason for this.  I am not one of those teachers who builds the classroom for my students.  I like to build my classroom with my students.  For example, the yellow square on my backboard is my word wall  that a student in my class helped me build.  The faint sketch of two stick people are examples of me and my co-teacher writing with our students during a brainstorming sessions to generate a list of things of interest to us.  In the second picture you can see my classroom door is filled with "Tweets" my students created about their reading over Labor Day weekend.  I also see books, and places for my students to get comfy and read.  Now for what I don't see!  I don't see a room that is set-up for easy collaboration amongst my students.  I also don't see a room that is user-friendly for technology.  By this I mean, I'd like to have charging stations for my students to easily charge their Netbooks.  One last thing I don't see is a place for me to keep things in storage.  I hate that there is a huge pile of boxes back in the corner of my room cluttering up my classroom library.  I'd like to find a way to organize this and get that stuff out of sight.  And, true confessions time...my desk area is always kind of a mess--organized chaos.
Meg-

Mrs. Knapik's classroom

Welcome to my sixth grade math classroom! What I see when I walk in the room is an inviting space full of color and math-related resources. From the place value poster above the dry-erase board to the math Word Wall, I want my students to be immersed in math when they enter my room. I also see a space that values literacy. Despite the fact that this is a math classroom, I have a class library and reading area where my "Hot Reads" is displayed, and our Word Wall highlights math vocabulary. I also see a variety of resources to help students be more self-sufficient learners, like the class calendar with daily homework assignments, a supply station for students who may have forgotten something (no more wasting time to get a pencil from a locker!), and the objectives posted on the dry erase board. Collaboration is also valued in my classroom since, for the first time, I have ditched the separate desks and am trying out tables. What is still missing from my classroom is an abundance of displayed student work. While I do have some student-created vocabulary posters posted on the Word Wall, you can see the red bulletin board is still empty (and as much as I would like to claim credit, the student maps hanging from the ceiling are from the Social Studies teacher who shares my room). The student work will come as we look to wrap up our first unit in a few weeks, so stay tuned...

Teachers, what are your favorite features of your own classroom?  Anything your classroom is still missing?