Classroom Set-up 2014-2015

Hey All! I wanted to post a quick tour of the classroom this year. This should eventually lead to a few post that describe my W.o.W program as well as the "Breaking Dreadful Writing Habits" program, too!

Still stuck in the stone-age...no white board! I use dry erase markers to write on the chalk board. A "magic eraser" works well to erase :) 

This is our homework board! To the right of the day of the week is the homework for the night. To the left, we usually list important information about that day or if they should BYOT.

Learning Objectives: I teach 7th grade English--usually we work on the same standard for weeks at a time. 

Do you post learning objectives in your classroom? It is part of out OTES evaluation. We need to include the standard covered along with an "I can" statement.

Our writing folders. Students will keep their published writing in these folders during the school year.

We often go back to our own writing from the beginning of the year to reapply recent knowledge. For instance, the students will go back to their writing from 1st or 2nd quarter and revise their writing to include different sentence structure.

Dreadful Writing Habits (A year-long process of breaking bad writing habits)

The Dreadful Writing Habits are mini-lessons that we complete in our WNB a few times a quarter. Students learn how to fix these habits and go back to revise their previous writing. We post the habit on this bulletin board to remind them of the habits we have completed. Once we complete a habit, they are to avoid it for the rest of the year (in all their classes)!

Formal vs. Informal writing poster. We use this posted as reference when we start a new writing piece. We always discuss whether our writing should be formal or informal before we begin. Students have a similar copy of this chart in their WNB.