Classroom walls

Post 23 of 30 #MTBoS30

Earlier this year, we travelled to a high school for a conference. Some of the rooms in this school were extraordinarily long and skinny. We speculated that they were designed so that the room could be split into two smaller rooms. From a math perspective, what was cool about these rooms was that one long side was covered by whiteboard--miles and miles of it, it seemed. I could have my biggest class at that board doing problems with room to spare. The other long wall was covered in bulletin board material! I was positively drooling at the poster possibilities.

Currently, I occupy the smallest room in the school. I don't have super large classes, so it is mostly okay. I would love to make this room more habitable, but money, right? Still, I have gotten my principal to order me new whiteboard panels for next year. When they are up, I will have a whiteboard that is 16'x6'. My projector (which currently projects onto an old slide screen) will project onto a this whiteboard. It's going to be a real luxury to be able to write on the projected image. Maybe next year I'll talk someone into replacing my desks. One can hope.

I would also love to more bulletin board room. I have one large bulletin board behind my desk. Aside from the standard discipline policy, it is completely covered with memes, cartoons, student art and pictures. The kids love reading the memes. They will even bring them in occasionally. Most of them are funny, but some of them are serious. It's cool to post one that a student brings in--they really light up.

I also have the 8 practices printed out and taped to the wall in the front of the room. I refer to them often. Before testing, we had all of the families of functions up there. Those were pretty handy to refer to also, we'll put them up again in the fall.

What's left of wall space is taken up by posters. I have some stock motivational and math type posters, but they are mostly covered up by student work. There is the "big" unit circle. My pre-calculus class has done this every year. This year it came out more like the "giant" unit circle. Guess I had a more ambitious class. It has all of the standard points, plus all sorts of points we created using the different identities. Then there are the roller coaster posters--pre-calc again. Next, we have a bunch of thinking maps created by algebra 1 breaking down the different forms of quadratic equations. There is also a large SOHCAHTOA poster created by my geometry class. Finally, there is the California reservoir project poster created by my alt-math class. That one's kind of lame. Dan Meyer is right--just because it is real world, doesn't guarantee it will catch their interest.

So what's on your walls?