classroom ideas?

[trmd74]

I am a new teacher. I just found out I will be teaching 5th grade this year either Reading or Math, still not confirmed. I have a few things for my classroom but trying to decide on how to decorate. The items I currently have are lime green in color. I dont want it to look too childish but I am not sure what theme to go with, any ideas and suggestions would be very appreciated.

Thanks so much!

[hweber]

You could try to find a theme. Something that goes with limes or maybe green m & m's, or apples (some are green), I'm not sure what else, but there are some very creative folks here so I am sure that someone will come up with something.

[herdgrad]

bookworms, frogs, butterflies, you could add other colors and do a jungle theme (welcome to the jungle)

[herdgrad]

while we are talking about classroom setup....I am having problems coming up with a catchy title. Last year I had a bulletin board that displayed the kids work and it said "A Sea of Good Work" where I had fish, crunched up paper for border that looked like seaweed, and the bottom border was sandpaper with glued on seashells. Anyway, I had to move that board so I thought I would change it. I have some really cute star border. Any ideas for a title? "Star Work" is kinda boring, but if I can't come up with anything else I might have to go to that.

[dsmms]

One of my favorite Quotes! I heard Les Brown speak years ago and was soooooo inspired!

“Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars.” Les Brown

[Booky]

I don't know... Perhaps a jungle theme in a math classroom is sending the wrong message. I don;t know if anything using a lot of colors is a good idea. This could be highly distracting and could destroy some chance of getting through to some students.

If it were I, I would stick with a black and white theme, maybe even using regular patterns like a checkerboard type motif. Then I might further decorate the room with a chess theme using black and white pieces. As you may know, chess is highly math-oriented. This way you could use the opportunity to teach the children the ideas of mathematical strategy as it is applied to a chessboard by virtue of the room's decor which would be both interesting and purposful for the children.

I believe that this setting is far more suitable than a garish jungle (no offense :))theme or other cacaphonus assortment of random and distractive colorations. My 2-cents.

Best,
O. Vaughan

[Mathwizz]

I like Booky's idea about the black & white checkerboard. Soothing colors I have found put students into a comatose state and they daydream. The idea of having an erratic,black and white theme would perhaps cause them to be annoyed enough (physiologically) that they would pay more attention to their desk work or to the teacher. (Make sure the teacher does not have this background behind him/her.)
I'm sure most of us have been to some type of meeting or forum in a large banquet style room at a hotel or walked in a hallway in a hotel. Next time you do look at the pattern on the rugs,they are usually quite busy and something you can't look at for very long. The reason; so you don't stare at the floor and pay attention to what is going on in front of you. Using this same logic in the classroom simply makes sense. Kudos Booky for you idea.
BTW I worked with a teacher that kept a red flashing ,police style light in the corner. When things started getting kind of snoozy he would flip the switch and the students would get back on task. Me, I use the "World's Loudest Whistle" the Storm. I picked it up at Wal-Marts in the boating section,......works like a charm!

[Nordic]

Something I started doing years ago is using fabric for bulletin board backgrounds. This year I found a calm green fabric with a subdued print, so that went on one board. Next to it is a map printed on fabric with the names of countries. I have another map printed fabric, so I put it on a board on another wall. It has animals and other fun pictures on it. I also have fabric with a Native American print (we'll be studying Native Americans this year). On other boards, I will have plain unprinted fabric in soft velour in different colors.

Keep in mind that I teach first grade, but I'm sure there are fabrics out there for just about any teaching theme or need. As long as they aren't too wild or distracting, fabrics are not only fun, they add a special warmth to the room. And they prevent throwing out paper backgrounds!

When I was in the USA this summer, I found that fabric is pretty cheap at Walmart.

[Mathwizz]

Sorry Nordic, I don't agree as you can see in my post above yours. But each to their own. I would suggest trying one then the other see which works the best. The one thing I have found that works but sometimes is hard to control is background music while they are doing seat work. Classical is the ONLY music allowed, here comes the control part, the students beg to listen to other types of music,.Aarrgh...the argument is short and I always win. My house, my rules! Also it only plays during seat work, not during class or lecture time.

[Nordic]

Mathwizz, I'm not sure I remember typing anything anywhere about music?? I do like classical music, though. :)

[Booky]

LOL Nordic, I guess you and I have a different idea of what "cheap" is.

Mathwizz I still stand behind my statement about the checkerboard pattern so long as it is b&w. Like I said you can use the theme to teach math-as-game-strategy and teach strategy in chess as a life strategy. If my comment offended you about the b&w squares I apologise. I was merely trying to put in my two cents. If you disagree there is no need to get upset ok? No worries man.

[Nordic]

Yes Booky, we probably do have different ideas about what "cheap" is. I come from a country where things cost a lot more than they do in America (plus we pay a lot of taxes), so when we visit the USA, we are overwhelmed by how cheap things are...To us. Even your gas prices seem incredibly cheap, so we drove all the way from San Diego to Vancouver, Wa, just because. But if we lived and worked there, I'm sure our version of cheap would have to change a lot.

As well as cheap, I went into literal shock at the sheer abundance of goods for sale in Target--the first store we visited this time around. My mind just shut down. So yeah, for us, it's cheap and the choices are way more than what we're used to.

[herdgrad]

nordic....just out of curiousity where are you from?

[Booky]

I'm sure you pay a lot of taxes, Nordic, I gather you are from Europe, perhaps France? I am guessing this because this is where the Norman Invasion came from - Hence the name Nordic? It's a hobby of mine to try and guess where people are from based on accents or in the case of the internet user names, etc. I live in the Southeastern USA.

Some of our tax bases may be lower than yours but most of us pay about 25% of our income into FEDERAL taxes. Then you have to add state and other fees like FICA, etc... Then we have to take care of a lot of things here on our own. For example our property taxes are very high. Also we all have to get health insurance and even when we don't "pay" for it this is reflected in our pay.

many people here work for the minimum wage which is $7.25 per hour. Yes, gas is cheap but in many places you MUST own a car to commute often long distances so your transportation costs are more because you have to buy alot more gas. Our public transportation systems aren't like they are in Europe - Lower taxes and gas prices yes but higher transport costs medical, etc. You begin to get the picture. The economies of scale are roughly the same in many ways and the only time that it appears not to be so is when someone who uses a currency that is valued more favorably visits the other country.

Also, I have a very strong appreciation for the value of a dollar. I am not a cheapskate nor am I poor - but in my home we save and spend our pennies and when we see them on the ground we pick them up where others simply throw them away. Likewise fabric is $2.99 per yard at Walmart but I KNOW that I can go to a discount fabric center and buy the same for 98 cents per yard. I can buy 3 times more fabric for the same price. How do I know this? Because I have had experience with this very thing.

When I was younger I worked in a restaurant where a bunch of rich kids would come in. They rarely tipped ans when they did it was usually nest to nothing. One day some of those punks left me a tip (mostly pennies) in a glass turned upside-down. The glass was filled with about a half a milkshake. There was a note on the table telling me the tip was in the glass. Do you think I left the money in the glass? No, I took the glass and fished every darn penny out of it and washed them all off and took them home. It was about 23 cents. The next time I saw those creeps (some of them) in the restaurant - I thanked them for the tip. I'm not going to write what I said to them here but I will tell you that I said it in such a way that it was I who had the last word. They never stiffed me again. That's where I'm coming from.

[Nordic]

I live in Norway. Norway usually comes out in the top three countries of the world for high cost of living--next to Iceland and Japan. The USA is farther down the list.

My salary is the same as it would be if I worked in the USA. I looked it up just a few weeks ago. I do not make more money than Americans do to compensate for the higher cost of living. I actually meet a lot of people who think that must be true, so this isn't the first time I've heard this. My husband's salary is the same or lower than what he might earn in the USA. (His field is wider than mine.) We brought hard-earned money with us on our trip to the USA. It had been five years since our previous visit to the USA. If it hadn't been for a death in the family leading to some inheritance money, we would not have been able to afford the trip this year.

I pay between 35-40% income tax. I don't know exactly, because the tax scale varies depending on how much you make, and I haven't checked how much I'm paying lately.

We pay taxes on nearly everything. Food and all items purchased are taxed, of course. Services are taxed--if we pay a plumber to come to our house, we have to pay a tax on top of what he charges. We pay a yearly tax for every television we own. We pay annual road taxes, then we turn around and pay high tolls for most roads we travel on. (I pay about 7 USDollars per day to drive to and from work through the tolls.)

The cost of foods and other consumer products is very high here, even without the tax. We eat very little meat because we can't afford it, for example.

We MUST commute by car. We live away from good public transportation, even though I work in one of Norway's largest cities. We choose to live in the country, so our choice has affected how we get to work. We're happy to live in the country, even though it costs a lot to commute. If we lived in the city, we'd have to pay as much as two million more for a house. (Our house in the country is valued at about 2.3 million. A house in the nearby large city is around 4-5 million.)

Our gas/diesel is usually around 7-12 USDollars per gallon. (It's difficult to give an accurate figure because of the fluctuating gas prices, plus the variable exchange rate, but at one point during the recent gas price hike, we were paying around 12 dollars per gallon to the US price of around 3-4 dollars per gallon.) A lot of that is government tax. Norway is one of the leading petroleum nations of the world, so it's not like we have to bring our petroleum in from another country.

I used to work in a restaurant, and I've also experienced bad tippers. I'm originally from Oregon, but I've lived here for 17 years. I worked in a restaurant prior to becoming a teacher. You learn a lot about people in the food service industry.

If we'd had more time to shop around while we visit the states, I'm sure that we could have found better fabric prices than we found at Walmart. We were there for three weeks total, and a lot of that time was spent visiting with friends and relatives. Our trips out shopping were rushed. At any rate, our fabric options here in Norway are very expensive--at least four times as much as I paid in Walmart.

I really like to avoid conversations like this. I didn't imagine that my mentioning the (to me) low price of fabric in Walmart would bring up this question. If I'd known, I wouldn't have said anything. I find it difficult to describe in a way that people can relate to, and I also find that it leads people to believe that I am unhappy here. I am fine with living where I do. This is my choice. But it sometimes leads to others misunderstanding or unable to comprehend. I acknowledge that it is expensive for Americans. My parents remind me of this frequently, since they're now in retirment. However, it is even harder for us here. We live without a lot of "extras" that we could have if we chose to live in the USA. We see this when we visit there, but I never saw it before I moved over here.

After this usually comes the question, "Why do you live in Norway, then?" I'll go ahead and answer that question now. My husband is a Finn who relocated to Norway when he was in his early twenties. He is now a Norwegian citizen. Both of our children are Norwegian citizens, even though they were both born in Korea (they're adopted). To move would not be simple. My husband would need a job in his field, and we don't expect that to be easy. Our children would be uprooted (they're six and eight years old), and we know that it would be a very big disruption in their lives. We would be leaving everything familar and "safe" in their world. Moving would mean that three of our family would have to get a greencard. I have not yet managed to get USA citizenship for our children because the process is more complicated for adoptees. The process for a greencard is very difficult, even if a person is married to a US citizen.

None of us is native to Norway, but this is what we are all most comfortable with at this time. When I do visit the USA, I feel like a foreigner...Living away for 17 years has changed me that much. I feel more secure here. I've learned that I don't have to have everything I used to think was important before I moved here, and that acceptance is enough to make living here a happy event.

[hweber]

Thanks for the great explanation Nordic. I would love to visit you!

[herdgrad]

thanks for the eye opening explanation Nordic. I say as long as you are happy and your family is happy, why change?
You don't need "stuff" to make you happy and fulfilled (I try to instill that into my own children hoping that they will appreciate it one day).
Maybe I can pick your brain when my class does Christmas Around the World? I would love to learn more about Norway.

[Nordic]

Hweber, Norway is a beautiful country to visit!

Herdgrad, Christmas in Norway is one of the best times to learn about culture. We start with Sankta Lucia in mid-December. Sometime before Christmas, we have a "Juletrefest", or Christmas tree party. The children join hands and dance around the tree while singing Christmas songs. Then we have "Little Christmas Eve", Christmas Eve, First Christmas Day, and Second Christmas Day. After that is "romjulen", the week between Christmas and New Year's. Norwegian Christmas carols are very beautiful, and the children's Christmas songs are full of fun and energy.

[Mathwizz]

Good post Nordic, thanks for sharing!

Booky, all your past experiences despite how degrading it seemed at the time have made you the wonderful person you are today. Don't let the past run your now. I'm sure you understand what I mean.

[priyaanka]

hi!
I am totally agreed with Booky. Classroom decorations go well beyond traditional bulletin boards. Classroom doors, windows, the edges of the blackboard, and more are all spaces worthy of decoration.

All of us here at Teachers' School Supply know the importance of a beautiful classroom to enhance learning. Your children are in class up to eight hours a day. So shouldn't it be a beautiful environment? Classroom decorations come in great varieties – there are different classroom decorations for practically every holiday and season.
If you want to add a lot of character to your room, you can take things like snowflakes and hang them from your classroom ceiling with string or fishing line. There is no reason that decorations should only be on the walls. Witches on broomsticks, snowflakes, stars, and more can look perfectly at home hanging from the ceiling. Here are a few final words of advice: be creative with your classroom decorations and most of all, involve your students with your classroom decorations.

[Mathwizz]

Mathwizz, I'm not sure I remember typing anything anywhere about music?? I do like classical music, though. :)

Sorry Nordic I was away on a few days vacation. I was referring to my classroom. Many times when the students are doing seat work I will play classical music. I've been told that the key most classical music is played in has a calming effect. It seems to work when the kids are a bit rowdy or if you have a class right after lunch, you know what I mean?

Try it, it works......... maybe we should pipe it throughout the entire school.:laugh:

[AAA Teacher Forum]

One piece of advice - watch the volume of the music. I've walked in to a couple of classrooms where the music bothered me - and I wasn't even trying to work or concentrate. Remember that there are some students who may not want, need or enjoy the music.