New School, New Classroom 2017-18!

I had the excitement of going into my new school this week to 'do up' my new classroom and move all of my resources in! I spent the day there redoing the display boards and generally clearing out the room whilst trying to find new homes for all of my resources. I thoroughly enjoyed the day, especially given the ridiculous 'Secret Teacher'article this week about teachers working throughout the holidays! IMO if you want to go in and work, do so, if you don't, don't! There was no expectation on me going in and doing anything by my new HOD/school, I wanted to go in. I certainly don't feel it devalues the profession when teachers go in to school in the holidays and do work - it just shows that some teachers want to do that, just like any person would want to work in their 'out of office' hours.

So, here are a few pictures of my new room. A lot of the display material has been reused from my previous classroom display's (see blog posts here, here and here). I started taking down my displays towards the end of this school year so I had them all ready to go to the new school - I didn't want to spend time at my old school taking it all down in the holidays so used my 'gained' time to do a certain amount of this. I have put up a few new displays (mainly my revision board where I have all the corbettmaths revision cards up - I'll post a separate blog post about this and how I intend on using it)! If you want to know where I got any resources then just tweet me @mrprcollins or comment below.

 Here's the view from the 'Maths Hub' room at the back of my room towards my desk. The display board you can see will be my form's notice board and general noticeboard for all those posters you're asked to put up throughout the year. So, it's left a bit bare at the moment apart from a few of my favourite pictures/images I've collected/been drawn over the past few years.
My formulae bunting and @MissBsResources' bunting can be seen over the windows. Available here along with a whole host of other fantastic displays.
 This is the display board to the right of the IWB/whiteboard. I'm lucky to have quite a long room whereby the longest wall has an IWB in the middle, a whiteboard either side of it and then a display board both sides too. I like the symmetry!
On this board I have my 'Numeracy Shortcuts' - I couldn't think of a better name for it when I saw a tweet with the equivalent calculations. My students and I have used these loads over the past year and I believe they're essential in understanding the equivalence of the calculations. Knowing that finding 3/4 of something is the same as multiplying by 3 and then dividing by 4 (or vice versa), which is the same as multiplying by 0.75, etc massively helps when dealing with non-calculator problems. I find students often have a preferred method to work in, be it decimals, fractions, percentages or a combination of operations - so, if they know their equivalences it speeds these calculations up for them and gets them 'unstuck'.
Above this display board/whiteboard I have the square and cube numbers from @complexnumber (available on her blog here together with many other great display ideas). I think these look great and my students have always referred to them - especially when covering laws of indices and surds!

 Here's a panoramic I took from the classroom door. I didn't know you could upload these to Facebook and they then become a 360 image where you can scroll through it and tilt your phone to view around - pretty cool.
I have my 'Wall of Fame' ready to be added to this year when I get good work from students in. The blank, pegged yellow pieces of card will hold the 'work of the week' and then rest of the board is reserved for those extra special pieces of work/homework received. I have a few examples up from the past few years to show students the type of thing that will end up there!

 Similar view to the panoramic. You can see the yellow number line above the board. I use this on a daily basis and is a MUST. Honestly don't think you can have a maths classroom without one.
You might just be able to make out my large lime green calculator I've bluetacked to the whiteboard to the left of the IWB. This is great for showing students answers of sums they're doing and or quickly working out something myself in the middle of an activity. The calculator display is large enough for most students to be able to see it.
 This is the view towards the classroom door and from the cupboards near the windowed wall in my room. I love the fact the cupboard doors you can see are all whiteboard doors. I have been told they don't rub off very easily, but I managed to budge the existing ink on them after a bit of elbow grease, so I'm sure they'll do just fine - especially as I've never had the luxury of having as much whiteboard space before. I usually had to use the magic whiteboard sheets to create more space.

 Here's the 'Wall of Fame' display again (wall opposite the whiteboard/IWB wall). To the left is the corbettmaths revision card display which you can read more about here.
I'm excited to be able to put my dart board up again. It fell off the wall last year too many times so I got rid of it, but I think I've secured it better this year - time will tell. I love the mental maths involved in tallying the scores and I often through a few darts before a lesson starts to get my maths brain ticking over! I then keep the darts out of sight so the students don't 'mess about' with them. They then come out when a student/group of students are finished or when it's their turn to do some darts. I've used it as a reward in the past and it often engages the more reluctant students to do some maths without realising it!

 You can't really see much more in this picture other than the 'finished' letters. The little unit underneath them is my 'challenge drawers'. In them are the AQA 90 problems and a whole bunch of other resources that my other half used in her classroom (she's on maternity leave at the moment having not long had our daughter so I've stolen them off her for the meantime)! I've put them here as it's right next to the whiteboard cupboard doors so they can work the problems out on here, or just take them back to their desk. I just need to label the trays up as the problems in each are of different levels of difficulty.
Over the 'Maths Hub' door I have the 'horizontal' and 'vertical' words to remind myself more than anything - i know which is which but always blurt out the opposite one first when wanting the other. I do the same with the colours 'yellow' and 'white'. No idea why, its just a 'thing'!

I've then put my revision memes from my previous Y11 revision board (see here) and my constructions comics (see here) on the wall next to it as there was a blank space!



So there it is.

I've tried to put up those displays that I/my students have used most/referred to over the past few years as well as having those images, etc that make the room feel like mine, that I like and make the place more interesting.

I still want to put up my artist playing cards that I've had up previously as they're great to look at, but I'll do that when going back in September!
Very excited to see what my new department thinks of the place and what the kids will say when they have their first lesson with me - hopefully they'll enjoy learning in my room.