Sunday, September 7, 2014

Art Room Tour 2014-2015

I am very grateful for my Art Room. It is very spacious and I've spent a lot of time making it "my own." Some things are exactly the same as they were 17 (!) years ago and some things are different every single year! Please enjoy a tour of my home-away-from-home and leave your comments below!

This is my giant bulletin board that greets my students when they enter the Art Room. We have a SUPERHERO theme this year and I'm a big Disney fanatic, so I had to go with The Incredibles!" The green bins are for each grade level's supplies and samples. And the big table is for demonstrations, extra supplies, and it hides the garbage cans, recycling bucket and bins of my favorite markers. That left the front of the table area for a cute bookcase and display area!


This is a picture of my desk...when it's clean! It won't stay that way for long so I figured I better snap a picture before it's too late! The wooden boxes are from IKEA and I've had them for years! They hold all the extra handouts and paperwork for each grade level.


This gigantic paintbrush and paint splatter stickers are the highlights of The Paint Zone.

Point charts are a heavily debated issue in education, but I find that they work really well for my program. The kids are motivated to fill the rows, fill the entire chart and to compete against other classes. And they work really, really hard for just a small piece of candy or a new pencil. 
And I love the little orange sign below the Point Charts! At the end of each class, I noticed that I was calling up the same quiet tables first. To give everyone equal opportunities to line up first, I started rotating table numbers. So, this week, Table 1 lines up first, then 2, 3, 4, etc...  Next week, 2 will be first, then 3, 4, 5...and 1 will be last. The following week, we'll start with 3...and so on. This system is nice because when students know what comes next, there are less classroom management issues. Woohoo!
And the little hanging signs on the yellow sign are for "extra credit jobs" for the 4th, 5th and 6th graders. They include all the jobs I don't like doing but the kids do, like folding the smocks, emptying the pencil sharpeners or washing palettes. What they won't do for one little, extra point!?

And this is my Noise Chart - all superhero-themed, of course! This is another classroom management lifesaver. Each class starts on "Ready to Learn" and can move up the chart by working quietly or can sink to the bottom by being loud or disrespectful. It is a full-class system because I'm not a big fan of calling out or punishing individual students in front of the entire class. And again, this system seems to motivate students to work together for the greater good - getting more points which leads to more rewards. 

And this is my classroom mascot, Art from Monsters University, one of my favorite movies. He has absolutely no educational value but he's adorable, so he stays!!

Here's to the beginning of another great year of teaching and learning!

~Amy








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