More than a maths teacher

Actually – she says, bragging – I have two classrooms – one where I teach maths, one where I teach ICT and engineering. Obviously both rooms are shared with other teachers, I don’t get two to myself. This one is my main base, so that’s the one I’ll show you around first. Come on in!

The Room

Once inside the big green box, you’ll see student desks arranged in six groups; partly because that allows group work and partly because space is at a premium and groups of tables take up less room. Our department was refurbished about three years ago, so I’m lucky to have fairly new tables and chairs.

The department also got repainted when we were refurbished. Everyone thought I was crazy, because I decided to paint my own room, including the mural of triangles and quadrilaterals on the back wall. Maybe I was mad, but it looks great, even after three years – partly because I’m obsessive about keeping the room clear of graffiti and partly because I touch up the paintwork about once a year to keep it looking nice.

I had a rather battered old metal cupboard (which my form uses as a giant communal locker) and filing cabinet in the room. Our refurbishment budget didn’t stretch to replacing those, so I painted them. They ended up looking much better than I expected. Last summer I managed to trade another metal cupboard for two battered filing cabinets, which also got painted and now hold all my own files, worksheets etc. From the pictures it looks as if there’s masses of storage space in the room, but in fact but most of the cupboards hold departmental stocks of books and paper.

Whiteboards

There are quite a lot of whiteboards in the room, these are one of the best things about the space. At the front I have a SMARTboard with a standard whiteboard next to it. I use both of these (especially since I acquired a new, bright projector last summer) – often both at the same time. I don’t know how anyone manages with just an IWB – especially on the inevitable bad technology day.

The paper chain is a little unseasonal, but it is interesting – it’s a pi chain.

There are also five smaller whiteboards around the room. I made these when we were refurbished: I rescued two old teacher whiteboards that were being replaced and asked our DT technician to slice them up into smaller boards. Once I’d stuck on a bit of cheap plastic edging, they looked pretty good. Each table now has their own white board – although the one at the front has to share the teacher board with me.

We use these whiteboards pretty often:

• for groups to work together on a problem
• for students to demonstrate how they have worked out a question
• to compare different methods for solving a problem
• to discuss how clear someone’s working is
• to use as an aid when students present something to their group or the class

I have mini-whiteboards as well, but I tend to use the mini boards for individual or paired work.

There is more to read for this post. (Yes I know, I do tend to ramble on!)
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