To Decorate or Not Decorate...That is the Question

I love looking at all the cute elementary teachers' classroom pictures. There's something so magical and inviting with all the colors, rugs, story time areas, and cute tiny tables and chairs.

Then, as students get older and the desks get taller, classrooms start to turn...well, a little bland.

What happened to the bright colors?
The rugs on the floor?
The polka dot curtains?
The decorated doors?

Are those things reserved just for the tiny tots in the primary grades? To be honest, I don't think I could picture students in chemistry class sitting around little decorated chairs doing a lab experiment, could you? And if you let high school students sit on a carpet square in the room for story time, wouldn't they just fall asleep? And wouldn't group desk formations encourage cheating?

These are all excuses we high school teachers come up with because, quite frankly, who has time for this?

There are syllabi to copy!
Lessons to plan!
Rosters to load!
Apps to be ran!

Yet, elementary teachers do many of these things and even though they may only have 30 students to our 150, they do have prep work that does not involve decorating. So perhaps high school teachers just decide that classroom aesthetics aren't that important.

But...are they?

Do you decorate your high school room? If so, how does it impact the learning environment, if at all?

I've actually given this a lot of thought because I like a colorful room. I love hanging memes, quote signs, and posters relating to the novels we read. And an English classroom wouldn't be complete without books! These things count as decoration, right?

I think having a happy-looking room will brighten the students' moods. At least I hope it does. I've never done any formal research on the topic, but would love to see a study about this for secondary classrooms.

So I'm going to share some of my classroom pictures that may not be as colorful or organized as my elementary teacher friends', but I love my classroom. :)

I have almost an entire wall in my classroom lined with bookshelves. As my classroom library grew, the wonderful custodians in my building added the short oak bookcases--one-by-one each summer. Three years ago, our new counselor redecorated one of the rooms in her office and no longer needed the tall bookshelves, so our custodians--knowing how much I could use them--surprised me by adding them to my room. (Did I say already that I have THE best custodians!?)

I also think plants make any room feel more warm and homey.

On the window by my classroom door I added the previous years' "book selfies" (this is a FREEBIE in my store). Students love to look at the books their classmates recommend each year, so I continue to add to them each year as I get new book selfies from students. I will probably have to extend the display onto the door as it grows. I love that the first thing they see walking in and walking out are books.

Another simple tip is to add fresh flowers from your yard (or the neighbor's, if they don't mind!). Flowers make everyone feel special and students DO notice these little things. It's simple and it really does help with creating a more cheerful mood and adding a fresh scent. Just be aware of allergies--some flowers have pollen that may spark hayfever or other allergic reactions. 

Don't neglect the ceiling; it's a way to display student work and add a 3-dimensional feature to your room without cluttering the walls or using valuable board space. Here, I displayed student collage mobiles and trading cards. Both are great back-to-school activities.

I usually use my whiteboards for displaying student work. One thing I learned from elementary teachers is to use bulletin-board borders on my whiteboard to separate sections. I have one section I use for making announcements and displays students who were featured in the newspaper for various achievements.

Interactive bulletin boards are also very popular with secondary students. It gives students something to read and interact with before, after, and during class if time permits. This one is a banned books display in a social studies classroom.

Memes can be fun reminders of your classroom rules, policies, or just to supplement your instruction. And we all know how much middle and high school students love memes, so don't be afraid to add them to your decor.

Please share how you "decorate" your secondary room and feel free to link up a post to your blog or website. I'd love to see more examples of secondary rooms! And thanks to all the elementary teachers out there who bring color and joy into the lives of millions of school children each year.

This post is featured on the TeachersPayTeachers (TpT) Blog. You'll find many helpful articles for secondary teachers there!

I Know What You Read This Summer

I Know What You Read This Summer - Have students post books they read for other students to see.

I've decided to switch my old "Good Reads" board space up this year. I use that space to encourage students to suggest books to their classmates. It allows them to see what their friends are reading, rather than just having me suggest books. It's also more meaningful coming from their peers. In addition, they get a chance to contribute to the classroom "decor" (if you can call my room having "decor"). Students LOVE writing on white boards. I have no idea why, but even my seniors enjoyed the opportunity to write on the board.

So I made this sign for that space: "I Know What You Read This Summer." I am sure that someone before me probably came up with this parody of the novel/movie, since I Know What You Did Last Summer has been around for years (1973 to be exact). But you are welcome to download this poster for your own classroom. You can take the image file from here, or download it in my TpT store for a larger, better quality PDF file.

I've posted some classroom pictures on my Facebook Page and will add more on here when I have the board up. :)

What do you do to encourage students to read? Please share with us!

What Are Your Classroom Rules?

From Close to Home by John McPherson

One of the more difficult parts of classroom management is coming up with a list of classroom rules. You could be like Mrs. Mutner (above) and cover everything from "wearing weird clothes" or "making smart-alecky remarks." Or you could keep it more simple (which is what I would recommend).

I like to show the Close to Home comic and actually keep this posted in my classroom near the doorway. I've been a John McPherson fan for many years and stock my classroom with several of his Close to Home books for my students to enjoy. I love using humor and showing your students Mrs. Mutner's rules is a great icebreaker into your own class rules. Here are some additional "humorous" images from my classroom that I posted last year, before I had any followers. :)

After my students loosen up, I give them my classroom rules. It's important to keep your rules simple and broad. Here are some guidelines I learned long ago from one of my education professors:

Here's an example of my classroom rules (or expectations):

You can download a copy of this poster free (without the website link) from my teacher store: 

Simple Class Rules for the Secondary Teacher

Though they are short, they lead into various discussions, like being punctual, bringing all the necessary supplies to class (book, pen/pencil, paper, laptop, etc.), how we treat one another, and appropriate language used in the classroom.

Even though you want to keep your rules simple, class procedures are another story. You will want to go over little things like how they should turn in homework (Do you want it printed on paper? written in pencil? emailed to you? dropped in your digital dropbox? and so on...).

Elementary teachers will have to be more detailed, even modeling some of the procedures for the students. You can see Wise Guys' resources for class procedures if you teach elementary. They have a freebie you can download {HERE}.

Secondary teachers may not have to model as much, but it is still a good idea to go over procedures the first day of school or sometime during the first week of school. Topics will most likely vary from elementary; I always go over our school handbook rules on cell phone use, turning in late work, and chewing gum. My packet "Can I Chew Gum in Class?" is a great way to cover these procedures and rules in a way that is less boring than just reading them from a syllabus. It also places more responsibility on the students for figuring out what the rules are.

I also love Miriam  Hamilton Keare's "Golden Rules For Living" as seen below in the image. I inherited this from another teacher when I first started out and have kept it posted in my classroom for years.

Whether this is your first year or 30th year teaching, I hope you find these classroom rules and procedures tips helpful. Though I have been working in education since 1994, I still question my beginning of the year routine. Each year a few days before school starts (or, the night before) I always go over my syllabus and make adjustments. I learn from other teachers all the time. Even from Mrs. Mutner...on what not to do, of course.

Have a GREAT school year!

-Tracee

It's The Lesson Cloud Dollar Days Back-to-School Sale AND a Giveaway!

The Dollar Days Sale & Giveaway sponsored by The Lesson Cloud!

The Lesson Cloud authors are presenting a big Dollar Days sale this week! PLUS, you can win a $75 gift card to Really Good Stuff in our Back-to-School Giveaway!
You can get great deals on so many teacherspayteachers lessons, activities, printables, and other teaching resources for just $1 or $2. But it's only happening Sunday, July 29th and Monday, July 30th, so you'll need to put those items on your wish list or add to your cart so you don't forget.

To see all the great resources that will be marked down and to enter the $75 giveaway gift card, go to 

The Lesson Cloud Dollar Days

There you can click on the grade-level resources that are marked at super discounts and enter our giveaway!

  I will be marking down several products, including:

Grades 6-12: 
Common Core Graphic Organizers for Grades 9-10
Using Silly Shapes/Bands Bracelets to Teach Symbolism
Mockingjay Novel Unit Supplemental Activities/Lessons
The Life & Times of Shakespeare Powerpoint Presentation
 MLA Citations & Works Cited Student Help/Cheat Sheet 
Character Olympics - The Summer Games


Grades K-4:

  Create an Award Craftivity
Writing Lines Commercial & Personal-Use Clip Art (For handwriting practice) 

Clip Art:

More Seusstastic (Dr. Seuss-themed) Frames, Borders, Backgrounds

Writing Lines Commercial & Personal-Use Clip Art  (For handwriting practice)

Line-Art (or outline) Adults/Teachers Cartoon Characters Clip Art Package

Thanks to Hilary Lewis for designing the cute logo at the top!
Check out her blog {HERE}.

Cute School Supplies Clip Art for Commercial Use

 I started creating these little "props" to use in my own lessons almost a year ago. As you probably know, I am pretty slow to post new products because it does take me a while to complete them. So it was such a relief to finally finish this package of school-related graphics yesterday. It includes over 95 PNG files that can be used commercially and/or for educational and personal use. My only requirement is a link back to my website or my teacher store.

One of the great things about these school supplies is that they can be layered with your favorite characters, as demonstrated below...

...or used on their own.

SIDE NOTE: I have had many questions about "layering" and the difference between JPG (or jpeg) files and PNG files. If you scroll down to the bottom, I included a very brief explanation. :)

My school supplies bundle contains many images in full color as well as line-art, so you can have students color the graphics (plus it saves on ink). Below, I combined the iPad-like tablet with my Handwriting Lines clip art, which comes in a variety of lengths and widths and is so easy to work with when creating products for primary students.

I decided to create my people figures separate from the supplies because I think it adds versatility for the user of the graphics. Have you ever wanted to use an image of a group of items, but one item just didn't fit with what you were making? Now you can make your own groupings, like I did with these sports balls and equipment. (Plus, some teachers may not want the cute little people. But the "props" are still "cool" enough to use with older students.)

Another advantage is with the overall design of your product or scrapbook page. Sometimes you have to tweak items to make them work. Above, I was able to position the golf club and golf ball to suit my needs. Below, the book and ruler in the image were both rotated to fit in the girl's hands perfectly. 

PNG vs. JPG files...

In case I have completely confused you with all this talk about "layering" images, it helps to know a little about the types of images if you plan to design things digitally.  So here's a very condensed explanation to the difference between PNG files and JPG files:

The PNG format makes it possible to knock-out the background, so your images easily layer on top of one another without the white (or whatever color) background overlapping. You cannot layer JPG (or jpeg) files like this. 

To demonstrate, see the image below. The girl on the left is a JPG file and the girl on the right in a PNG file. When each is placed on a purplish background, the JPG file will maintain its white background. The PNG's is knocked-out, allowing you to place additional PNG files on top of it. 

Another difference between the two is PNG files never lose their quality.  JPGs, however, will begin to degrade every time you open them, so over time the quality of the image will not be as sharp. Because of this, PNG files are much larger than JPGs, making JPGs (and GIFs) more ideal for web browsing because they load faster. This was something I learned while teaching journalism and advising yearbook and newspaper (because digital photography was not around when I was in college...yes, I'm that old). I picked up a lot during those years, and continue to learn as technology keeps advancing. That's an advantage to teaching: it forces us to keep learning and passing along that knowledge. Of course, I learn just as much from my students as they learn from me.

If you need help working with images in Microsoft Word (which, in my opinion, is one of the worst programs for design/working with images), you can download this free tutorial. People who use Microsoft and do a lot of designing would probably be better off using Powerpoint or Publisher. 

Since I am a Mac girl, I use the iWork applications (Pages, Keynote) and Adobe's Creative Suites apps: Photoshop and InDesign. Pages is much like InDesign, but much easier, so I have actually converted to using Pages more. If you use a Mac, I highly recommend it!

Back to the clip art...

All of my images are PNG files. On occasion I will include additional JPG files, but I will always include the PNG files. You can find all of my packages in the clip art department of my teacher store. 

Or just click on my button below.

Or if you are looking for specific packages, here are some links to my recent ones:

 I appreciate you stopping by my blog! This post was long overdue, so I apologize for its length. As thanks for reading through it, you can click {HERE} to get some limited-time freebies from some of my new packages. Hurry, though. They will only be available for a limited time. Please read the terms of use if using these for commercial products. Also, they cannot be resold in a clip art package, or altered and resold as clip art. If used in a free product, it must be secured in a PDF document. No exceptions. Thank you!

Get to Know Your Students with a Creative Project

One of my favorite assignments to give my students at the beginning of the year is to create a collage mobile. They are required to fill out a questionnaire of their interests, then based on those answers, create a collage mobile that will hang in the classroom. The third step is to write about the items they chose to include in their collage and why those things are special, or represent who they are.

I like this activity because I'm able to find out the interests of my students and get some classroom decoration up. The 3D effects of a collage adds interest, then hanging them as mobiles make them even more fun. Are they distracting? A little at first. I do give students time to look at them when they first go up. They love seeing what their classmates have created. They stay up most the year and we've even added smaller collages to the originals for true mobiles.

The picture shows how you can assign an addition to the mobile at the end of a novel unit. Have students find images, favorite quotes, and artifacts that relate to the novel.

If you would like the handouts and extensive lesson plan for this project, check here.

Back to School Sale!

Are you ready for back to school? Stock up on resources from August 1st through the 6th and save 20% off everything in my teacher store! This includes all my novel units, presentations, and even my shipped CDs! Make sure you use the TeachersPayTeachers sale code at checkout: B1T1S

What do you think of the new TeachersPayTeachers website? It's a new look for a new year! Enjoy!