Tour of the new room!

A painting a family gave me last year

- I love it!

Welcome back to school! Wow what a whirlwind August!  I am finally settled into my new room and have a chance to give a virtual tour of my favorite things (and things that I hope to add super soon).  I am so excited for this bigger space for my students to Learn, Sing, Dance and Play!





 
I moved rooms this year, and this is what my room looked like before I left for Hungary in July.  It was a mess! I was super excited to have more space (including a chorus room) but not super excited to clean everything up.

What a mess!

Before I left I spent a few hours working and then when I got back used about 3 full days to get it all cleaned up and ready to go.  

Now I have 2 rooms (all in one modular classroom), one for general music and one for chorus (YAY no more chorus in the gym or cafeteria!) 



 The chorus side now looks like this:  I have my risers set up, as well as the piano in the center of the room and cabinets full of small instruments, classroom supplies, etc.  I am also storing a bunch of stuff in the closet and behind the risers as well.  
                                                                 

Front of Chorus Room (risers face this wall)

Right side of Chorus Room- My Desk!

Center of Chorus Room, looking at risers

Check out my
 chorus room!








It will be so awesome for the kids to practice on the risers every day instead of just the 10 minutes before each concert.  They are going to look so much more professional this year! I am also doing warm-ups for other grades on the risers during general music so that they are used to standing up there for when their grade does a show.  YAY risers!

Instrument Wall

The general music side is actually the same size as the previous room I had, but because I don't have the cabinets or bass bars in that side it looks and feels much bigger.  On one wall I have all my instrument shelves, including a few of many types of instruments I may use throughout the year while the rest are stored in the chorus side.  It will be so much easier to get the orff instruments out now because they are no longer blocked by dulcimers, or bass bars, etc.  I can also set them up before a class in the chorus side and we can just move over for those songs so I don't have to worry about students getting them out or putting them away quickly.  I hope to put a music history time line above the instrument shelves soon. 

Front of GM room

Along the front of the room is my bench, SMARTboard, and dry erase boards.  Just like last year, these will all be used often.  I love my SMARTboard!  I also have a huge grand staff that will be great for teaching staff anything because students can see from all the way across the room. 

MUSIC IS:

The back corner of the room has my MUSIC IS "bulletin board".  My room has walls that you can staple into or push thumbtacks into so there really isn't a designated bulletin board area.  On my music is board I have an acrostic saying all the subjects music teaches, and then a smaller frame describing those subjects more in detail.  Music is:  Math, Physical Education, History, Reading and Writing, and Science.   My rules are also framed right around the corner.   Rather than saying "rules" they start with "In This Classrrom" and then I go on to list positive ways we can take care of ourselves, each other and the classroom (our Wilson Way) while in the music room.

The back wall will soon have a word wall- probably just a simple one with each grade having a ribbon that I can stick words to as we learn them using wooden clothespins.  Something that we can easily reference, but that wont be too visually distracting.  I will be sure to make another post just on how I decided to do the word wall- I can never quite decide how I organize it, teaching 6 grades but when I saw the clothespin idea it seemed to fit.