Arrange Your Classroom Online!

The other day, I published a post with an amazing classroom (click here if you want to view that post).  because I'm sure that these first days of school without students, most of you are thinking of how to arrange the furniture and the spaces in your classroom. Having a well organized environment will help teachers and students to feel more comfortable in class and this will promote concentration and motivation towards the learning.

Today, I would like to share with you 'Classroom Architect' which is an excellent tool to arrange the furniture and the spaces of your classroom and see the result at a glance.

I encourage you to try it because it's very easy to use!
And please, tell me if you have found it useful!

An Amazing Classroom

The past few days I have been publishing lots of posts with ideas for organizing our classrooms because we are preparing everything before our pupils come back to school and I think that they can be useful for most of you. I promise that soon I will post new entries about different topics! ;)

Today, I would like to show you an amazing classroom that I found on the Internet and I think that could be interesting to share with you some photos in order to compare our classrooms with it and maybe we can get some ideas to improve the organization of ours. 

This classroom was designed by the author of the blog http://tunstalltimes.blogspot.com.es/ which I recommend you have a look around because you will find there lots of great ideas there. 

I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did it!

 The door way.

A view of the whole classroom. You can see how the tables are arranged to work in small groups.

They have some corners for other types of group work such as small group instruction.

The awesome library!

 The computers area with a Math reference wall.

A lot of space for storage and lots of cute decorations.

Remember that if you want to see more pictures about this classroom or the original post you can click here.

Now it's your turn!

Wouldn't you love to work in a classroom like this one? 

Can we find this kind of classrooms here in Spain? Yes, Where? No, Why not?

Organizing Our Classroom Materials

To have our classrooms well organized is as important as promoting good habits and routines in class for our students and us. Remember that all of these will help our students to feel more secure and comfortable especially when learning a foreign language. No doubt that teachers need this organization to simplify our job.

Today, I would like to share with you some ways to organize the common materials for the whole classroom.

HANGING BOXES ON THE WALL.

source: http://burtonavenue.blogspot.com.es

We can recycle boxes, paint, label and hang them on the wall to put inside everything we need.

TEACHER TOOLBOX

source: http://mrsrojasteaches.blogspot.com.es

Another option is to create a teacher or a classroom toolbox using those some plastic boxes and labeling each box with attractive paper.

CHART STAND

Source: http://www.kindergartenkindergarten.com

We can use old PVC pieces to create this stand or we can even buy a cheap clothes stand to hang our posters and charts.

Source: http://mrsterhune.blogspot.com.au/

Here you can see in detail how to hang our material. We can use hangers and book rings to hang our charts and even we can label them for a better organization.


CEREAL BOXES

Source: http://naptimedecorator.blogspot.com.es/

 You can hang some boxes on the wall to keep different papers in order.

 Source: http://www.teachercreated.com/

Using cereal boxes can be a cheap way to organize our teaching material by topic such as games, posters, flashcards...

Source: http://margdteachingphotos.weebly.com/

Each student can decorate a cereal box and use it to store their finished worksheets, notes for home...

Do you have any special way to organize the common material for the whole classroom?

Organizing Your School Supplies

This week most of the Spanish teachers are coming back to school and and starting to prepare the new course. Today, I would like to share with you some ideas to help teachers to organize their school supplies.

RECYCLING MATERIALS

As you can see in the photo below, you don't need to waste a lot of money because you can recycle a lot of different materials to put all your school supplies in order, such as:

- Egg cartoons and cupcake molds for the stuff you always need to have on hand.

Source: http://www.bhg.com/

- Food boxes keep all your supplies together, but each one has its own space.

Source: http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.com.es/

(If you click on this link you will find a good tutorial on how to create some cute drawers organizers using food boxes. )

- Spice Racks to hold all the smallest supplies like paperclips, tacks, rubber bands...

http://www.redbookmag.com/

- Painted cans for your pens, pencils, crayons, felt-tip pens, etc.

Source: http://www.controllingmychaos.com/

- Old cupcake pans to organize other small stuff too.

Source: http://tatteredstyle.blogspot.com.es/

TEACHERS WITHOUT A CLASSROOM.

Some ideas for those teachers who don't have a classroom and they need to carry all their stuff with them!

- A bag where you can put a a portable filing cabinet inside with a lot of space to carry all that you will need with you: your plan book, a binder, files... and a lot of pockets for the smaller supplies.

Source: http://notjustteach.blogspot.com.es/

- And why not even use a bucket covered with a piece of fabric full of pockets?

Source: http://mykotori.blogspot.com.es/

What are your tips for organizing your school supplies? Feel free to share your tips with us!

Bookmark Organizers - Symbaloo

Along the same lines as the previous post, I realized that most of my colleagues often have trouble finding links to some specific webpages. Sometimes they find an interesting webpage they would like to use in the classroom, but they aren't able to access it when they need to because they may have bookmarked it in their favourites at home or they may have written it on a piece of paper and they lost it.

For this reason, I want to share with you an online application that is very useful for organizing your links. There are many different applications of this type available online, such as Delicious, Diigo... but my favourite is Symbaloo. 

Symbaloo is an online visual bookmark organizer that is very easy to use. 

Some of the advantages of this application are:

- It is free, you just have to register.

- It works online. You don't have to download any program and you can access your Symbaloo wherever you are. You just need a computer with a working internet connection.

- It is organized by different Webmixes (that work like desktops, which you can organize as you choose, e.x. by topic: Math, Science, Language...). Each Webmix has a grid of boxes where you can drag and drop your links.

- You can customize each box with colours in order to organize your links and recognize them  at a glance (e.x. blue boxes could be related to grammar, red boxes to stories, etc.).

Now, I would like to know about you!
How do you organize the links to your favourite webpages? Do you use online applications or do you prefer other more traditional ways?

Resources for English Teachers

Most of the time, teachers need teaching resources such as posters, flashcards, games... to complement, expand our lessons or just to fill in those minutes before finishing the class. For this reason, I would like to share with you some links where you can find some useful resources.

Mes-English: I love this webpage. It is full of printable material such as flashcards, games (bingos, memories, dice...) and worksheets that I used when I was studying for my degree and I keep using them. The pictures are very attractive and motivating for kids. You can also find videos, materials to work phonics, printable colouring, among other material. Everything is classified by topic and it is very easy to use.

LearnEnglish Kids: I also enjoy this webpage. You can find different material depending on the topic that you are interested in or the skill you want to work through. It combines a lot of interactive activities with printable material. The idea of this webpage is to not only to be used only by teachers. It is especially designed to be used by young learners who also want to practise English in a fun way. Needless to say it was created by The British Council, 'The worlds largest English language teaching organisation'. 

KizClub: Another great webpage full of resources to learn the alphabet, phonics, stories and nursery rhymes to read, crafts to do, games to print... Highly recommended especially if you are working with very young learners.

I hope these links are as useful for you as much as they are for me.

I will be glad to hear if you have some interesting links with resources to learn and teach as well.

The Adventure Begins

The adventure begins!

The aim of this blog is to compile resources, ideas, thoughts... that are lost on the Internet and that are useful and interesting to me. As an ESL teacher, most of the posts from this blog focus on teaching languages, especially English, but I hope other teachers, parents or students can find them useful and inspiring too.

You are more than welcome to Candies For Teachers and feel free to comment, give your opinion and suggestions.