It's the Final Countdown!!!

It's the last week of this school year! There for a while I thought it would never end. But this one snuck up on me fast! Since our grades are due before the official last day, I've decided to take this week and make it kind of easy on myself and the kids. Let's be honest, they are done (and so am I). So this week we are making stellated icosahedron stars out of straws and ribbon. I got the idea from a wonderful blog I follow. Here's the link to the activity: Dog Days of Math. I saw it and immediately thought 'last week of school!' I teach 9-12, so I'm interested to see how to plan turns out with the different age groups. Even in high school, something that interests freshmen probably won't have the same effect on juniors...yet again it may. I'm hoping this is one of those things.

While we build our stars, I'm busy getting final grades in and cleaning out my room. EVERYTHING has to go since I'm moving schools. You never really know how much crap you accumulate until it's time to find a new home for it. Three years is all it took for me. 

Since I didn't have a blog when the school year started, no one knows what my classroom looks like. Here are some pics from the beginning of the school year. Personally, I hate boring classrooms. Kids don't like looking at stark white walls for 50 minutes, and I don't like looking at them for 7+ hours each day. I tried to find a happy medium of cute but age appropriate. My kids loved my room from the first day, which was good because I was not changing it after making all of those dang pom poms! 

So here's my room at the beginning of the year:

 This is the view from the door.

 Another view from the door to the closet. I kept my calculators in an over the door shoe rack that had numbers glued to it. I liked this idea, but I still had a thousand calculators go missing by the end. I still have yet to come up with a good system to borrow calculators.

 The view from the door to my desk/projector area.

 My desk area. Yes, that's a picture of a cat in a suit.

 My desk. Unfortunately it did not stay like this for long. Teenagers are lovely because they think if something looks nice they have to find a way to destroy it. Before the end of the first quarter the front of my desk was completely ruined. My pencil organizer was a lovely pinterest idea...tin cans, paint, and a plastic plate were all I needed to make this beauty. BTW the dinosaur is my hall pass. He's awesome.

 My homework center. Each class has its own crate that holds extra papers used each week throughout the quarter. It helps when I have absences so I can just grab their papers when they return and know exactly where they are located.

My own bulletin board. I'm lucky enough to have one right outside my door. In years past I would change this quite a bit. I quickly learned that in high school no one really cares about your bulletin board so I made mine match my theme and kept it up all year long.

So this is my classroom at the beginning of the year. Here it is now:

It looks way different. It'll be even crazier once I get all of the stuff out.

 The cereal boxes along the ledge of the windows are what students use to keep all graded work in throughout the year. I make them keep EVERYTHING for a couple of reasons: 1. They can use past tests to study for finals, etc., and 2. They can't tell me that I lost something which is why it's missing in the gradebook. If they don't have it, then I never got it.

 I know my tables are in the same arrangement that they were in the beginning. I've changed my room around several times, but I always revert back to this in the end.

Cleaning out this room has been challenging, which is why I went ahead and started the process even though school isn't out. It's amazing how much crap you accumulate over the years!

Anyways, I can't believe this school year is finally almost over. This one has definitely been the most challenging for me. I've had a lot of health issues and a lot of personal issues this school year which has caused me to miss a lot of days. Also, my kids were pretty difficult to say the least. I was so excited for this year to begin, and when it did I quickly learned it was going to be a hard year for me. So now that it's almost over, I can finally smile and be glad that I survived. :)