English Room

The summer vacation is here, but I don't seem to enjoy it too much so far. I was busy remodeling the English room at school and then on July 14, when the school's stuff went on their summer vacation and school was closed, I found myself sitting at home thinking about the next school year and I started adding, writing, deleting, designing things to my English site (www.englishatbarlev.com) and so I made this nice presentation about the remodeling so far... Let me first tell you the objectives behind the design :) First, I wanted the kids to have a welcoming place where they feel they want to come and learn. Another thing I noticed during the years I've been teaching is that a lot of kids are afraid of English... They believe it is a hard subject, so I wanted them to love the subject with the help of an attractive English room. Each class (beginning 3rd - 6th grade) has one English Room Lesson per week. During the other times we meet we learn at the regular class ("mother class") I made 6 "corners": Writing Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Computers Grammar Teacher's Corner and a Library. There are 8 seats in each 'corner', so that the kids work in small groups. There are also 'activity pockets' in every 'corner' and so the kids can work on a different assignment every lesson. The activities are based on what we learn in class and they are numbered. At the end of every lesson the kids have to fill a chart saying what they did during the lesson (name of "corner", name of book read, name/number of activity, where did they stop etc) I will continue telling you about the English Room and how it goes... I can't wait! For the meantime - here are some pictures I took during the remodeling.... Please take a look.. What do you think?