My teaching space

In the past few weeks I have seen teachers on Twitter getting their classrooms ready for September, and the great photos they have posted are making me feel very jealous! I am a visiting language teacher, a one person travelling circus who carries ALL these things in her hands:-)

I park 10 minutes away from my school, that is a fair bit of walk for me every Tuesday and Thursday morning, carrying my "classroom". And because I like challenges, on my way back home, I go to the charity shop just a few minutes away from my school, and buy even more things I then have to carry back to the car! The ladies who work in the shop worry about me if I don't turn up on Tue/Thu, we have become very fond of each other over the years, so I pop in all the time. I have bought lots of treasures there for my teaching: look at my puppet Valentín, or the pizza hat he is wearing (for the "Soy una pizza song.")

Here is a list of my teaching space:

The basket: it is my BRAIN, it has general teaching stuff: a lesson plan book, my iPad with converter for the board , dictionaries, a kitchen timer, fly swats, a Spain scarf (for the mystery voice), fake moustaches for detective games, reward stickers (from The Language Stickers Company), reward notes to send home, CDs,one kilogram of blu tack, a USB stick with a million songs/videos/PowerPoints/YouTube clips,the talking hamster, and the parrot, who flies around the classroom in every single lesson I teach in the first 5 minutes asking questions in Spanish.

 

Two big yellow bags: I bought these at the airport duty free shop for £1 a few years ago, they are very sturdy and look great. I teach in 2 schools, there is a bag for each.

The 3rd bag (I love Madrid, it says): it is for eTwinning/Spanish club/crafts. In the picture you can also see some playmats, they are only with me occassionaly when I feel I need to burn extra calories!The playmat activities were inspired by Vicky Cooke and Julie Prince.

As a reward, 2-3 pupils can carry my basket, bags and CD player from one room to the other after the class. They absolutely love it, it's better than offering chocolate!

My desk: Well, I don't really have one, nor do I have an office... My teaching resources had been stored all over the house in the past 5 years, but this spring my husband agreed to give me half his loft space, which is his beloved art studio. Because I got there second, I got the space just under the roof where I can't actually stand up:-) I kneel, crawl, sit or lie when I am up there and knocked my head on the beams and ceiling so many times, I don't feel the pain any more. Here everything is put away in topic boxes, each box/drawer has toys, lesson plans and activity descriptions. I have separate shelves for Intercultural Understanding, children's books and stationary. I have big buckets for eTwinning, ALL Primary hub stuff and European Day of Languages rewards (to order free stuff, see my EDL blog post).

On my wall I have language teaching posters I bought from the Association for Language Learning. You can order them from the ALL website.

I know primary Spanish teachers who have their own rooms:  I have seen Carmen's classroom pictures on her blog and Fatima Duerden posted some pictures of hers in the Facebook group before. They both look fabulous, I wish I could be a pupil sitting there in their lessons:-)

But don't think I have always lived like this.... on a different planet in a previous life, I had my own language school, in an old train carriage, heated by a stove:-)

update 31/8/2014: I have just finished my planning on my kitchen table, on a huge sheet of paper!

Happy New Year to everybody going back to school next week!