Grade 4 PYP Classroom Reveal September 2018

It's finally classroom reveal time again. I was very excited to get cracking on getting my room ready. This year I will teach grade 4. Having been a grade 3 teacher for the last few years and moving to a new classroom, I was very motivated at the thought of creating a fresh space for my students and me. As I will have some of the same students as last year, I wanted to create a learning environment that looked a little different and more mature. As you'll see, I've kept some things that have worked well in the past and I have added in some new systems. Read below for more details!

I'll begin with my favourite. This is the popcorn display just outside the classroom door. On the first day of school, the students are going to write their goals for the year on popcorn-shaped paper. We're then going to analyse them - noting which attributes of the Learner Profile, transdisciplinary skills or PYP attitudes are connected to their goals.

And let's take a look inside the classroom. Here are some views of the whole room. Scroll down to read about specific sections of the room.

 You'll notice there is just a "Learner Profile" title on the door. The children will make the Learner Profile posters in the first week of school. To do so, I'm going to share a Google Slides presentation and they will all be collaborators, adding text, pictures, drawings, photos, etc. as they see fit. This will be used as an interactive display. I will cut out pictures of each student. When they feel that they/their peer has shown an attribute very well, they move the picture to the related attribute. We will regularly discuss who we have moved and what they have done. The skills posters are my own. On the narrow board, we have our class jobs. Each child's name is on a crayon template on a peg. 

As with other years, I will continue to use this polkadot behaviour management clip chart that I got for free from Under The Alphabet Tree (on the tall bulletin board). It has worked very well for me in the past. The purple and orange object hanging on the left of the photograph is my PYP Attitudes certificate, handmade by one of the children in my class last year (and again this year!).

I've displayed the PYP attitudes posters on the cupboard doors, along with our school's mission statement. If you look closely you can see that my "superglue" basket is still going strong! The "Vowels glue words together" poster and "Super Adjectives" word mat are from Sparklebox. These two boards at the back of the room will remain blank until for now. Then they will be filled with student work related to the first unit of inquiry. 

This year I decided to ditch the words "Wonder Wall" and have a "Burning Questions" area instead. I've also put the 8 PYP key concepts around it so that the children's questions can be sorted as they place them on the wall.

Next to the burning questions, we have a reflection area / "Wow work" wall. If you've seen my other classroom reveals, you'll see that I've used homemade Lego superheroes to hold up the essential agreements in the past. As I'm still not ready to part with them, I decided to use Hulk to hold up this title. How cool is the Hulkbusters font? I then hot-glued some Hulk fists to pegs so the kiddies can pin up their favourite work. They can then take the attitudes / Learner Profile attributes or skills from the plastic envelopes and pin on the ones they feel they developed while doing their chosen piece. I made the skills posters. I couldn't resist making the "Reflective" lettering actually reflective. Have a look at my blog post to see how I did it!

Behind you can see this lovely inquiry cycle graphic that I got from Mr. PYP. Then there is this Action board. I downloaded the action cycle posters from The Classroom Contessa. Underneath is a fantastic "What kind of action do I want to take?" poster from Jessica O'Hanley.

Above this is the main unit of inquiry board. I created this display pack last year and love it. I have all of the transdisciplinary themes, Learner Profile attributes, attitudes and key concepts printed and laminated so I can just switch them every time we start a new unit. 

At the front of the room, I made a more grown-up looking calendar in a grey and mint theme. I made a sheet for our birthdays using the same colour scheme. I'm very excited about the "Student of the Week" section. This year, I'll choose a student on Monday to be our Student of the Week. The other students will be encouraged to note instances where they demonstrate attributes of the Learner Profile. They can add this to the sheet. The sheet will be given to the student at the end of the week. As you can see, this sheet is put on with little pegs so it's easy to change weekly. Also on this display you'll see some reflection posters based on Marzano's Levels of Understanding. I just changed this one what I had previously to match the colour scheme and fit better.

I also put together those clock labels to help with reading digital and analogue time. I made them using these gorgeous free glitter digital papers from Jena Hudson at Sew Much Music.

On the other side is my personal teacher board. There I have these 3D cacti that I made over the summer. Read about how I made them in this blog post. You can also see my name card which I made with this Southpark Avatar Creator. I'm still in love with my Van Gogh "Starry Night" laptop case. It makes it so much easier to find my computer if we move around in staff meetings / collaborative planning sessions. 

In the green cup, you'll find these Ladybug & Chat Noir flipsticks. I use these to choose students at random. You simply flip them over and then you can easily see who you have not yet chosen. 

Like last year, I've displayed the PYP key concepts around the board. I got these fantastic keys for free from Ms. Murdoch. I have also attached my remote controls to the side of the board using adhesive velcro squares. 

I'm reusing the giant symbols and header of "Magic Maths Words" display. The students will add useful words to it as the year goes on to help with problem-solving e.g. multiplication words could be "multiply," "groups of," "by," "double," "times," etc. I got the title banner from Sparklebox, the symbols from Fun for Learning and the adhesive googly eyes from Flying Tiger.

If you've got this far, thank you for taking the time to have a look around our room!