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Big City View: Going Places Classroom Theme

"Moving on up...."


"My 'Teacher's Space'"
This is a simple canvas of city lights that I enhanced by using an
old desk lamp with a bendable neck.  It's perfect to spotlight this scene!




Growing up watching the sitcom, The Jeffersons, I couldn't help but think of this song when creating my "Big City View" or "Going Places" theme for my middle school classroom.  In fact, the theme song to this sitcom has been stuck in my head, for days.  :-D...  I find myself singing "Moving on up/ to the East side...... I finally got a piece of the pie...."  If you aren't familiar with the show, then it is hard to imagine why this song fits perfectly with the underlying idea behind this classroom theme.


First, I have to admit something.  I didn't start out thinking, "Okay, I'm going to create a theme that shows big skyscrapers, bright city lights, and famous places across the world."  Actually,  It just came together as I began collecting things for my classroom, before the 2012-3013 school year started.

I began looking for a canvas type room divider, so that  I could  create a small "reading center" in my classroom (yes, middle school and high school classrooms can STILL benefit from centers... :-).  After days of looking, I felt like I had found the perfect divider.  It was modern and vibrant, showing the image of New York's skyline.



It was from this piece of decor that I began adding to the class theme, which, actually, turned out to be several themes, meaning basically the same thing:  "Moving on up"... which is my classes' goal this year when they take their MCT II Test.  Each student is competing against their own score, and he/she is setting a goal of at least 5 % better than they did last year.  So, YES!!!!  "Moving on up" is an appropriate name for our decor.

However, I didn't feel that I wanted to base the room's decor simply around a standardized test, so I took it a step further, and I thought about how many places students visit, sitting right in the classroom through books, virtual tours of sites around the world, etc.  So, I decided, I had to also use "Going Places" as another phrase to describe our classroom.

I haven't completed all of my class decorations, but I have most things in place.  A lot of the decor was made from cardboard covered with vinyl type black and white material, and I even covered a small wooden crate that a large desk was delivered in, to create a mini-room divider.  I simply used a staple gun and some of the vinyl black and white material, and it looks great!  If you have any questions about anything you see, please feel free to email me.

I am new to the blog community, and I would love to share my blog with you.  You can subscribe to the blog by entering your e-mail on the right side of the page.  I update about once, weekly, and it's usually about things going on in my classroom or about various things teachers face every day.

I, also, LOVE to hear from my readers.  PLEASE, feel free to comment on any post, past or present.  I am interested in your ideas, and I'm considering starting to periodically have a guest blogger to post about something going on in their classroom.  So, let me know if you have something you would like to share, and I will definitely consider you as a potential "guest" blogger.


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