Color Scheme

Now let's look at the color scheme of your classroom. If you are using blue, green, or violet hues then you are already aware that color affects our mood and that those colors are calming to your senses and for your students. If you are using yellow, orange, and red as your main color hues, that could present a problem for some teachers, as those colors are known to stimulate and energize our mood.

An educator needs to decorate their classroom to create the learning environment that they are wanting. A librarian will want a calm environment that stimulates reading so a theme of green, blue, or violet will help emit that. A physical education teacher may want a very stimulating environment to increase physical activity. Their choices of red, yellow, and orange would energize the students to be more physically active. In the primary grade levels a teacher might accent a room in yellow, orange, and red as their students learn their color words, but avoid those colors otherwise. As a teacher you are in control of those choices and your learning environment should reflect that.

Enhancement Materials

Your first task is to go through all of your enhancement materials, and give away anything that hasn't been used in the last two years. This will be very difficult for many of you, but please remember that a cluttered room creates a cluttered mind. Also, having a abundance of materials on hand that you never have time to use, may make you feel incompetent and overwhelmed when you don't have time to use them all. The clutter can also create disorder for you, as you try to find the materials that you are required to use or want to utilize. Simplify your life! Scale back to the basics that your school requires. Give away your extra materials to your students, church or a youth residential program. You may want to have a garage sale, but find the strength to remove the extra materials from your classroom. You are probably thinking, "I may need that!" If you are a teacher that is having difficulty taking this step, then you might want to box up your extra items and store them at your home. Then you could rotate enhancement materials each semester or when needed. Remember, this is a start to make your life less complicated so take those baby steps if you need to. Continue to arrange items on your shelves so that you and your students have easy access to them. The visual appearance for your classroom will be appealing and the items that are a necessity will then be accessible. Once you have accomplished this chore you are ready for the next step.

In the Beginning (cont.)

Changing the cosmetic appearance of the room can be the first step to a more productive learning year for all of your students.

Let's start by looking at the foundation and structure of your classroom. Most classrooms are built to accommodate twenty to twenty-five student desks and are the shape of a square. There are four walls with a door, and sometimes you have window(s) with several shelves built in for storage. The majority of schools give their teachers basic teaching tools that their school district requires them to utilize to enhance student learning. Most teachers will purchase several of their own items to accompany their teaching style. What usually happens is you will accumulate more enhancement learning tools for kinesthetic learning than you will ever be able to use. You may also have more copies of academic reinforcement worksheets than you can make use of.