with special attention paid to identity, stephenson & turner created a welcoming entrance to the school, which elicits a sense of pride and playfulness.

with special attention paid to identity, stephenson & turner created a welcoming entrance to the school, which elicits a sense of pride and playfulness.

ThenDesign Architecture has designed the new North Olmsted 6-12 campus located in North Olmsted, Ohio. The new North Olmsted 6-12 campus is located across the one-and-a-half-mile […]

Motivating students to take ownership of their learning

School environments should fulfill a student’s need to feel engaged intellectually and emotionally in the learning process, Jim Childress writes.

An ambitious study of 153 classrooms in the United Kingdom provides the best evidence that flexible spaces can boost academic performance.

Image 25 of 31 from gallery of Rockford Public School / CannonDesign. Diagram 01

Image 4 of 16 from gallery of Heathfield Primary School / Holmes Miller Architect. Photograph by Andrew Lee

Browse through our Library Design Gallery to get school library ideas & inspiration for your project. We have many years of experience designing and installing libraries in primary schools, secondary schools and children's areas in public libraries.

Come Join Us The Glasshouse Primary School PNG - Peace SVG stock Premium Graphics for Crafters, Graphic Designers & Businesses.

A gallery of shortlisted projects in the Colour in Commercial Design category of the 2012 Australian Interior Design Awards.

Image 7 of 21 from gallery of Jacobsvlinder School / DKV architecten. Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode

Looking for some great books for career lessons? You'll love these books for your school counseling classroom guidance lessons!

FS1 Planning board

Wouldn’t it be nice if all schools had a designated space for teachers to gather together on a regular basis to learn and share ideas? Where they could relax a bit, enjoy a cup of coffee, and consider how to improve their instruction? I thought so too. That’s why I really wanted to create a […]

Holly and I had been wanting to do video announcements for our school for years. The tech department kept telling us they couldn't support it with our current system. We were determined to find a way to do it and with the approval of our principal, we made it happen! I have to give Holly all the credit for figuring it all out. She's amazingly creative! First, I'll take you through some of the basic steps and introduce you to the apps you will need. Then, I will tell you why you have to do this at your school in some form or fashion. I promise, it will transform your school culture and start to the day immediately!!! We have an announcements team made up of three of us teachers. We do a weekly rotation. So, I will make announcements one week out of every three weeks. We do a whole new set of announcements everyday. I have heard of other schools only doing it every couple or few days. We make our announcements in iMovie. You can get the app in the AppStore for around $10. We each had to get it for our own iPads. There are tons of tutorials out there on how to use iMovie, so I am not going to get into the technical parts of iMovie. It's an app that allows you to insert videos and photos and turn them into "movies." You can insert text, titles, and music. There are all sorts of possibilities. You just have to get in there and play with it. We do have to get permission from parents, of course, to use students' photos in our announcements, since we are using the internet. We do not publish announcements for the public or even our parents to see. Once we make our movie for announcements, we upload it to Dropbox. We then e-mail the link to the video to our principal who sends it out to the rest of the faculty. You can either make a movie or a trailer in iMovie. We make new trailers all the time for our opening to announcements. We take tons of photos and videos of our students. You can insert those into the trailer templates and it creates it for you with any text you want to add. There are lots of templates to choose from and they're really fun! Every week, a hallway will be responsible for sending us videos for announcements. We ask them to send us videos of students saying the pledge, our mission statement, school rules, and birthdays for that day. It gives all grade levels the opportunity to be a part of announcements. It's also great for encouraging students to have excellent behavior so they can get a chance to be on announcements in front of the whole school. They feel like movie stars when they make it! We have lots of different segments that are always changing. We like to keep announcements fresh and new. We always have a weather report and we make any general announcements needed. Anyone can send us a video of something they want announced. We always give a shout out each day, as well. It may be to a student for making a great choice or to a staff member for being helpful. Another segment that we love doing is "Look who got caught reading!" We take photos of students that we catch reading and put them on announcements. You would not believe how much that encouraged students to start reading! EVERYWHERE! ALL. THE. TIME. We were amazed! They wanted to be known as a READER to the whole school. Students who never read were reading at lunch, in the gym, waiting for the bus, you name it! We like to incorporate fun and educational videos from YouTube, too. Sometimes, it's based on holidays, what lots of classrooms are studying, motivational videos, etc. We also do a Jammin' Minute for exercise, so we like to put Just Dance clips in to get them moving. You can actually get an app called Download Video Pro. It's the app above. You can upload a video to the app and it allows you to save it to your device. Then, you're able to insert those videos into iMovie. I have the Dropbox app on my iPad, too. Every photo and video on your iPad will automatically be uploaded to your dropbox. After you make your movie in iMovie, you will save it to your camera roll. It will get uploaded automatically, if you chose that option, to Dropbox. From there, you can e-mail it to whomever you wish. I so wish I could share a finished announcements video with you! If we make one for the first day of school with no student faces, which is very possible, I will share it. Announcements have really transformed the culture at our school. If ever there was a day where we were unable to get announcements uploaded, the students (and teachers) were devastated. Our announcements were anywhere from 5 to to minutes long, so that gave teachers time to do those morning routine tasks we have to do. I hope you try video announcements with iMovie. If you do, please let me know! I would love to have more ideas for new segments to add.

Large range of flexible and custom common room and sixth form furniture. Design your own common room with a choice of shapes and sizes

Start the school year off organized using this FREE 2018 - 2019 calendar. Large spaces with lots of room to add your own events or tasks. LOW PREP -- Just print and go!

This listing is for 7 of our most popular anti-bullying messages to help promote kindness in your school. With each decal measuring 18" wide, this set is perfect for decorating school restroom stall doors, classroom doors or use the colorful decals throughout your classroom or school hallways to help spread kindness messages wherever they are needed most. This kindness decal set is a great way to decorate your school or classroom for October's Bullying Prevention Month. Each message can be a topic of discussion during your Anti-Bullying curriculum. This set includes each of the following phrases at the sizes shown. They can be ordered in Multiple Colors (Primary or Pastels), All Black or All White. You can even send us a note letting us know what colors (using our color chart) you would like each decal. Only one color per decal. This will allow you to utilize your own school colors to decorate your school with the kindness quotes. Each set will come with easy to follow instructions, a professional application squeegee tool and a free practice decal to become familiar with the installation process. We have chosen to include the "Wash Your Hands" decal as the free practice decal with this listing in hopes it can also be utilized in your school to help keep students healthy and safe. Kindness Counts - 18"w x 18"h Be The Good In The World / Believe There Is Good In The World - 18"w x 22.5"h Be The Best Version Of You - 18"w x 17"h Be The Reason Someone Smiles Today - 18"w x 18.5"h Kindness Begins With Me - 18"w x 11"h Don't Let Anyone Ever Dull Your Sparkle - 18"w x 18.5"h One Kind Word Can Change Someone's Entire Day - 18"w x 26"h Wash Your Hands - (works beautifully on bathroom mirrors too!) - 17"w x 4"h - The color will be one of the colors you select for your order, you can specify if you like. These decals are non-toxic and safe for use in schools and can be washed, when needed. If you don't see a size or color you are looking for, let me know! Does your school use purchase orders or looking for a custom decal that can even include your school logo or mascot? Contact me! Some of my best designs begin with a customer request! Our wall transfers are made of a high quality vinyl that is die cut (no clear background) and made specifically for interior wall application so it actually looks painted on! We offer the largest collection of beautiful matte finish colors, over 70 to choose from for the perfect match! Our wall transfers can be applied to any clean, smooth and flat surface. Put them on your walls, mirrors, windows - anywhere you want! Use our free squeegee tool to easily apply your decal like a pro! Each of your orders comes with a free sample word to familiarize yourself with the install process prior to using your purchased decal. Some walls with a heavy texture may take more effort to apply and won’t sit as flat. They work beautifully on flat surfaces such as doors, mirrors, smooth walls and windows. They will also work on block walls so long as the wall is painted with several coats of quality paint that makes the block non-porous. Would you like to try a sample first, contact me or order from www.TheSimpleStencil.com ·Transform your walls into works of art in a matter of minutes! Less expensive, faster, cleaner, and easier than painting and removable! Looking for a custom design? See my custom design listing or contact me for free design services, some of my favorite products started with a customer request!

Are you on the Sunshine Committee this year? Some schools call it Social Committee. Whatever the name, it serves the same purpose. Usually there is a little arm twisting at the beginning of the year to get staff members to pay their dues. If your school normally doesn't allow the staff to wear jeans, you might ask your administrator if your committee could give people who pay dues a "Jean Day Coupon" that allows teachers to wear jeans on one day of their choosing. It's like a "get out of jail" card. Through the years, there has been some grumbling at some of my schools about our committee. I think this happens when there are not clear cut guidelines. There needs to be guidelines in writing and transparency with the finances. Here are a few topics to discuss when you are ready to write some guidelines: Leadership: officers and their duties I highly recommend the treasurer giving a report at the faculty meetings at least quarterly. Boss Day in October: Will the committee purchase the gift? If so, what is the budget? Appreciation Day/Week: Which staff members do you recognize? How and what is the budget? Morale booster activities: when and budget Staff parties: When, where, budget Showers: baby/wedding - Does the committee provide anything for the shower, if so what is the budget. Is it for the first baby and first wedding or other? Death: Does the committee send something from the faculty? If so, what and what is the budget? What relationship to the staff member should it be when you do this? I.E. Immediate family member Holidays: Does the committee purchase holiday gifts for any staff members? If so, who and what is the budget? I typed up a few things that I have done at some of my schools that you might like, too. These are fun activities that boost morale. Do you have a staff member that is your PTA representative? If the PTA ask you for suggestions, you might suggest that they organize food during your conferences. I helped organize this at my daughter's middle school. Her school had a week of Parent-Teacher Conferences. Students had school for half a day and then teachers met with parents the other half. Our PTA organized food the first three days for the teachers. We knew that the teachers had conferences at different times and wouldn't eat at the same time so the food had to stay fresh for a long time. We organized a salad bar one day, a nacho bar another day, and heavy appetizers the final day. This was the most popular thing that our committee organized. Click HERE to download this freebie. Looking for more tips? Check out my Beginning of the Year Pinterest board. Click on the picture below. Fern has a few tips to share with you, too. Be sure to hop over to her blog! Each week, Fern and I will share a teacher tip. We love to read teacher blogs and the latest teacher idea books and hope you do, too! Stop by Fern's blog and my blog each week for our latest tips. We hope you will share your ideas, too. Each week we will choose one person who shared a tip on our blog who will get a $10 shopping trip. We will announce the winner on the following Tuesday's post. Click HERE to read Melinda's tip. Do you have a staff morale booster tip to share? Be sure to include your email so I can contact you if you're the winner of the $10 shopping trip. You must leave your email address in order to win. Looking for more ideas? Click on the pictures below. An InLinkz Link-up Sources to make my blog post graphics can be found HERE. Click HERE to read my blog's disclosure statement.

Turn blank spaces into inspiring places!

Are you on the Sunshine Committee this year? Some schools call it Social Committee. Whatever the name, it serves the same purpose. Usually there is a little arm twisting at the beginning of the year to get staff members to pay their dues. If your school normally doesn't allow the staff to wear jeans, you might ask your administrator if your committee could give people who pay dues a "Jean Day Coupon" that allows teachers to wear jeans on one day of their choosing. It's like a "get out of jail" card. Through the years, there has been some grumbling at some of my schools about our committee. I think this happens when there are not clear cut guidelines. There needs to be guidelines in writing and transparency with the finances. Here are a few topics to discuss when you are ready to write some guidelines: Leadership: officers and their duties I highly recommend the treasurer giving a report at the faculty meetings at least quarterly. Boss Day in October: Will the committee purchase the gift? If so, what is the budget? Appreciation Day/Week: Which staff members do you recognize? How and what is the budget? Morale booster activities: when and budget Staff parties: When, where, budget Showers: baby/wedding - Does the committee provide anything for the shower, if so what is the budget. Is it for the first baby and first wedding or other? Death: Does the committee send something from the faculty? If so, what and what is the budget? What relationship to the staff member should it be when you do this? I.E. Immediate family member Holidays: Does the committee purchase holiday gifts for any staff members? If so, who and what is the budget? I typed up a few things that I have done at some of my schools that you might like, too. These are fun activities that boost morale. Do you have a staff member that is your PTA representative? If the PTA ask you for suggestions, you might suggest that they organize food during your conferences. I helped organize this at my daughter's middle school. Her school had a week of Parent-Teacher Conferences. Students had school for half a day and then teachers met with parents the other half. Our PTA organized food the first three days for the teachers. We knew that the teachers had conferences at different times and wouldn't eat at the same time so the food had to stay fresh for a long time. We organized a salad bar one day, a nacho bar another day, and heavy appetizers the final day. This was the most popular thing that our committee organized. Click HERE to download this freebie. Looking for more tips? Check out my Beginning of the Year Pinterest board. Click on the picture below. Fern has a few tips to share with you, too. Be sure to hop over to her blog! Each week, Fern and I will share a teacher tip. We love to read teacher blogs and the latest teacher idea books and hope you do, too! Stop by Fern's blog and my blog each week for our latest tips. We hope you will share your ideas, too. Each week we will choose one person who shared a tip on our blog who will get a $10 shopping trip. We will announce the winner on the following Tuesday's post. Click HERE to read Melinda's tip. Do you have a staff morale booster tip to share? Be sure to include your email so I can contact you if you're the winner of the $10 shopping trip. You must leave your email address in order to win. Looking for more ideas? Click on the pictures below. An InLinkz Link-up Sources to make my blog post graphics can be found HERE. Click HERE to read my blog's disclosure statement.

Woo Hoo! Time to cheer! My classroom is FINISHED :) My inspiration for this classroom color scheme is my obsession with organization...

My Annual "Presidency Freebie Kit" for Primary is finally ready for 2018! As always it includes binder covers for each member of the Presidency + 1" spines, binder covers for the 4 manuals that will be used for 2018 + 1" spines, two types of door signs and two sizes of Sharing Time Assignment Cards. Your pins and shares help me keep fun sets like this free... Please PIN before downloading... thanks! DOWNLOAD FROM MY SHOP FREE! You might also be interested in... SEE ALL 2018 PRIMARY PRINTABLES Happy Printing! Don't miss new printables, freebies and discounts! FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, PINTEREST or SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER SHOP NOW | WHAT IS SCRAPBOOK MAX? | TERMS OF USE | DISCLOSURE | CONTACT

Every veteran classroom teacher worth their grain in salt will tell you that rituals and routines are a necessary part of the management of their students. It would be impossible to manage a room full of 2nd graders who decide to walk into their classroom and pick what they want to do! It is

A Place for Wonder Book Study (Heard & McDonough, 2009)

As an element of restorative justice, dialogue circles foster a safe space for open discussion.

WARNING: This room is ah-mazing! I know how lucky we are to have it, I talk more about how we can afford it near the bottom of this SUPER long post. I can only take about 1% credit for its existence. I was in charge of gathering, organizing and labeling the leveled readers. I also put in my two cents about the unit theme boxes and was on the literacy committee that helped organize the Big Books. The real credit goes to our two AWESOME instructional coaches that made this room look how it does today. You may see some extra piles/boxes in some pictures, this is because we are constantly finding MORE books to put into this room. Okay, so let's get acquainted! For the last 6 years my school has used a Houghton Mifflin basal series (which we'll call HM from here on out). My county purchased a large kit of HM so each teacher had a full pack of leveled readers. When we found out we were no long allowed to use HM and had to switch in to Common Core mode we didn't want to just throw these books away. Especially because they are already leveled and we knew we would need some small group instruction books. So, we collected ALL of them, they were all organized and put into the common core room! Here's how they look today. The levels correlate to Fountas and Pinnell, which is what we use since it also correlates to our Reading 3D mClass assessments. When organizing, our goal was to make it very easy for a teacher to walk in and find the genre/level/theme they were looking for. You can see the box of clothes pins which is used to "check out" books. Whatever bag you take, you put a clothes pin on the box with your name so you know where to put it back when you're done. We have a few teachers who check on clothes pins that have been clipped for a long time and kindly remind those teachers to return books if they are done with them, so they don't end up in their rooms and are lost forever. There is so much organization here it makes my head spin. The color of the label matches the grade level that is appropriate for the books (these are the same colors on the grade level unit boxes a little ways down). Pink: Kindergarten Goldenrod: 1st Grade Blue: 2nd Grade Green: 3rd Grade Purple: 4th Grade Yellow: 5th Grade Here you'll see there are shapes on each label too. Those shapes indicate fiction or non-fiction. When you get to the actual bag of books (which contain a set of 10-20), it is broken down ever further. It's kinda like a secret code, check out the next picture to crack the code! (sorry for the glare!) Here's a picture of what the label on each bag looks like. Now this I can take credit for, I made ALL the labels. I took me from January to June last year to do this. It was quite an undertaking. The bags have even more shapes on them, below is a chart that explains those shapes. How did we know how to organize all these leveled readers this way? Well it turns out that HM has a nice little Reference Guide. If you're wondering what it looks like, you can find one HERE and HERE. The people at HM actually make it very nice to level their books. Okay so we have the leveled readers but that's not all! Looking to teach a unit on animals?? The common core book room also has a science section (all the green labels are Science book sets)! Want to teach a unit on American History? We have a Social Studies section too (all the blue labels are S.S. book sets)! Need a book on measurement for math? We have math books too, leveled by topic and by grade level. Back to ELA...We have a LARGE inventory of Big Books at our school. Many were purchased through grants. We have had some great grant writers over the 12 years my school has been open. They are now organized in the awesome common core room for easy access. And there's more... On top of each holder is a list of titles that work for different grade levels according to our ELA Units that I posted about yesterday. Here's what that looks like up close. Sticking with ELA, this is my FAVORITE part of the Common Core book room. The ELA Unit Theme boxes. You saw the "main stories" that we used for each week of ELA instruction on our unit plans but this is where they are stored, ready for us to check out. Some boxes are missing because some grade levels have them, planning their instruction. Each grade level was given a dollar amount to order books they wanted for these boxes at the beginning of the year. (These are not the only books we have for ELA, the library keeps all the class sets of chapter books which have to be checked out through the media center but that's another post for another day) So these boxes are pretty amazing, let's open one up. Each box has a list of titles that are included, more titles have been added since these were typed but that's okay. At some point we may update them but we haven't had much time for that! We have sets of books in the box (one per teacher) and we also have books that were ordered through Scholastic which match the standards that we will be teaching during the unit. The sets of books are the title at the top of our unit plans. Each box has a folder for the teachers to sign-out the books they want or need. We can sign-out books from other grade level boxes if we want to. And then we have books in the box that go well with the theme of our unit. Some leveled readers are in here too that match with the theme/standards we are teaching during this time. The literacy committee at my school helped to stuff these boxes and set aside the leveled readers for the theme boxes instead of putting them in with the leveled area. So, how can we afford all this when we know education has taken some serious budget cuts?? Well, before this room we had a literacy room which held A LOT of books. Some were dispersed to teachers to use in their small group instruction and some were transferred to the new room. As I said above too, we have had lots of teachers write grants over the last decade, which has added to our book inventory. We are also a very large Title I school (almost 700 students) so we do get a good amount of funding each year which we have spent on adding to our book inventory. In addition to all of that we held several fundraisers to buy more books (we had a penny war and a raffle for a Kindle Fire) which brought in a good amount of money. This room was not created over night, it has been MANY years in the making but it is pretty awesome. If you stuck with me through all of that, I hope you found it interesting! I am sure it has opened up a ton more questions, feel free to leave any questions or comments you may have below : ) One more thing before I go, we have 1.5 more LONG days before we're off for Spring Break. I needed something fun to do during these long, restless hours so I put together a couple Springy games. You can check them out by clicking on the image below. I'd be happy to give away a free copy, just leave your e-mail below and I'll pick a winner by tomorrow night so you could use it before you leave for break or when you return!