Mrs. B and the Classroom Zones

I enjoy substituting for Middle School, each teacher is so different! If I've learned anything from Junior High it's this...the more organized YOU are, the more organized your STUDENTS will be for you! It's interesting to see the same students rotate to different classrooms and how they magically "change." If the class is organized and structured, so are the students. If not, well...let's just say the kids know it and that's when the "change" happens. I found it surprising to sub for Teacher A where the students were on task and well behaved and the next day, subbing the same students for Teacher B and thinking, "You weren't like this yesterday." Routines, procedures, organization and consistency are just as important for Middle School students as it is for Elementary students, if not more!

I've shared a few ideas for organization in previous posts and I'd like to share a couple more. Mrs. B teaches 3 Block classes of 6th grade Language Arts. Her organization for students in each of those classes helped me have a very productive day while she was absent.

There was 1 clipboard for each class, each with a class photo list and seating arrangement. 

Mrs. B used this clipboard to keep track of tardy's, table points, individual points, etc.

Now for the Classroom Zones. The pictures below are pretty self explanatory, but to elaborate Mrs. B introduced classroom zones for noise level control. The zones let students know the expectation for the classroom throughout a lesson, project assignment, partner work, individual work, etc. Super easy to implement as well as remind, "Remember, we're in a yellow zone." Take a look...

Only one color would be showing at a time, of course :)

One more thing to share...Mrs. B was very generous in sharing materials, but VERY serious about making sure they were returned. (The students were as well!) They were in charge of counting Sharpies, erasers and White Out's. All had to be returned before anyone could leave.