Feng Shui Your Classroom : Create an Engaging Environment Installment 1

Feng Shui Your Classroom

            Think about how much time you spend in your classroom each week—more than you care to admit right? Let me show you how to create a room that inspires you as well as your students. Let’s make this space a place that feels positive, fresh, and inspiring. Your students should walk in that first day and feel relaxed in an open work environment with a flow of positive energy. Let’s Feng Shui your classroom.

            Aside from the positive relationship that you foster with your students, a positive classroom climate is essential for a successful year. A high performing teaching space will be comfortable, attractive, and highly functional.

Feng Shui is an art/science developed in China over 3000 years ago. Feng means wind and shui means water, and in the Chinese culture wind and water bring good fortune. This Taoist vision also includes yin and yang and the elements.

This instructional guide is really an ongoing project that I’ve been working on for the last ten years of my nineteen in teaching. The first few years you spend perfecting the art of teaching. The next few years are about delving deep into your subject. After that you can take a breath, exhale if you will, and really look around your classroom and think about what type of environment you have created. When I looked I found it lacking a little life, and a little serenity. Although serenity might be a funny concept for a High School English classroom, it is essential for focus and contemplation. Over the years, I have created an environment that is inspiring to my students as well as myself.

            I’ve “teachified” the tenets of Feng Shui: water, earth, wind, and fire. I’ve created an easy to use guide that you can implement to make your classroom effective and engaging.

Water

            I bring water into the classroom in many different ways. I’ve had a few inexpensive fountains and set them up on my desk, or in an area that the students use often (near the pencil sharpener or where papers are turned in.) The sound of the water is pleasing, and the sight of the water is very calming for students that get easily distracted. Home Depot and Lowes have really beautiful fountains in the garden area.

            A vase of colorful flowers is another way to work water into your atmosphere. Fresh flowers instantly make everyone feel refreshed. They are natural and beautiful. You don’t have to spend tons of money on an expensive florist. Just check out your nearest grocery store or warehouse store. Gladiolus are always on sale in August in my area. They are enormous and beautiful.

            A friend of mine buys a large bouquet and divides it into 3-4 smaller vases. She gives the small bunches of flowers to several other teachers and it brings each one a little touch of sunshine.

Poseidon the fish

My best idea for bringing water into the classroom came this year. On a recent workday my friend and I decided to get a couple fish at the local Walmart. We were going for supplies anyway, and we found a water jug that said “fish bowl water” and we had our idea. We re-used a couple of large mouthed flower vases and glass pebbles (we washed them carefully), and purchased three Beta fish (Japanese fighting fish). These fish are viable in smaller containers and have beautiful angel wing-like fins.  I named mine Poseidon (I love teaching Greek mythology). We enjoyed the fish so much that the recycled vases became larger and more interesting tanks. Our third friend bought it a fish condo with lights a bubbler and a hiding place. We bought a fourth fish for a friend that was having a rough week – she loved it. The kids love having something alive in their English class. They beg to feed him, and love to come up to my desk to visit him.  At the end of the year, I started letting the fish bowl sit on the desks of one group of the students for the class period. It was a reward. Not only does the fish bring in water, but life. Living things are key to a comfortable, relaxing environment.

Follow this blog for the next two installments of fire and wind. 

 Try these ideas out and let me know how it goes. I would love for you to post some pictures of your results on my blog.

Or my Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/crazyenglishteacher   

Thanks so much,

The Crazy English Teacher

The Crazy English Teacher is participating in the sale. The Crazy English Teacher Store

A Creative Take on Romeo and Juliet

Is your Romeo and Juliet unit as dusty as ancient Verona. Spice it up with this creative criminal investigation of the multiple murders that occur in this Shakespearean drama. Your students will become the investigative team as they search for textual evidence to build a criminal case. 

This project allows your students to become intimately familiar with the text and it's characters. They will have so much fun that they will forget they are dissecting the text.

Romeo and Juliet CSI

Explore African Cultural Traditions with a Tragic Hero: Things fall Apart Learning Stations

I have created 10 literacy/learning stations for the Novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. This hero is almost Shakespearean in his tragedy, and an archetypal symbol for the human condition. 

The literacy stations explore textual evidence, cultural norms, characterization, and symbolism...just to name a few. 
This is an engaging and entertaining formative assessment. With a little preparation and careful instructions, students can rotate through several novel based activities with simply a “rotate” from the teacher every 9-10 minutes.

Check it out  Things Fall Apart Literacy Stations

I've created eight learning stations for the Holes novel. Holes: Learning Stations

Check out my new Mandala Project:
The Universal Mandala Project


This project combines the universal symbolism of the mandala with a creative way to represent the novel that your students are working on. 
The mandala in this project is divided into ten sections, but mandalas are often divided into eight or four. You can change your divisions to fit your project. Just keep it symmetrical (an even number). I’ve left the project as a word document so that you can alter it to fit your class.

In the same way that the symbol of the mandala is universal, this project is universally applicable to any text. I used it with The Seven Habits of a Highly Effective Teen by: Sean Covey, but it would also work with the hero’s journey in The Odyssey, the parts of the plot in “The Most Dangerous Game”, or the sequence of events in “Casey at the Bat”. The Mandala is the circle of life with a beginning and an end—all pieces of literature have this. 
I’ve included some pictures from our class project, and I would love for you to post some of your mandalas on my blog: http://thecrazyenglishteacher.blogspot.com/

Learning Stations are the way to go

Use learning stations in your final days of school to keep up their energy levels.

This is an engaging and entertaining formative assessment. With a little preparation and careful instructions, students can rotate through several novel based activities with simply a “rotate” from the teacher every 9-10 minutes.

Using stations with older students creates interest and adds engagement to any lesson. A student that was previously listless will sit up and take notice when asked to work as a team to accomplish several tasks in a timely manner. The stations are fast moving and usually produce a product. Upper level students enjoy the fast pace and high interest of station work. This activity takes a little planning, but when in process the educational component becomes a student driven learning experience.

Learning stations require a little preparation. Read the station instructions for the necessary supplies: markers, construction paper, computer paper, scissors, glue sticks, laptop or Smartboard, tape. Each one varies. If a station requires extra items I will note it with an asterisk at the bottom of the page.

Before beginning a session of stations I ask the students to leave any personal items on the outside edges of the room. I tell them that they will rotate in a clockwise direction when I give the call to switch. Walk around to each station and give a brief synopsis of what will go on. Let students know that anything they make should be taken with them to the next station. They should straighten up their current station before moving on.  This learning structure really lets the teachers become the facilitator and the student becomes the creator. It’s that 80% vs. 20% relationship that we all strive for.

Check out some of my learning stations:

Romeo and Juliet Literacy Stations

Poetry Stations for Middle School and High School

Night :Novel Learning Stations