A lot of thought went into designing this classroom. I wanted to make sure students would not become overwhelmed when walking into this classroom. Diller talks about the importance of not having too many posters and things on your walls at the beginning of the school year. Your wall is a place to add to throughout the year. With this in mind, I did not put anything more than a few dry erase boards to start out the school year. Another part I thought a lot about was the type of desks I wanted to have. I decided on just the regular desks for two main reasons. First, as a future math teacher, there is going to be a lot of partner work going on in my classroom. The great thing about math is that it requires students talking it out with the person sitting next to them to verbalize their thought process. In order to make group work flow smoothly it is best to have desks that already have the students sitting in pairs of two. The second main reason I chose these desks were so I could see what was going on underneath the desk. As a future high school teacher, I am aware of the temptation a phone brings. I want my students to take advantage of the time they have in class and not be distracted by their phones. Since these desks are very open I will be able to see if they are texting. I also added one desk off the side incase a student needs extra help and is too distracted by their fellow students. I can take them over there and help them out. I specifically put the desks facing away from the door so the students won't be able to see out into the hallway. I know this can be a huge distraction if friends walk by the door. I put three dry erase boards up because math teachers need a lot of space to write all the example problems down. I also added a lot of storage bins to neatly put all of my resources in. Lastly, I chose a small desk area for the teacher so not a lot of clutter is able to build up there. I placed this floor planner inside component 2E because it discusses organizes and class space. Considering I was designing a classroom I thought it fit very well inside this component. To create my floor planner I easily made a website on floorplanner.com and started out with the typical dimensions for a classroom. Once I had my space, I started messing around with the tools available to me and put in all the furniture for my classroom. It was a very easy process that did not require a lot of steps.
Danielson, C. (2007). Enhancing professional practice a framework for teaching (2nd ed.). Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Diller, C. (2008). Spaces & Places: Designing Classrooms for Literacy. Stenhouse Publishers. No reproduction without written permission from the publisher. In my future classroom, I will be able to first design it on floor planner. This will save a lot of time and effort if I already have what I want to lay out on this website. It will be a lot easier to switch things around and change my mind on floor planner than actually in real life. I can use the exact dimensions of my classroom on here so I know how much space I have. This is a great tool that I really hope to use in the future. I really enjoyed watching my classroom come to life. To actually put in the tables and chairs, the teacher's desk, dry erase boards, and storage bins, I could really see my classroom coming together. It makes me excited to design a real classroom one day. This experience related to the SAMR model by showing how much technology is available today. I would say floor planner is at the modification level. Instead of using paper and pencil you can use technology to design a classroom. Not only do you get the 2D version of the classroom, but also the 3D. Technology is being used to do the same task in a more effective way.