These are photos of the two elementary schools that I taught at.  

The classroom setups relate to standard 4M) Organizes, allocates, and manages time, materials, technology, and physical space to provide active and equitable engagement of students in productive learning activities; because my teacher and I worked together to arrange and rearrange our room in the best way for student learning. 

I learned that classroom setup is integral to the way that the classroom functions and how students learn. When I first started teaching, I noticed that oftentimes the students at the back of the room tended to start to goof off and not listen. I talked to my teacher and I decided to rearrange the tables so that the students were closer to the front of the room which kept them more engaged. In addition, each classroom has an Art Store, and grade labeled drawers where students know to turn things in. These expectations are clear and labeled colorfully so students can remember. Another change I made when making sure the physical environment was conducive to learning was the placement of my electric pencil sharpener. Originally it was at the back of the room, but I realized if students were sharpening pencils, I was not able to get their attention over the noise to give them instructions. I chose to move the pencil sharpener to the front of the room, which allowed me to be able to tell them to pause sharpening while I spoke. This solved the problem!

These are some slides that I pulled from some of the different projects that I taught that let the kids know what we will be working on for the day.

This connects to standard 4J) creates clear expectations and procedures for communication and behavior and a physical setting conducive to achieving classroom goals; because the slides clearly set the expectation for what to do that day. 

Since I taught each lesson 5 times, I learned that having a visual reminder of the steps students were to complete was helpful. Since these were for younger grades, I kept them simple, and also added visual cues (pencil/scissors/etc). Having these slides up on the board helped the students if they forgot, and it also saved me time of having to answer the same question over and over again.