Superheroes in Training

I've been teaching at my new school for about 3 weeks now and, wow, things are hectic! There's a lot to be said for driving into work and parking your car with a massive mountain in view. I really enjoy the new staff, grounds and facilities but it's a lot of change all at once. It will take a little while to get fully comfortable here at Bridge House.

I'm fortunate enough to be in charge of the Foundation Phase IT lab here. It has 26 student stations and one teacher station, as well as a projector. As I can't help myself, I've decorated it in a theme: Superheroes in Training! I mostly used a great free font called Komika. Here's some pics of what I've done to the place:

The centerpiece of the theme, 6 posters with the tagline: What's Your Superpower?

My door reads "JP Information Technology, Superheroes in Training"

I love how my Tech Alphabet turned out, it borders the top of the wall, A-Z, across the front of the room.

Some great superhero classroom rules I found free on Teachers Pay Teachers.

My overly verbose but required lab rules, which live on the whiteboard at the front of the room.

All 26 computers have a unique 'name'. I tried to include a bunch of female heroes for diversity and coolness factors.

I'm already getting to grips with having a lab to run. There are many differences from my old job but I must say I'm really having a blast. The staff are very collaborative and willing to try new things. A large part of my job will be integrating the IT skills I'm teaching with the learning across the curriculum. Another new angle will be using iPads, I'm doing a lot of reading on how best to use them with young students.

I've set up a Symbaloo, my first one ever, to help my students navigate web resources. For now, I've sorted it by Grade but have found it tricky to decide what website falls into what Grade. This has been remedied by just cloning the tile across the Grades. It's not a perfect solution but having a shortcut to the Symbaloo page on their desktops has taken a lot of the frustrations out of URLS and browsers.