If walls could talk, what would they say? Well, for the case of my classroom and the other language arts classrooms in my middle school, our walls do, in a sense, “talk.” They hold a story and document a year-long learning journey. As a literacy coach, the very first thing that I do when I enter any classroom is look at the walls because they cue me in on the language that is used in a classroom, common understandings students hold, and what the teacher values and wants students to be able to transfer into their reading, writing, and classroom behavior. I am going to defer from my traditional blog posts and do a blog post centered on pictures of my classroom at the end of the school year. I will let the walls speak for themselves. If you’d like to see pictures of my classroom at the beginning of the year to see how it has transformed during the 2014-2015 school year, check out this link: beginning of the year pictures.
Reminiscing always brings a hint of sadness to me. Pictures tell a story, and when I look at the pictures from my room, I know that we have documented their story as readers and writers at every turn. Next year, my students will begin with another blank slate without anything on the walls, and we will be able to dedicate our wall space to a new story as it unfolds.
