2020-2021 High School Math Classroom Decorations

Welcome to a tour of my 2020-2021 high school math classroom decorations! This school year, I taught Algebra 2, Pre-Calculus, and Statistics. Normally, I would post these pictures at the beginning of the school year, but we all know that this past school year got off to a very strange start due to COVID!

I actually didn’t do any decorating at the beginning of the year – I just kept all of my same decorations from the previous year.

Let’s start with a few pictures to give you a feel for the layout of my classroom. Then, I’ll share close-up photos of everything as well as links to download files to create them yourself!

2020-2021 High School Math Classroom Decorations

Here’s the view from the door to my classroom.

Up next, a few different angled views from the podium:

Here are two slightly different angled views from my desk area.

Here’s the view from the back corner of my classroom looking towards the front dry erase board.

And, here are the side walls.

Finally, here’s the back wall of my classroom.

Now for close-up photos with more details and links! Let’s start at the door and work our way around the classroom since that’s the order I took the photos in!

Above my door, I have pennants for the two universities I have attended. I earned my bachelor’s degree in mathematics and education from The University of Tulsa. I earned my master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from The University of Texas at Arlington.

Next to the door, I have two measuring tapes. I plan on using these next year for a scatterplot activity where we compare our heights and our ability to jump. I was hoping to fit it into my Algebra 2 class this year, but we ran out of time.

Now, I have a height-measuring station up all year round. This will come in super useful for teaching statistics!

Next to the door is my pi-ling cabinet. Someone called it that on twitter a few months ago, and I have adopted the name for myself. Previously, I have always just called it my “pi filing cabinet.” My parents/sister helped me stencil the numbers on to decorate my first ever classroom.

On top of my pi-ling cabinet I have a three drawer organizer where I store notebook paper, copy paper, and graph paper for students to grab whenever they need it. Two of my students assembled a giant sonobe origami structure that lives on top of it.

Next to the door, you will find my Math-y Welcome sign. This is one of my favorite things I have ever made for my classroom.

I created a set of free, downloadable coordinate plane magnets to decorate it. Because they are magnets, I can easily slide them off the coordinate plane whenever I need to use it for graphing.

Above my large dry erase board, I have a free printable number line poster and a modular origami display of a variety of origami pieces constructed from sonobe units.

I absolutely adore this colorful little corner of my classroom!

I have also created printable positive and negative infinity signs to hang at the ends of your number line.

In the corner of my classroom, I have my podium.

It sits under the 65″ flat screen television that my school replaced my SmartBoard with.

On my podium, I have my name sign (made with math symbols) and my SOH CAH TOA posters.

This next bulletin board is actually an old coordinate plane chalk board. It had seen better days, so I covered it with black butcher paper. I put colored tape around the edges to serve as a border.

It isn’t perfect, but it looks so much better than it did before I covered it. The good thing about it being an old chalk board is that it’s magnetic!

The jumbo magnetic unit circle is from EAI Education. My school’s parent/teacher/student organization purchased it for my classroom several years ago as a Christmas present.

I posted several bell schedules around the room to help remind myself and my students of our different schedules. We had a traditional bell schedule for in-person days and a separate bell schedule for Distance Learning Mondays and those additional days we had to pivot to distance learning. Next year, we will be continuing our distance learning Mondays, so that will be interesting!

My students absolutely love my Math Joke of the Week posters.

I keep the sheet protectors in a binder next to my desk, so I can easily switch out the joke each week. If I forget to switch out the joke, a student usually volunteers to do it for me. The answers are already in the back of the sheet protector so students can flip the sheet protector up to read the answer.

I typed up a set of unit circle magnets to go on my large magnetic unit circle. I’ve also printed off some extra decks of unit circle cards for students to use in the floor next year to construct their own unit circles.

This agenda board was pretty useless this year. All of my assignments had to be on Google Classroom due to students being quarantined/electing to do all of their learning via distance learning. So, I didn’t end up keeping a running record of what we did each day on the dry erase board.

I need to decide if I want to keep the agenda for next year or if I want to repurpose the board for something else.

Here’s my little desk corner. It’s a no-student zone.

My desk is home to some of my growing origami collection. I still need to blog about this Columbus Cube Tower and Hedgehog Dado Origami projects.

I keep this pink rolling cart near my desk with organization tools that I use frequently – copy sleeves, plastic storage pockets, sheet protectors, etc. I need to redo this cart and reorganize/relabel it for next year.

Behind my desk, I have a bookshelf full of resource books and binders.

In a normal school year, I use this six drawer organizer as turn-in trays. Since we did so few paper-based assignments this year, I didn’t even label it for the different class periods. It will definitely get used next year, though!

The top of the drawers did make a nice place to keep some of my sonobe origami.

My bookshelf is a bit messy, but I like having my resources close-at-hand.

The magazine holders on top have printed resource books that I have bound with my binding machine.

The bottom shelves mainly hold binders and textbooks. The box on the bottom shelf is my “teacher memory box” where I keep notes from students and other teaching mementos I want to keep.

I also have a mini fridge and microwave in my teacher corner. The three drawer organizer on top of the microwave holds extra copies for each class.

Here’s my little computer corner. Nothing too exciting here…

I use magnets to attach the school map/list of phone extensions to my file cabinet.

The top of the filing cabinet is home to awards I have received over the years as well as my collection of mini sonobe origami pieces. These are folded with 2.5″ squares left over from cutting down letter-sized colored paper to make 8.5″ squares.

I also keep my paper chopper up here away from students.

These two filing cabinets hold all of my resources for the courses I teach plus all my puzzles and activities!

I sort my non-course related puzzles and activities alphabetically.

They are stored in plastic storage pockets. The pockets I use are from 3M, but they have sadly been discontinued.

I use removable file folder labels to label each storage pocket. This makes it super easy to change the labels when I need to! They are super cheap, and they are one of my must-have school supplies. I use them on SO MANY THINGS.

Here’s an example of one of my puzzles in my cabinet. The H Puzzle folder contains the instructions as well as the magnetic pieces for the puzzle.

My plastic storage pockets close with velcro, but I have seen lots of others that have strings or snaps. As long as they have something to keep them closed, they should work!

Since I usually remember what activities are called (probably a side effect of blogging about every one of them!), the alphabetical filing system works best for me.

My other file drawers hold files for specific courses.

These drawers are still organized with plastic storage pockets, but I tend to organize these in the order of the course instead of alphabetically.

I want to be able to see all of the resources I have for say, logarithms, in one place without having to remember what I labeled each folder.

I have a computer paper box on top of my counter where I store all of my 11 x 17 cardstock activities.

They are each labeled with a post-it note. I also store them alphabetically.

One the side of my cabinet, I have started storing large magnetic pieces like this one from the See and Say Sequence Puzzle that won’t fit in my plastic storage pockets.

I also have an old Amazon box stashed in this area of my classroom to hold large laminated posters and decorations that I am not currently using.

I am so thankful to have a wall of storage cabinets in my classroom. The classroom I had for my first four years of teaching had no built-in storage at all, so I have been grateful for storage ever since!

These cabinets are the perfect home for my Powers of 2-9 Posters.

These posters get SO MUCH USE during our units on radicals, exponentials, and logarithms.

My tall set of cabinets features my Includes/Excludes Posters.

I have my new straw rocket launchers I wrote a grant for. I still need to blog about these, too!

I put up a new origami bulletin board this year. The two large origami pieces are mine. All of the others were created by students. I like having a place in my classroom to encourage students to try out something new like origami.

One of my favorite parts of my classroom is my Puzzle of the Week corner. You can find the Equilateral Triangle Puzzle here. If you want to start your own puzzle of the week, I have a huge collection of free printable puzzles for you to choose from.

Above this bulletin board/dry erase board, I have my vintage place value posters I picked up at a thrift store. I remember sitting in math class looking at these exact posters, so I had to buy them when I saw them!

Hanging from the ceiling, I have my straw icosahedrons I built several years ago from clear straws and curling ribbon.

Students always beg to make them, but I have never actually made them with students.

I have five large three-drawer organizers that I use to hold supplies for students to use.

I finally got around to labeling the drawers just before the school year was over.

Here is my non-working SmartBoard. Well, the SmartBoard works, but there is no projector hooked up to it. I’m hoping that my school will remove it over the summer. I requested for it to be removed last summer, but it never happened. If they don’t remove it, I guess I will continue taping stuff to it like I did with my Radian Arts and Crafts.

Below the Smartboard, I have a collection of dry erase boards for students to use. I want to get a magnetic wall pocket to put above them to hold erasers for next year.