2018-2019 High School Math Classroom Decorations

It’s time to share with you my 2018-2019 high school math classroom decorations now that I have successfully taught my first full week of the school year (plus a two day week before that) at my new school.

In case you missed the announcement, I have returned to the high school I graduated from to teach Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus.

This is a big change from the mostly freshman classes I was teaching before, but I am super excited about it.

The past couple of weeks have been crazy with learning how things at my new school work. My new district adopted digital textbooks for math, and there have definitely been a few unexpected snafus, but we are working through them.

Sadly, this has meant that a lot of the energy I’ve usually had at the beginning of the year to write blog posts has been redirected towards emails to the tech department and administrators about what has been working and what hasn’t.

Now that things are being figured out, I figured it’s time to share with you all what I’ve been up to in regards to my classroom!

So, what better way to start than showing you my newly decorated classroom?

Math Classroom Door Decorations

Let’s start with the door since that’s where you enter my classroom which is really my “home away from home.” 

Above my door hangs my Mrs. Carter sign that was a gift from my old school when I got married and changed my name from Ms. Hagan to Mrs. Carter.

Below that, I have two decorations. First, my We Learn Math. What’s Your Superpower? poster.

Below the window, I have my When you enter this classroom… quote poster of sorts. This was one of my very first projects for my very first classroom as a first year teacher.

I’m now in my seventh year of teaching, and this quote is still welcoming students into my classroom!

Beside my door is one of my all-time favorite classroom decorations – my math-y welcome sign.

Okay. Enough pictures from outside my classroom. Let’s head inside! This is the view from the door.

You just thought we were done with the door. Let’s turn around now and check out the other side of the door.

Like last year, I decided to hang my GEMDAS order of operations posters on the door with my grouping symbols poster.

Above the door, I hung my pennants from the universities where I earned my bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Last year after I was named one of twelve finalists for 2018 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, I received a care package from UTA that included a pennant and a scarf in my school’s colors.

I asked my sister to get me a TU pennant for Christmas last year so that I would be able to hang them both in my classroom. I’m super happy with how they look in my classroom!

Next to the door, I hung a copy of the bell schedule that I reformatted to fit on 11 x 17 cardstock.

My new school has different bell schedules for Monday-Thursday, Friday, and Friday Early Release. This means a lot more different times to keep track of than I’m used to!

Math Classroom Decor Inside of Classroom

Next to that, I hung my Red/Yellow/Green Team Cups posters. I look forward to using these cups for formative assessment as students work in groups.

My classroom still has a SMART Board, but my school is slowly phasing these out. The math department was chosen to receive 65″ televisions to replace our SMARTboards this year.

The projector hooked to my SMARTboard still works, but whenever it dies it will not be replaced. So, I’m trying to rely completely on my TV and not use my SMARTboard this year.

Maybe I should hang some posters on it to take advantage of this space…

Here’s what my tv looks like.

Next to my SMARTboard, I have my posters that remind students what they need to check for when making a graph.

I stole this TULSA mnemonic device from @druinok. It helps that we both teach in a suburb of Tulsa! I made the title say “Are your graphs OK?” with an outline of Oklahoma. I realize this is super region specific, but I LOVE it.

I was so excited when I saw that my new classroom still had a wall of cabinets. I’ve had this in my last two classrooms, and I didn’t know how I was going to adjust to having a classroom without built in storage.

Plus, cabinets are awesome for hanging posters like my Roman Numerals poster and my Naming Polynomials poster.

To the right of these posters, I have my inequality and equality symbol posters. These posters are part of a larger set of math symbols posters that I blogged about several years ago.

I didn’t have room for all of the math symbols, so I chose these since they seem to be referenced the most.

My SOH CAH TOA posters are a must this year since I’ll be teaching trigonometry as a part of Pre-Calc.

To the right are my Includes vs Excludes posters. These posters are constantly referenced by my students!

In years past, I have had students complain when I took them down only a few days before the school year ended because they were trying to reference them while retaking a quiz.

They have already came in great use this year as we’ve been doing domain and range!

My last cabinet decoration is my Pythagorean Triple posters. I’m hoping these will be useful in our trig units in pre-calc.

My prime number chart was a labor of love this summer. It’s humongous, so you can see it no matter where you are in the classroom.

Not sure how to read this chart? There’s a helpful tutorial here. I will hopefully get the files for this poster up on the blog soon! 

The only wall big enough to hold this humongous poster was above my desk.

One thing I’m not used to about my new classroom is that there is only one bulletin board. You won’t find me complaining, though, because this is because I have three whiteboards (31 feet total of whiteboard space)!

For my bulletin board, I decided to start the year off by hanging up my Truth Signs posters that I made several years ago.

Above the Truth Signs, I put up my Perfect Squares and Perfect Cubes posters.

Next to these posters, you can catch a glimpse of my stellated icosahedrons that I made a few years ago from straws and curling ribbon.

I love the visuals these posters provide for my students. I even find myself referencing them!

At the end, I hung another poster titled “More Perfect Squares.”

Here’s the other two of my dry erase boards. I wasn’t completely sure about the tv’s placement at first, but it turns out it’s placed perfectly.

Next to the dry erase board by my desk, I posted the parent functions posters that I stole from my husband since he’s taking the next two years off from teaching high school to pursue his master’s degree in applied mathematics.

Students have already been referencing these posters a lot. They were a huge resource to my students when they were working on their first Desmos marbleslides challenge!

This little corner is one of my favorites. I didn’t realize how many posters I had printed off in the same color scheme until I started hanging posters on this chalk board coordinate plane.

I stuck a dry erase coordinate plane over the top of it and put posters around the blank space.

I’ve had a lot of questions about the magnetic coordinate plane. It’s manufactured by EAI Education, and it comes in four separate magnets that are assembled together to make the coordinate plane.

You can also download the files for my parts of the coordinate plane magnets.

As for the other posters, here are the appropriate download links:

• Horizontal/Vertical Lettering
• Mistakes are Expected, Inspected, Respected, Corrected
• Keep Calm and Combine Like Terms
• N/O and O/K Fractions
• Left and Right Signs

My long dry erase board is meant to be the focal point of the room with the tv hanging to the side of it. I put my number line above this board.

We reference this horizontal number line ALL THE TIME. I firmly believe every math classroom needs a number line! I often find my students holding their pencils up in the air to count things off on the number line.

As we’ve been doing domain and range in Algebra 2, the positive and negative infinity posters have been especially helpful.

To the left of my dry erase board, I have my TI-84 reference poster.

Above my number line, I hung the function/expression/equation poster that I shared on twitter earlier this summer. I found an image on twitter, and my amazing husband, Shaun, turned it into a poster for me.

Next to that, I put my Roots, Solutions, Zeros, and X-Intercepts posters. I printed these on 11 x 17 cardstock.

Underneath my dry erase board, I put up my Greek Alphabet posters. Students LOVE looking at these posters.

The Greek alphabet posters come in really useful when introducing concepts such as using delta for change in regard to the slope formula in Algebra 1 and theta in Trig.

I currently have thirty desks in my room (and two of my class periods have exactly thirty students). So, I have my desks arranged in six groups of five.

Here’s what that ends up looking like. I love that there is still an open space in the center of the room. I look forward to using this space for activities! Maybe even for pulling out my shower curtain coordinate plane!