IPTS Standard 4 - Learning Environment - The competent teacher structures a safe and healthy learning environment that facilitates cultural and linguistic responsiveness, emotional well-being, self-efficacy, positive social interaction, mutual respect, active engagement, academic risk-taking, self-motivation, and personal goal setting. This includes a virtual environment and any learning aids used within a Google Drive.
7D: understands how to organize the instructional environment to maximize students’ learning.

Description: For our Kindergarten setup, we worked in a small yet cozy room provided in Illinois State's Center of Visual Arts. Considering we had one student for our Kindergarten class, we kept it minimal in terms of tables and set up. Things that stayed consistent in the first three weeks with our Kindergarten room was: computer station to the front, left of the room, projector screen in the center, front of the room, and to the right wall was our supply table. We had posters of vocabulary words of the day and artwork examples we thought fit with our goals of the day.

 

For Lesson Day One, we had set up two long tables set next to each other in the center of the room close to the front of the projector screen provided for our student to be able to see the screen and have space to move around and work easily later in the lesson time. For Lesson Day Two, we moved the two long tables to make a big square in the center of the room. With this, we thought it would make it easy to spread supplies in the center and when it came time to use that supplies, we would ask and pass the supplies around. For Lesson Day Three, we returned to setting up the long tables next to each other to create a long line for assembling our class garland.

 

As for Third Grade, we kept our set up the same for both Lesson Days One and Two. We just down the hall from our previous room with Kindergarten in Illinois State's Center of Visual Arts. Our lesson revolve around a still life set up, so we had six drawing desks around the still life. A computer desk stayed in it's place to the farthest left corner on the wall where our projector displayed our "Artist and Artwork" presentation. Two or three studio lights with red cellophane were propped up on left over tables to have the red light shown directly on the still life. One studio light was set up on the farthest wall of the classroom (near the computer desk) and the other studio light was set on the wall nearest to the entrance/door of the classroom. Below the projected presentation, we had vocabulary posters and our teacher examples displayed for students to refer to through our lesson time.

Rationale: We kept in mind simplicity and consistency for our classrooms to keep a familiar environment for our students. Considering the lesson days goals, our classroom setup stayed the same to continue the routine of the lesson plan. Our students knew where to sit and were ready to get started.

Evidence: Photos can be seen in the collage below and the carousel to the right of our classroom setup for Kindergarten (Weeks 1-3) and Third Grade (Weeks 4-5).