Setting Up Your Braille Classroom

As it is the beginning of the year, it is a perfect opportunity to share what our students are doing when they are with us. Bulletin Board 2012 is exactly what it says. The bulletin board background is made out of old braille tests with images of students at different schools (faces and schools have been blacked out for their privacy) on top. The middle of the board shows some math work and pages from a book that was made for a student. The bottom of the board is interactive for students to look at the true false questions and get a "take away" sheet with a braille activity on it.

This year I was given my own braille room! The room walls were hideous as they were badly scarred and had children's scribbles/words all over. A parent volunteer (one of my student's moms) aided me in hanging the paper on the walls to hide the worst of it.

	View of braille room from doorway
	Here is the students' board. This is where they were put up their hard work that they've done. I'm letting them choose which of their pages they want to display.
	This is a view from the "tree" to the front of the room. The table in the corner has a bird house with a "tree limb" and vines for leaves on it. Once a week, my students will be looking under that table cloth to see what their surprise is for their hard work.
	This is the tree itself with the words "Tree of Knowledge" with images of tools the students use on "leaves". This is not finished yet. In the lower area we will be putting words (again, student choice) under the tree. My more advanced student will braille the words "Tree of Knowledge". Basically this will be like a word wall that they know is in their classrooms.

On the filing cabinet (which was also hideous with scarring and rust), I put up brown butcher paper. The sign "Be Curious" (also labeled in braille) is hung. Under it will be a mirror. One of my students I get right after lunch and the student's face has a bit of lunch on it. Since the student has some vision, the student will work on cleaning her face before we start the braille lesson. I will have wipes available so she doesn't have to go across the hall to the bathroom....yet. That will be later in the year!