Are you a new teacher? Did you move to a new classroom or school? Setting up a new classroom is exciting, exhausting, and a lot of work! I wanted to share a few steps to help make the process as easy as possible.
1. Clean out!
The first day I entered my new classroom, I brought only cleaning supplies. Leave all the boxes and sacks at home! Take time to go through every item left in the classroom. Make a pile to giveaway, keep, and trash. Keep any item that will be beneficial to you or your students, but many classrooms have gone through a handful of teachers and curriculum changes. If it isn't something you will truly use or is based on an old curriculum, get it out of your room.
2. Classroom layout
Start moving around furniture to make defined spaces. Where will you keep your materials? Will students have desks, tables, or more of a flexible seating arrangement? Will you have a desk? Where will be the best place for a library? After years of teaching, I have learned the less furniture the better! Teachers love to grab any free piece of furniture in the hallway. It's almost like a child in a candy store! Extra spaces are a great place to add pillows and to make reading nooks for your future readers. I even spend a lot of time in those places teaching my students!
Medium and large pillows are the perfect size to fill in those empty spaces.
3. Organize, Organize, Organize!
It is important to find a system that works for you. Even though I've been teaching for eight years, I change things constantly! If something isn't working for you a month into the school year, change it. Grab ideas from coworkers and online, but in the end, it doesn't matter how cute it looks if it doesn't truly work for you.
I like to keep materials that I know students will need on a daily basis in easy to access containers. The large galvanized pails and large galvanized buckets are perfect for this. Add a chalkboard place card clip for a cute label using a permanent chalk marker! You could also choose to add a chalkboard sticker on the front as a label.
Math manipulatives are materials that need to be easy to access daily. Clear storage bins with lids are the perfect size! Not only do they fit snap cubes in sets of tens, but also there is no reason to take the time to label each bin. Work smarter, not harder!
Neon Round Containers are perfect to hold table supplies! They are also the perfect size to hold pencils and other rewards. Classroom storage tubs are fantastic for a classroom library and to also hold other materials that will be used frequently. The book organizers are great to hold student materials. I love that the Black and White Draw and Write Journals and writing folders fit perfectly in the book organizers.
4. Breathe!
Not everything has to be done the first month of school. It is hard to leave things "unfinished," but it can be done! Do what is the most important first and continue working on other ideas as you can. I do the best when I work for a few hours and then walk away. It is amazing how everything seems less stressful the next day. Remember, it will all get done. And if it doesn't get done, it probably wasn't very important to start with!
