Before the first day of school, teachers must prepare their classroom. Organizing the room will help you feel ready for the school year and the challenges that will come with it. Think through your seating arrangement, the organization of your black board, how you will collect student work and the layout of the room to get a start on classroom organization.
Decide on a Seating Arrangement
Using your class list, create name tags and decide on a seating arrangement. Consider your teaching style when organizing your student desks. If you will be doing a lot of group work, having small groupings of desks may be more efficient than a u shape or rows. When deciding where to put students, keep in mind that you will be changing the seating around, most likely several times through out the school year. The biggest thing to stay away from is grouping all boys together.
Organize Your Black Board
Knowing how you will use your blackboard will help keep your classroom organized. Common things to use the blackboard for include the daily schedule, homework assignments, morning announcements and blank space for use when teaching. Depending on the setup in your class room, you may need some portion of the board set aside for class rules and a reward or consequence chart.
Organize Bins for Student Work
Deciding how you want student work turned in will help keep you and your classroom organized. You should have one place for students to turn homework in. This way at your first opportunity, you can go through the stack of homework and quickly check a list off and know that everyone turned their work in. Another place should be designated for completed class work so that you do not end up with piles of work on your desk. Having separate places for class work for each subject may be a good idea for elementary classes, and for secondary classes you should have a place for each separate class.
Classroom Layout
When deciding on a layout for your room, think carefully about the traffic during class. For example, if you will allow students to sharpen pencils during instruction, place the pencil sharpener in a place that will not cause excess distraction to other students. The placement of the trash can is of similar importance. Ensure that students do not trip over the trash can while lining up, but that it is in a place that several students can throw something away at once.
Although there are many other things you must do to ready yourself and your classroom for the first day of school, working on some simple organization for your classroom will help the first days and weeks go smoothly. Starting organized will give you the time necessary to focus on your lesson plans and the students.
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Jennifer Wagaman - Jennifer is a mother of 2 and has both public, private and administrative experience in the education field.
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