Setting Up the Classroom

While getting ready for the 2011-2012 school year as a First Grade teacher, I followed many Kindergarten and First Grade blogs to help set up my classroom. 

One of the first ideas I got was for my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom door and magnetic tree for a word work station. The students loved this! The tree is made from an 8" concrete form tube from Home Depot for about $8 (covered in magnetic paint and brown spray paint), a cheap umbrella, and a large green piece of felt (I laid it over the top of the umbrella and rounded the bottom into palm leaves). If I can do it, so can you! 

I used the white board next to the Smart Board for a magnetic word wall. This way it could be used during our carpet-time Literacy activities, and the students could take the magnetic words to their desk if they needed help with spelling. 

Since I use my Smart Board for just about everything, I could use my large chalkboard for displaying other things. After taking SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) training, I post my Content and Language Objectives on the board. I laminated the paper so I can use dry erase marker and wipe it off when we are working on new objectives. The parents really like this! I also have our Edmodo for 1st Grade Pocket Charts displayed. Edmodo is a free educational blog that I used with my third graders for discussions; however, with first grade we use laminated sentence strips with their pictures and names of them. Not only does it remind the students of Facebook, it is also a great way for me to use up those markers from my old overhead projector! I post a question and a sentence starter they must begin with, and they write the rest. We use this as an "exit slip" for a lesson or a chance to respond to a field trip. 

At the start of the school year, my largest bulletin board was empty except for the fabric background. This was VERY hard for me! Eventually, it filled up as we learned reading, writing, and spelling strategies. Our Reading reference posters were for Retelling a Story, Character Traits, Character Emotions, Reading Strategies, and Words Found While Reading. Our Spelling reference poster gave ideas for what to do when you don't know how to spell a word. Our Writing reference posters gave ideas for writing topics, the 3 Main Parts of a Story, and how to write a great Story Starter. 

Other helpful tricks for setting up your room:

• Covering up your file cabinets with pocket charts to make a station. Why waste that space! 
• Great, inexpensive, colorful benches from Walmart that double as storage. This is a go-to location for my students! 
• Get rid of your teacher desk. Let's face it, all it's used for is stacking papers! Now, my room is more spacious! 
• Run a decorative piece of ribbon down the front of cabinets and display students' work with close pins. Great way to save wall space! 
• Store cute kid's chairs for independent reading in a plastic hamper. Very durable! 

I'm sure there are more set-up ideas I will think of later, but for now... keep rearranging furniture until you find an arrangement that works for you!!!