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Along with her background as a researcher, writer, and teacher, Joanne Meier is a mom. Join Joanne every week as she shares her experiences raising her own young readers, and guides parents and teachers on the best practices in reading.
Arranging your classroom
August 12, 2008
Our babysitter is starting her first year of teaching this week. She'll be teaching kindergarten at one of our highest needs schools. It's an Open Court school, so while most of her curriculum is already prescribed for her, how she arranges her classroom is up to her. And she's filled with questions!
As a teacher, setting up your classroom is one of the most exciting parts of August! Where should the classroom library go? Where should the teacher desk go? How should the student desks be arranged? In my mind, each decision says something about how the classroom will run and what the teacher values.
For desk arrangements, this site, from Huntington College shows various desk arrangements, and the types of learning encouraged from various styles (my classrooms were usually a variation of the horseshoe or the group work plan). Our own article, Classroom Arrangement, provides guidance about some things to consider when setting up all your furniture.
For classroom libraries, I think I've mentioned this site before, but I'll mention it again because of its helpful pictures and labels. A second good site on classroom libraries is here. I like the breadth of topics on this site, including ways to acquire books, labeling the books, and creating a welcoming spot.
We'd love to hear what has worked for you, August is a great month for veteran teachers to share their expertise! What's your classroom arrangement like?
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I was talking with a friend about classroom arrangements and she recommended this site - Classroom Architect from 4Teachers.org: http://classroom.4teachers.org/ Check it out!