Welcome Back! Or maybe I should say, “Hello again!” I know that I have not posted anything new in a little over a year’s time. I apologize. Life was busy and hectic with finishing my master’s degree, teaching full time, being a mom and wife has been a bit tricky to navigate in finding time to post much. Since my last post, I have finished my master’s degree, had my second baby, and finished my third year of teaching!

For my next post, I wanted to write about how I organized my classroom for the last two school years. During that time, all teachers had a school/district charge to meet and maintain a list of nonnegotiable items that we had to have in our classrooms. Part of the nonnegotiable list for my classroom set up included labeling each bin of toys and classroom materials that were out for student use as well as having a matching label for the shelves to put those items away. I’ll be honest, the first year that I made the labels was the most time consuming, but after that, I was able to reuse the labels each year.

When I created the labels, I took pictures of the items in the bins and printed two copies of each image in 2-inch by 2-inch squares or 2-inch by 3-inch rectangles. I cut the pictures down, laminated them, and then cut them out. I like to cut then laminate and cut again because then the edges of the pictures are sealed with the lamination and will last longer. This is just my personal preference; you should do what works best for you. I used clear packing tape to put the laminated labels on each bin, and if the bin was a woven type or had circle cut outs on it, I hole punched the label and used a clear, plastic luggage loop to attach the label to the bin. I ordered some clear, sticky pockets to put on my shelves and slide the labels into the pocket sleeve. This labeling made organizing my shelves with materials and toys easy for my students to know where everything went when it was time to clean up after centers, and it was easy for me to swap out labels for toys and materials if I wanted to rearrange where items were in my classroom. These are the links to the sticky pocket sleeves and the luggage loops I ordered.

I also labeled each table with a number to help students know when to line up, or if we needed to do an activity at one table, they knew which table was doing a special activity at that time. (Side note: If you are doing a special activity, make sure to emphasize that every student will have a turn to participate in the activity, so they need to wait for their turn. Otherwise, you may have half the class swarming you and asking when it’s their turn, or they may start trying to do the activity when you are not ready for them or while you are working with someone else.)

In addition to labeling classroom materials and supplies, I also labeled each center for “Mathematics,” Science,” “Literature,” “Dramatic Play,” etc. as well as labeling our classroom library and calm down corner. In the calm down corner, there is also a poster with emotion emojis and the word for that emotion. Here is an example of the emotion chart.

Some of the other nonnegotiable items for my classroom environment were having two sets of schedules up on the walls. One with pictures for the students to know in what order different events happen throughout the day, and one schedule with the activity and the time of day for it. I would put the student friendly schedule up near our classroom bathroom door at student eye level mostly because that’s where I had wall space that was also at student eye level where they could regularly see it. I put the more teacher-oriented schedule up on my teacher cabinet next to my table. This way, if I had a substitute, they would see it right off and know the schedule for the day and be able to refer back to it as often as they needed.

In Prekindergarten, we need to create a print rich environment for our students. This means that, as a teacher, I need to have words, letters, numbers, shapes, phonics charts, student names, etc. up on the walls and around my classroom. To accomplish this feat, I had students’ names throughout the classroom such as on their cubby, at their table seat, on our classroom jobs board, on the word wall, on the transportation sheets, and on their carpet spot. I also put up posters for calendar time, and weather/season time in addition to the shapes, numbers, and ABC’s that I also had up on the walls.

I even created a “Focus Wall” for each unit of study we did. This wall of information was focused on our current Unit of Study, the current week’s focus questions, and the vocabulary words for that week. After the week was completed, I would move those vocabulary words to our word wall; then, I would update our Focus Wall with the new focus questions and vocabulary words for the new week.

In my next post, I will go into more details about my Focus Wall, Word Wall, and lesson plan organization, but for now, here is what my Focus Wall looks like with all of the components. 

This may be a controversial statement, but in my opinion, two extremely important tasks for teachers to do are to make sure they know how their students go home and to keep them safe in the event of an emergency. For my classroom, I posted my student’s transportation for the end of the day next to the classroom door (inside our classroom). This way, a substitute would be able to find it easily and line the students up for dismissal accordingly. In addition to the transportation lists on the wall, each student also has a backpack tag with their name, teacher, classroom number, and how they go home. For keeping students safe and practicing drills, I had a go bag which contained a first-aid kit, tissues, baby wipes, hand sanitizer, etc. as well as a clipboard with a class roster and my school’s emergency procedures book (green on one side and red on the other) next to our classroom door. This way in the event of an emergency, we could grab it and go quickly to where we needed to be for the drill.

Essentially, my classroom set up could be narrowed down to two main tasks. One being to arrange and rearrange furniture, and the other being to put things up on the walls. Arranging my classroom furniture seems straight forward since I have officially decided how I want my room set up. Before deciding how you want your classroom set up, you might arrange it one way, change your mind, do it a different way, and repeat this process a few times before really being happy with it. My first-year teaching, I had no idea how to set up a prekindergarten classroom, I was walking around looking into other classrooms for ideas and finally decided what to do with some encouragement from my mentor teacher to do what I needed to do for myself that would make my classroom mine.

I did not want big open spaces in the classroom because young students might think there is enough room to run around which is not safe in a classroom environment (where we use items such as scissors and pencils). I used the shelves in a way that blocked some spaces off, creating smaller pockets of space for students to play in centers.

But, for my second-year teaching, I moved classrooms, and I ended up using the same kind of set up as the previous teacher who was in that room did. It had one larger space which allowed students to use for centers and our class to do carpet time in, but it wasn’t so open that students felt like they could run around in it. My students and I created almost an imaginary boarder to section off the more open space. So, where they sat on the carpet was only for wooden blocks or baby dolls (Dramatic Play), and where the shelf was by the door was the space for the green bins.

In conclusion, your classroom set up may not be anything like mine or the teacher next to you, and that is okay. Every teacher and class is different. So, here I will pass on the advice and permission you might be looking for that my mentor teacher gave me as I set up my classroom for the first time. “Do what you need to do in order to make the classroom yours. Get rid of (or put in storage) extra things you do not want or need. Arrange the room to be functional for your needs. Make it yours.” In making the classroom space yours, it becomes inviting and welcoming. This classroom will become a safe place for any student or family entering it. Now here is your permission to have fun this school year.