Read on for the 7 steps of how to set up a classroom!

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How To Set Up A Classroom

Setting up a classroom from scratch is a HUGE job, and it can be hard to know where to start. I remember feeling so overwhelmed during classroom set up week, so I knew I needed to create a system for myself. Breaking things down into steps has been unbelievably helpful. Following these steps will help keep you organized and on track in the process of classroom set up.

Here are my 7 steps for How To Set Up A Classroom:

1. Layout
2. Zones of storage
3. Wall displays
4. Classroom bins
5. Put it together
6. Decorate
7. Teach it

Step 1: Decide Your Classroom Layout

The first step to classroom setup is definitely deciding on a layout. There are lots of ways to configure a classroom, and these decisions really depend on the size of your classroom and which grade/subject you teach.

Here is an example of my classroom layout:

Some important questions to ask yourself while deciding on a layout:

• Do I have student desks or student tables? What formation of these would be best for learning?
• Where will my classroom library go?
• Do I want a large rug for group lessons?
• Where will my teacher desk go?
• Do I want a small group area in the classroom?
• Are there other special areas I want? For example, a calm corner, a place for tech storage, a spot for group work, flexible seating areas, etc.

If you’re having doubts, don’t stress too much. You can always shift things around if they’re not working. Just commit to something as a starting point, and move everything into place. Then give yourself permission to shift when needed.

Step 2: Create Zones of Storage 

Classroom storage is a big step in how to set up a classroom. It’s important to think through the types of storage you will need so you can allocate your cabinet and shelf space wisely. 

Some areas to think about planning for:

• Student materials
• Student backpacks and lunches
• Arts and crafts supplies
• Center works
• Teacher storage for items not currently being used
• Office supplies
• Curriculum storage
• Classroom library

If you need some storage solution ideas, you can read my blog post 10 Genius Ideas For Classroom Storage.

Here's a little video showing how I allocated my storage space in my classroom:

Step 3: Plan Your Wall Displays

Next up, it’s time to think about your bulletin boards, whiteboard, and any other displays you want the walls. Many classrooms come with some built in bulletin boards and a whiteboard, but you can easily add more wall display areas to fill empty wall space or cabinet doors.

Think about what you want displayed (at least for the beginning of the year, as you will probably switch out these spaces as the year goes on).

My list of wall displays includes:

• Sound and alphabet posters
• Sight word wall
• Whiteboard
• Themed bulletin board (for whatever season or theme we are studying)
• Positive reinforcement board (you can check that out here)
• Student work display
• Math fluency display (you can check that out here)

This is honestly such a fun step, so let yourself enjoy it! Be creative and start thinking about the décor your might want.

Step 4: Find Your Classroom Bins and Baskets

Okay, so we know it takes a lot of baskets and bins to make a classroom. But how do we decide which ones we need to buy? Once again, I like to break it down into smaller pieces.

Think about what kind of bins or baskets you'll need for the following:

• Books for classroom library
• Student materials
• Art supplies
• Centers – both when they're available for students and when they're being stored
• Storage for materials that aren't currently being used
• Office supplies
• Teacher supplies

Here are some of my favorite practical bins for these things:

Step 5: Put It All Together

This step is really just about getting to work. You've done your planning, now you need to get to it! Your to do list might look something like this:

• Move furniture into correct spaces to match your layout
• Organize your books into your book bins
• Get student materials ready to go in their containers
• Fill up baskets with materials, label them, and put them on shelves
• Put up your bulletin boards and wall displays

Step 6: Time To Decorate!

It’s hard to save this for last, but when time gets crunchy, you’ll be glad you got the important stuff out of the way first. 

Once you have those important first classroom set up steps finished, then you get to have fun! Think about what other classroom décor you want (you probably already started thinking about this with your bulletin boards and displays). Maybe there’s an empty corner you want to spruce up, or maybe you want some fun tassels for your teacher desk. Or maybe you want to add some fun pillows to your classroom library. The possibilities are endless!

Go area by area and use Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration – there are endless examples of cute classrooms once you start looking!

Step 7: Teach Your Students About Their Classroom

I guess this step is technically extra, since your classroom will be fully completed without doing this one. BUT… I wouldn’t skip it!

A lot of teachers don’t spend the time needed to teach their students about their new classrooms. Students need time to adjust to their new environment. Plus, we want them to be invested in keeping their classroom beautiful and respecting the materials inside of it.

Start thinking now about the routines and procedures you want your students to use in their new room. Think of fun ways students can familiarize themselves with the classroom layout and storage. Plan time to teach and practice routines and procedures.

This blog post goes into fun ways to teach rules and routines to your students.

Best Way To Set Up a Classroom

Now, these tips I shared with you are my best practices for setting up a classroom. But in truth, it’s a very personal process. It will look different for everyone. These steps can be guide posts for you as you discover what works best for you. Let yourself be flexible in your setup process. 

But anytime you start to feel overwhelmed, you can return to these steps and they’ll help you get back on track.

What part of classroom setup are you feeling nervous about? Let me know in the comments! 
xoxo 
Laura

Resources For You:

Articles For You:

10 Genius Ideas For Classroom Storage Teachers Will Love

5 Must-Try Classroom Routine and Procedures Ideas

21 Amazing Ideas for Activities on the First Day of School

21 Classroom Amazon Must-Haves That Teachers Will Love

The post How To Set Up A Classroom in 7 Easy Steps appeared first on Love Grows Learning.

This article is all about activities to build classroom community!

In a rush? You can check out my Classroom Community Builders MEGABUNDLE on TPT right now:

This product may contain affiliate links. I make a small commission on products purchased through these links.

How To Build Classroom Community

There certainly isn’t one correct answer for how to build community in the classroom. But over the last 9 years of teaching, I’ve developed a way that works for me every time. When I start to think about my classroom community and the classroom culture I want to create, there are three pieces that I find to be the most important. Here’s my magic recipe if you want to learn more about how to build a classroom community:

1. Back to School Classroom Community Builders: Use classroom community builders that help students feel seen, included, and celebrated during first few weeks. 
2. Rules and Routines for Classroom Community: The way these are established are going to have a big impact on how we build classroom community as a group. 
3. Build Classroom Community with Kindness: Having explicit discussions around treating each other with kindness is important for establishing a positive classroom community. I find it’s helpful to revisit these conversations throughout the school year.

Let’s dive into each one of these and I’ll share some specific activities to build classroom community!

Back to School Classroom Community Builders

Back to school season is the perfect opportunity to think carefully about how to build community in the classroom. The activities you do during the first few weeks of school are an important part of setting the tone and helping students feel safe and happy in their new space. Here are some of my favorite activities to build classroom community during that back to school time:

First Day Feelings

Talking about our feelings on the first day of school can be especially helpful to start building classroom community. Starting a new school year is a lot to process! It’s always a good idea to have some first day of school activities that help students feel safe in their new classroom environment.

On an anchor chart, write or draw some different feeling emojis (happy, nervous, excited, sad, etc.). Lead your class in a discussion about how feelings are normal and everyone’s feelings are different. (“First Day Jitters” and “A Tiger Tail” are two great book choices to read with this activity)

Give every student a sticky note to write their name and let them put the sticky note on the anchor chart next to the feeling that they most identify with.

Heart Maps

Creating heart maps is another activity to build classroom community at the beginning of the year. Share with your class some things that are important to you in your life and add them to your heart map. Then have each student create their own heart map filled with the things that are most important to them. Displaying these can help students get to know each other, and it can help you learn about the passions and interests of your students.

Friend Scavenger Hunt

Make a checklist for students that includes items like “A classmate who has two younger siblings” or “Someone who has the same favorite color as you” or “Someone who went to a different school for kindergarten than you”.

Students then go around the classroom trying to find a student’s name to write next to every item on the list. This gets them walking around, meeting new people, and talking to each other! This is definitely one of my favorite activities to build classroom community!

You can snag this Find a Friend Scavenger Hunt for free right here!

Celebrating Names

Celebrating names is a wonderful way to help students get to know each other at the beginning of the year. Also, it provides an opportunity to promote inclusiveness and respect between students from different cultures. Reading the book “Your Name Is A Song” is one of my favorite activities to build classroom community. I love these bookmarks to go with it!

Reach for the Stars

If you are looking for a gorgeous bulletin board for the first week of school, look no further! This display celebrates the goals that students have, and helps establish a community of learners.

These resources and more are available in my First Week of School Activity Bundle!

Rules and Routines for Classroom Community

Establishing your classroom routines and rules is a key part of building classroom community. Every classroom needs routines and procedures to create a structure that children can learn and participate in. And of course, teaching classroom rules is a huge part of classroom management. Classroom rules help children feel safe. Therefore, introducing them thoroughly and revisiting them often is so important to build classroom community. Here are some of my favorite ways to introduce those oh-so-crucial classroom rules and routines!

Class Promise

First, Lead your students in a discussion about what a great class should look like, sound like, and feel like. Then, consolidate all of their ideas on an anchor chart. Finally, have children decorate a handprint, heart, or cutout person of themselves to go around the class promise, sealing everyone’s pledge to one another. I like to display the class promise in the classroom for the whole year, as a visual reminder of the classroom community we committed to.

Classroom Routine and Procedures Visuals

Providing clear visuals that students can refer to every single day is such a helpful way to reinforce your classroom routine and procedures. There are so many gorgeous classroom decor ideas out there to give you lots of inspiration for how you could do this in your own classroom!

For example, anchor charts are great activities to build classroom community because they involve the whole class and create a helpful visual.

Classroom Material Flipbook Craft

Crafts are another way to teach these important skills. Emphasizing care and respect for the classroom environment is an important part of building classroom community. This craft helps students learn how to care for their classroom materials.

Classroom Rules Flower

Crafts are great activities to build classroom community! This craft is a fun and engaging way to introduce your classroom rules. Each student contributes a square of paper with something they’re committed to trying. Then take all the squares of paper and put them together to make a class display. 

Classroom Map

Helping students students feel at home in their new classroom can help them feel like part of their classroom community. A classroom map can help students learn where everything is.

All these resources and more are included in my Routines and Procedures Activities Bundle!

Build Classroom Community with Kindness

Every year, I make sure that kindness is set as a standard for how we treat one another in the classroom. Encouraging kindness between students is hugely important if you want to build community in the classroom. Here are my favorite classroom community builders that really help to make kindness an everyday expectation.

Bucket Filler Chart

The book “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?” provides a helpful metaphor for kids to understand the importance of how we treat one another. Reading this book can help inspire students to be a part of building classroom community by being a “bucket filler”.  Another fun activity idea is to have students brainstorm ways they can be a “bucket filler” at school and record them on an anchor chart.

WOW Word Wall

One of my favorite ways to build community in the classroom is by creating a WOW Word Wall. First, we talk about words that are important to our classroom community. Some examples might be “kind”, “respectful”, “helpful”, or “patient”. Then we post them on our WOW Word Wall. After that, I am constantly on the lookout for students exemplifying the words we discussed. Throughout the day, I take time to acknowledge what I noticed them doing, and then they get to place something special next to that word. You could use a sticker, or a star – I like to use these beautiful plastic butterflies. Later in the school year, I turn it over to the students, and they get to be the ones who acknowledge their classmates doing great things.

Kindness Chain

This is a fun and easy way to promote kindness in your classroom. Have a time during the day when students can share ways that their classmates were kind to them. For every kindness that gets shared, add a colored strip of paper to a paper chain. My class always loves to see how long the chain becomes!

Kindness Bingo

If you’re classroom community is needing some help, this can be a fun activity to get things back on track. Create a kindness bingo board with different acts of kindness in each square. As you notice students doing the activities, they get to color in a square on their bingo board. I like to make it a challenge to see if the whole class can reach a certain number of combined bingos so that it doesn’t become an individual competition.

Kindness Shout-Outs

Another fun way to build classroom community is to create a way for students to leave each other positive notes or messages. Shout-outs, positive notes, or compliments can be made available for students to fill out and give to other students. Some teachers even set up student mailboxes for these to be delivered! (Make sure to personally check notes before they are delivered to ensure that they stay positive.) 

To get your hands on these kindness crafts and resources, plus many more, check out my Kindness Activities Bundle!

I hope you now have lots of ideas for activities to build classroom community! Spending time with your students to build relationships and community is always worth it! 

Which activity are you excited to try out with your students? 
Xoxo 
Laura

Resources you may be interested in:

Other articles you may be interested in:

21 Amazing Ideas For Activities On the First Day of School

Week of Kindness

5 Must-Try Classroom Routine and Procedures Ideas

10 Powerful Community-Building Ideas

The post The Best Activities To Build Classroom Community To Try Now appeared first on Love Grows Learning.

When we are on campus (you know, in non-pandemic times…) Circle Time in the classroom usually consists of:

• Songs and Movement: I have a huge collection of songs and movement that coincide with our language arts units.
• The Pledge: We have a musical version (of course!) of the pledge with a special added verse that talks about the unity of all nations and peoples. There are sign language movements that we do with it.
• Student Compliments: We invite students to give compliments to each other about positive behavior they've noticed so far that morning.
• Morning Message: Every morning I write a short letter to students on the board about what we're doing that day. After reading it together, students volunteer to circle sight words or words with a certain spelling rule.
• Calendar: We lead students through changing the date every day, and we write down the day of the week in English and Spanish.
• Schedule: We have magnetic labels with all the subjects that we put in order every day on the whiteboard and then one student reads out the order of the subjects for the day.
• Sharing: On certain days a week, students can volunteer to bring something special from home that they want to share with the class.

So the big question is…

How can we have Circle Time in a distance learning setting?

When we started distance learning last spring, we decided to continue to start each day with Circle Time. We made it optional, but the kids loved it, and we had almost all of them join us each morning.

So from 9-9:30 every morning, we met on Zoom and spent time together singing and learning and laughing. My kids loved the chance to see everyone face to face and interact with some non-academic activities.

Here is a sneak peek of how our morning Circle Time over Zoom would go:

Songs

Singing songs together over Zoom is easy! Just mute everyone except the song leader. My students loved singing along and doing our movements to familiar songs we had sung all year long.

Morning Message

My handy whiteboard made Morning Message seem the same as when we were in the classroom. I would have it pre-written off to the side so I could easily grab it after singing.

Calendar

After the Morning Message was read, I would call individuals to tell us what the date was and the day of the week.

Interactive Games and Activities

Here are some of my favorite interactive games to do over Zoom:

• Swingman – like hangman only he's on a happy swing, helps with word recognition and spelling patterns
• Madlibs – they have kid editions that are so fun, these also help with grammar and parts of speech
• Class polls – we would give them three choices (like strawberries, oranges, or watermelon for fruit) and then we would tally everyone's responses in a bar graph and talk about the results
• Sharing – students could choose something in their house to show to the class. We had some fun ones during distance learning – lego creations, stuffies, and even pets!
• Mingle Mingle – we would give kids a question (what did you do this weekend, what's one game you played last week, etc) and put them in groups of 4-5 in breakout rooms to talk and visit about the question. They loved this social time!

Changes For The Fall

There are some tweaks we are going to make this fall to get even more out of our morning Circle Time:

• Handwriting: We decided to include our handwriting instruction in our morning Circle Time. This will be a simple addition to our morning routine: a few times a week we will have a letter that we introduce at the end of circle. We will have students trace it with us in the air, on their hand or thigh, and then fill out their alphabet page that goes with it.
• Read Aloud: I also want to include some read alouds in our morning circle. Once or twice a week, I will choose a short book to read together in the mornings. Read alouds are so important in my work to establish classroom communities at the beginning of the year, I wanted to make sure that I found a whole group live time to read some of my favorite picture books.
• Ice Breakers: For the beginning of the year especially, I want to focus on ice breaker games, community-building activities, and getting-to-know you exercises. I plan on including a different game every morning during the first few weeks of school.

With all of the technology available, you could also create a virtual environment for Circle Time, such as Bitmoji classroom, or an interactive board. I've been playing around with the idea of having something in my Bitmoji classroom that links to a Circle Time area, and I created this as a possibility of something to use:

Do you have plans to incorporate Circle Time into your schoolday?
xoxo
Laura

The post How To Lead Morning Circle Time… Virtually! appeared first on Love Grows Learning.