These are the 5 classroom setup tips I wish I would have known as a first year teacher.
These classroom setup strategies will help you get clear on how to utilize classroom management, how to organize different areas in your classroom, and how to confidently plan for the first few weeks of school.
Download the Ultimate Classroom Setup Guide Here: https://sunny-creator-106.ck.page/d315493966
Join the 3-Day Back To School Challenge: https://sunny-creator-106.ck.page/f18e312756
Confidently Kickstart Your School Year: https://thepresentteacher.com/mini-course/
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// ABOUT
I’m Helena, a coach for new and first-year teachers sharing knowledge on how to have a thriving career and personal life.
The Present Teacher Podcast is a resource for classroom management, classroom organization, time management, and teacher wellness. Follow along and learn how to thrive in the classroom and in life.
Subscribe to The Present Teacher Podcast to get inspired by new weekly podcast episodes!
These are the 5 classroom setup tips I wish I would have known as a first year teacher.
These classroom setup strategies will help you get clear on how to utilize classroom management, how to organize different areas in your classroom, and how to confidently plan for the first few weeks of school.
Download the Ultimate Classroom Setup Guide Here: https://sunny-creator-106.ck.page/d315493966
Join the 3-Day Back To School Challenge: https://sunny-creator-106.ck.page/f18e312756
Confidently Kickstart Your School Year: https://thepresentteacher.com/mini-course/
___________________________
❤️Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/thepresentteacher/
🔥TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@thepresentteacher
🚀Website | https://thepresentteacher.com/
💜YouTube | https://youtube.com/@ThePresentTeacher?si=meqMmiDHJN-0Jmlr
___________________________
// RESOURCES
💌 Join our email list for weekly motivation | https://sunny-creator-106.ck.page/4277e03f92
🌼 Join our Community on Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/groups/thrivingnewteachers
___________________________
// ABOUT
I’m Helena, a coach for new and first-year teachers sharing knowledge on how to have a thriving career and personal life.
The Present Teacher Podcast is a resource for classroom management, classroom organization, time management, and teacher wellness. Follow along and learn how to thrive in the classroom and in life.
Subscribe to The Present Teacher Podcast to get inspired by new weekly podcast episodes!
So I was scrolling through my photos the other day and deleting some old photos, and I stumbled across the pictures of my classroom when I first started teaching and it was extremely eye-opening to see how I used to set up my classroom versus how it is set up today. So I thought today we would dive into what are the first-year teacher classroom setup tips I wish I would have known as a first-year teacher. So, with that being said, let's dive in. Hey, teacher Bestie, my name is Helena and I'm the creator of the Present Teacher podcast. I'm a first-year teacher coach and in this podcast you are going to learn everything from simple, actual classroom management, social learning and teacher wellness strategies. You know that impact you want to make in the classroom or we're going to make it happen here. So you're a first-year or new teacher and you're wondering what classroom setup tips there are and what are some things you should avoid. So here are my top classroom setup tips.
Speaker 1:I've learned in the making that I wish I would have known as a new teacher, the first one being don't focus on just the aesthetics. So a big mistake I made when I first started out is I would spend weeks trying to make my classroom look just right Now, don't get me wrong. I absolutely love and still do scrolling on Pinterest and saving all the cute ideas and making my classroom feel homey, but when my students finally came in, during that first day, even week of school, I had no idea what to teach or how to teach or how to manage a classroom, even though I had my master's degree in elementary education. So, without being said, there's much more to a room than just set up your classroom to look nice. While, yes is important, here are some things to focus on instead. The first thing you want to focus on, apart from the aesthetics, is the flow of the classroom. How will your students move about the room when they come in? What's the first thing they're going to do? Which area are they going to go to and then where are they going to go next? How will your students gather materials and are they spread across the room? Now, this was a mistake I definitely made. I made all the materials sporadically throughout the classroom, so there was constant bumping and interrupting each other, quietly working and distracting each other, and I thought it was a behavior issue. But in reality, I could have set up my classroom to be way more organized and way more condensed into one area for the materials. That would minimize distractions if I did that more strategically. But also, how do you want your students to move about the room? I like to think of the classroom as like a row of a river Students are going to go where there's the least amount of resistance. And when you don't set up your classroom with flow in mind, oftentimes what happens is students will distract each other by walking across the room to get something. But if you are strategically thinking of the flow of the river as you're setting up your classroom, you're going to minimize the amount of distractions happening through the school year, and future teacher you is really going to appreciate that. So that is the first thing you should focus on, apart from aesthetics.
Speaker 1:The second thing I recommend you doing instead is to think about classroom management. Now, by this I don't mean just googling what rules you should have in your classroom. Well, yes, classroom rules are important. There's so much more to your classroom management than that. So the first thing is, yes, you want to figure out what rules you want to have in the classroom, but also, what are the expectations and procedures you expect in your classroom? What consequences are students going to have for not following expectations. Also, what are the procedures you want to teach and when do you want to teach them? All of these are important things to figure out before the first week of school, before you start teaching. That way, when your students come in, you know what to teach and why you're teaching it, instead of very quickly going on tpt and looking for ideas, like I definitely did my first couple of years. The third thing I recommend you looking into are what are you teaching during the first week of school? What skills and procedures do you want to cover during the first week? Have this printed out and ready to go?
Speaker 1:I made the mistake of thinking that I would wait until we had time to work as a district, but what I didn't realize is during that first week, we actually spent a lot of time in meetings, and actually every year since then, since I can actually know that I think about it has always been full of meetings and meeting new people and different training that I had to take, so it didn't leave me a lot of time to planning. That's why I recommend figuring out what to teach during the first couple weeks of school, before school actually starts. So, as a recap the first thing I wish I would have known about teaching and setting up my classroom is that there's more to classroom setup than just making things look nice. I wish I would have spent more time in those other areas that I mentioned before. The second classroom setup tip that I wish I would have known sooner is where areas matter.
Speaker 1:So as a first year of teaching I just starting started setting up areas, kind of ish, similar to the ones I'd seen in other classrooms that I thought I might need. But there's really no rhyme or reason. I put the whole group area next to the lineup area. I put the teacher table next to the whole group learning area. I was just kind of like no rhyme or reason. There wasn't really a reason why I set up areas other than I thought it would look nice aesthetically. But I didn't really think things through. For example, like I said, I put the library next to the teacher table, so students were always distracting each other when they were silently reading and I was pulling kids for a whole group or small group and the turn in basket was where the lineup area was. So students that had to get in were always colliding with the students who are ready to get in line.
Speaker 1:The moral of the story is your areas definitely matter. Which areas you set up where definitely matters and you're going to learn more as you kind of play around with this. But think about which areas are going to work best next to each other, intentionally set them up that way, not just what looks good aesthetically. So you might be wondering what areas you should set up, and I did cover that in a previous week. But here's a quick overview of the different areas and if you want to learn more in depth about these different areas, I will put a link in the description about which areas these are and more in depth about that.
Speaker 1:But the first one is your lineup area. The second one is your whole group area. The third one is the independent work area, the fourth one is your small group area or your teacher table, and the fifth one is your library. And then you also have the pack up lineup area. Pack up area, different than the lineup area. Make sure to ask yourself do I think these areas pair well next to each other or should I separate them to minimize distractions?
Speaker 1:So as a recap, the second thing I wish I would have known intentionally when I was setting up my classroom, your teacher was how you set up your areas and where you set them up in your classroom Does matter, and to think that out more in depth than I did the first time around. The third thing I wish I would have known as a first year teacher when it came to classroom setup teacher tips was this to set up your processes or your systems now. Now, I wish I would have spent more organizing my paper and data workflow than just focusing on the aesthetics. Something I truly didn't work on until year three was how I wanted to organize my papers and materials and, honestly, my organization organization classroom organization suffered because of it. That's why I'm so passionate about talking about it now is because I wasn't natural at it by any means from the get go Of anything. I learned the importance of it through trial and error and the hard way. So what do you why mean by processes?
Speaker 1:When you print a resource online, whether it's through your curriculum or tpt? How do you go from printing it out to distributing it to your students, to filing a master copy for later, so you're not doing this work every single year and having to re-find things and reprint things out when it comes to keeping students work. How do you keep the completed work? How do you grade work? And then how do you send home a copy or send at home? What is that paper organization look like for you? And then the third thing collecting data for intervention or grading. What does that look like? How do you go from grading to putting it in the grade book and collecting data for your intervention and inputting it, and so forth.
Speaker 1:All of these are really good systems or processes to think ahead of time before you start the school year. So when I didn't take the time to think this through before school started, I just threw something together last minute and it went really rough. It's created a really rocky year where I couldn't really find any resources that were given to me or that I had printed out and I had to repeat the work I did during the first year of teaching, which really stuck. So don't recommend doing that. So how do you achieve a clear system and put them in place from day one? Well, here's how I recommend doing it.
Speaker 1:Imagine you're a piece of paper or resource and you need to file it away. Where do you put it? Start walking through a typical from printing to giving it to your students. Where are you going to put it From start to finish, walk through where things need to go and where things need to be. For example, when I print something off, I immediately make enough copies for my students, plus one extra for my filing cabinet, after I put it in the hanging basket by my door to give to my students during that day of the week that they need it. I then immediately file it away and my filing cabinet and my filing cabinet already has folders in place that are pre-made with typical topics that I think I'll cover later in a year. That way I'm not trying to file and make new folders and at the same time it's already set up, in place, ready to go.
Speaker 1:So, as a recap, the third tip I wish I would have known, as a first-year teacher setting up my classroom, is to focus on the systems of the classroom before the first day of school. You can always adjust this system or these systems later, but in fact I can almost guarantee that you will. But it's nice to have something in place for now instead of throwing something together last minute and it just not working for you all year. So, with that being said, the fourth tip I wish I would have known, as a first-year teacher setting up my classroom, is to have your first week planned and prepped. I talked about this earlier, but instead of focusing on just aesthetics, it's important to have your first week planned and prepped.
Speaker 1:So what procedures are you teaching during the first week of school? What skills are you teaching? Choose activities that will allow you to model different procedures throughout your week that the school, the students, are going to use later. For example, I'm a primary teacher and I had to teach my students what using glue and scissors look like. So I made sure to use those first couple weeks of school modeling what that procedure looks like. How does it look like, sound like, when we hold scissors? How does it look like, sound like, when we use our glue? The model the right way and the wrong way to do it, explaining the why and I have more in depth about what procedures are that you get the idea. But make sure you're choosing activities intentionally for that first week, with skills that you know you're going to have to teach later, so you can take this time to model the right way to do it from day one.
Speaker 1:I recommend taking a week at the beginning of the year, if possible, to teach procedures and expectations. I personally like using themed weeks at the beginning of the year that revolve around a book to. It just makes planning so much easier, and I've talked about this in the past. I talked about using the kissing hands and the bucket filling how full is your bucket? I'll link both of these down in the description down below, but these are great ideas on what you should be teaching during the first week of school. So that means that it takes some time to lay out what you're teaching and printed out and have it prepped for the first week of school so you can just focus on starting the year strong and focusing on your students and getting used to the feeling of teaching. Because the truth is, like I mentioned earlier, those in-service days before school starts are mostly going to be meetings and you won't have a lot of time to set up. So it's always nice to start the school year out ahead of time with these all prepped ready to go. I highly recommend going in a couple days over the summer to get your planning done ahead of time. So, as a recap, the fourth tip that I wish I would have known setting up my classroom as a first-year teacher is to plan and prep your first week of school at least ahead of time.
Speaker 1:The fifth tip I wish I would have known as a first-year teacher setting up my classroom is you don't have to have it perfect now. So this is more of a mental tip, but it doesn't have to be perfect right now. Your classroom doesn't have to be Pinterest ready right now. So remember, when you first started to learn to draw, you maybe copied down someone else or you had those guided drawing books and you started with the circle and before you knew it, you knew a smiley face. And then, once you learn step by step how to do it and you can do it repeatedly, you eventually had the confidence to make it your own and add your own style.
Speaker 1:Well, the same goes for teaching. The more comfortable you become with teaching in your classroom and your space, the more you will add to it. All this to say you don't have to buy everything on your wish list right now. You don't need the perfect classroom with the perfect things from day one. You don't need a huge library. You can build a strong foundation and then you can start adding as you go.
Speaker 1:The whole idea behind this is to shift our mindset, and I want to invite you to shift our mindset from a long term versus a short term mentality. Teaching is all about the long term, energetically. So instead of trying to have everything perfect now, think about how can I lay down a very strong foundation that weighed five years time. My life is so much easier and I can get so much more done, so you don't want to spend your entire summer trying to create the Pinterest perfect classroom just to feel excited or exhausted during the first day of school. So make sure you are going out of pace that feels energetically aligned and good with you.
Speaker 1:So those are the five tips I wish I would have known as a first year teacher setting up my classroom as a recap, the first one being that you don't need to focus on just aesthetics. There's more to it than that. The second one is your areas matter. The third one is to set up your processes or your organization Now. Fourth one have your first week planned and prepped. And the fifth thing you don't have to have everything perfect now. When are you setting up your classroom? Let me know in the comments or sending me a DM. I would love to chat and celebrate your new classroom and update on how it's going.
Speaker 1:If you want to take this a step further and you want some more resources on setting up your classroom, I want to invite you to download the ultimate classroom setup guide. This is a step by step on everything that I have in one place about how to set up your classroom with the confidence to build a strong foundation from day one. I also want to invite you, if you want to take it a step further I have a three day classroom setup challenge. Every day, you get an email with a video and I walk you through the theme of the day, everything from how to gather materials, how to save money and how to set up your classroom in a way that's aligned with you.
Speaker 1:And the third thing I want to invite you to do, if you want to take it an even step further than that, is to join my classroom kickstart mini course program. So this is a self-paced four week course to setting up your classroom for success. Granted, you can definitely take this course faster depending on what your timeline looks like, but it covers everything I talked about in this video and further and more in depth and more activities and templates. For example, in week one we talk about setting up your classroom. We also talk about family night, parent communication, classroom management and how to actually plan and prep that first week of school, and I actually give you templates and activities to grab and go as well. So if this is something you're interested in, I'd love to have you join us inside that program.
Speaker 1:As always, remember we are stronger together and I will see you in the next one, future, besty. Bye. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. I hope that you were able to take away some value that will help you thrive inside and out of the classroom. It would mean the world to me if you could take five seconds right now and leave a review on this podcast. And if you found this podcast especially helpful, make sure to take a screenshot of this episode right now and tag me on your socials to let me know you're listening. As always, remember that we are stronger together. With all the love in the world. Helena, aka the President Teacher. See you next time, teacher Besty.