Sunday, September 1, 2013

More Room Design


I meant to take more pictures of my classroom but as you can imagine, last week was a bit crazy. So somehow this is all I ended up with (more to come as I keep reflecting on meaningful use of space in ID classrooms)

In the back of the room we have all three teacher desks along side an independent work space. In the middle of the room I've put the supplies/writing center. This is probably what I am most nervous about. Last year I kept my supplies off in the corner and really didn't give the kids access to them. This year I'm going to try to make it a bit different. Now they are up front where everyone can easily get them. Hopefully we'll be able to encourage independence while also monitoring the class for only taking materials when they actually need them. If it doesn't work we'll just quickly move the materials off to the back corner of the room again. Everything is labeled with scissors, adapted scissors, pencils, crayons, glue, etc so hopefully we'll be able to get the kids to put materials back where they go. Beside the supplies are two boxes of paper (these are just amazon boxes covered in wrapping paper from the dollar tree. They held up great last year and saved me money!) One box is full of blank sheets of paper and the other is full three page booklets so that the kids will have the opportunity to choose if they want to use a booklet or one sheet of paper in writing workshop. Below are what I'm hoping to use as our writing boxes this year. Last year just using writing folders was difficult for my kids because we did so much with gluing, cutting, and coloring. I'm hoping using writing baskets will allow them to be more independent with their writing materials.

This shelf is in the middle of the room, which creates a nice divide but also makes me nervous about monitoring behavior and getting to children quickly who may need help. I have two students in wheelchairs and while I think they'll be able to get around easily I don't really know. Stay tuned...  I could be re-arranging by the end of week one.

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