Where To Begin: Preparing the Classroom for the First Time

You said “yes” to the school board and are planning on teaching a roomful of students within a couple of weeks. You enter the bare classroom with its blank walls, empty bulletin boards, stacks of curriculum, and odds and ends that previous teachers have left behind. Where to begin? What should be done now to make it a smoother year overall?

Today’s post deals with the tangible and physical—the checklist that can be completed and checked off before the beginning of the school year to make your room an inviting environment by the first day of school and sets up your year for success.

Bulletin Boards and Wall Decor

Consider Classroom Theme or Color Palette: You can use a theme or color palette for a more cohesive look in your classroom. There is an abundance of theme ideas from favorite books such as Curious George, Dr. Seuss, Winnie the Pooh, Clifford, and Charlotte’s Web. Or you can consider environmental themes such as Under the Sea, Forest, Camping, Travel, and the Rainforest. Or perhaps you’d rather go with a certain color palette like Chevron, Retro Rainbow, Polka Dots, Neon, or Tropical. Keep the theme or colors in mind when choosing such items as a job/cleaning chart, birthday chart, daily schedule tags, desk/hooks/cubby labels, number lines, student folders, behavior systems, etc.

Sourcing: Making your own items can be time-consuming but also quite rewarding. Easier methods would include shopping on Amazon for a certain theme, downloading items from Teachers Pay Teachers, or borrowing from another teacher that used the same theme a previous year.

Functional over Cutesy: Keep in mind that while you want everything to have a cohesive look, functional and academic is preferable to cutesy and cluttered. Walls are valuable real estate within a classroom—take the time to consider how each chart and decor item on your wall will be used during the school year. Does the item add value to your classroom, or should it be replaced with something that will be used more or provide more academic value for your students?

Job/Cleaning Chart: Think through what classroom responsibilities you would like to delegate to your students and the way that you will rotate those responsibilities. You can find many ideas and free charts here.

Daily Schedule: A visual reminder of what is happening when is both helpful for you and your students. Consider adding magnetic strips to the back, using tacks, or finding some way to make it easily changeable from day to day as your schedule fluctuates throughout the week.

Academic Charts: timelines, number lines, alphabet strips:Depending on your grade level and curriculum, there are certain charts, strips, or timelines that may need to be put up within your room. The alphabet for those learning to read, a history timeline if you are teaching history, a number line for students learning to count, and certain phonetic charts for those still learning how the English language works. A number line around classroom for the number of the days of the school year (take one number off each day). In lower elementary classrooms, it is helpful to have every 10 or even 5 looking a bit different so that it is a helpful tool in teaching skip-counting (counting by 5’s and 10’s) or perhaps have the odd numbers bolder than the even to teach skip-counting by 2’s.

Behavior System: My favorite visual behavior system for the elementary classroom is the clip chart. But again, there are many other downloadable free visual behavior ideas as well.

Student Storage & Desks

Name Tags & Numbers for desks, cubbies, hooks, etc. There are so many free ones at Teachers Pay Teachers that you can print on cardstock, put through a laminator, and then attach to desk/cubby/hook areas using wide packing tape. Assign your students each their name and a number. Their number should go up on their name tag and then that number is used to label each of their personal supplies so it doesn’t get mixed up with other students (like their text books, ruler, scissors, pencils, etc.)

Small Number Lines for students still learning basic math concepts (K-3?). There are several free options here. It’s helpful to print them first on card stock, put them through laminator (because then you can save them for another year) and then tape onto the bottom of the top of the desk.

Small Alphabet Strips for each desk for students learning to write their letters correctly (K-3). It’s best to use the same script for the alphabet strip that they are taught to use in their handwriting curriculum. Again, if you put it first on card stock and then laminate and then use packing tape to tape onto desks, you can save them and reuse them for additional years.

Individual Supplies

Take Home Folder: One pocket inside labeled as “Keep At Home” and the other pocket labeled “Return to School.” 

Student Supplies: Check what your school provides and what the students are expected to bring along. Your school may provide markers, crayons, scissors, glue, rulers (make sure they have centimeters and inches), and large erasers for your classrooms. You can choose whether you would like to have bins (a bin of crayons, a bin of glue, etc.) that everyone just shares or if you want to allow the students to label their supplies with their individual number such as their pencils, eraser, etc. Quite a few students will probably bring their own supplies on the first day of school so while you want to check to make sure there are enough supplies for your students, just wait to label them—if they bring their own pack of 36 crayons, don’t feel the need to give them a pack of 12 crayons provided by the school, etc. You can cut masking tape into little squares or use dot stickers for the students to put their number on and then attach to the item they are labelling on the first day of school.

Functional over Gimmicky. If they bring gimmicky items such as erasers that don’t erase well, rulers with only inches and not centimeters, or pencil sharpeners that create a mess all over your floor, or 100 pack markers that are just too enormous for to be contained well, don’t feel bad telling the child to take those items back home and give them a school-supplied item instead.

Classroom Supplies

“First Aid” Basket somewhere in classroom with Band-Aids, cough drops, tissues. The teacher has access to these items and can hand out as needed.

Basic Cleaning Supplies for wiping off desks, cleaning off blackboard or whiteboard, cleaning the bathroom connected to your classroom, etc.

Teacher’s Desk Items (that students can use IF given permission): tape dispenser, stapler, adult scissors, red pen, etc.

Blackboard, Whiteboard Items: markers, erasers, etc.

Curriculum Preparation

Number Student Books and make sure you have enough for each student.

Separate and File Papers for the Year—work pages, tests, quizzes, etc. This can be a big task, but have some friends or family over and make stacks per lesson/test/quiz and paper clip it together and then file away in a file folder within a filing cabinet. This will save you so much work and time and keep you organized throughout the year. There is always the chance that more students may be added to your class, so go ahead and sort all of the curriculum papers you have on hand. 

Prepare 10-20 Center Bins for the first month of the year (through the end of September). These center bins are intended to be extra activities and review work for students to complete on their own. During Reading time or any other time when you are working with individual or small groups of students, it is helpful to have something on hand for the other students to do if they have already finished up their seat work. These centers could be a game/activity or a more structured academic center. To find downloadable centers go to Teachers Pay Teachers, search for centers, and sort by grade. Again, just remember that you may want to start them off with centers from the last grade they were in instead of the current grade to ensure that it is review material. Going into October and into each following month, it would be good to switch out the activities in the bins and replace them with centers that review concepts you learned so far in the year. 

Plan Your First Day. Check with your principal or other faculty members to see if there are whole school events or other expectations for the first day.

Allot time for a visual talk-through of your wall decor/items: “This is where you will see the schedule for each day. And here we have a job chart with each of your names listed so that we can see what your responsibilities are for the day. This bulletin board will be holding some of your best papers throughout the week as you use neat penmanship and do correct work. Etc.”

Allot time for a brief introduction to the classes within a typical school day. In an early elementary classroom, it is helpful to move through the student books within the order of a typical classroom day: “First, let’s pull out your Bible that you will be using in Devotions. Now, let’s take out your Phonics book and do one page together today. After Phonics, we will always take a bathroom break so let’s go see where the bathrooms are located, etc.”

Allot time at break/recess to take photos. Your students are dressed up in the best for the first day of school, so now is the time to take those snapshots that you may want to include on your door or your classroom wall, a visitor’s book, or simply to compare with an end-of-the-year photo.

Many schools only have a half day on the first day so you may want to include a snack at some point in the day if your students are not expected to bring lunches on the first day. As much as possible, try to note on your plan for the day any expectations and classroom procedures that you want to address throughout the course of the morning. Are there small moments throughout your day when you can go over how you want your students to hand papers in, the expectations for walking in the hallway, how will they tell you they need a tissue or need to use the bathroom, how do you expect them to wash their hands after using the restroom, etc.?

This is not an all-inclusive list or even an exhaustive list. You may think of things that I have not addressed that are necessary for your classroom and I am sure I have things on this list that do not apply to every classroom. But hopefully this will get you started and leave you feeling not quite so lost as you start the year.

Happy organizing and preparing!

P.S. When you have completed your classroom setup and are ready to tackle some of the less tangible items for the year, check out “Help, Where Do I Begin” by Betty Yoder for a 25-page handout where Betty Yoder discusses discipline plans, schedules, recess planning, and more.

Photo by Terry Jaskiw on Unsplash