Looking for classroom setup ideas to completely nail your elementary school or middle school plans? Creating your ideal space can be one of the most exciting tasks at the beginning of the school year. Then again, it can also be one of the most confounding if you’re a new teacher or you’re just not feeling like you’re quite up to the task.
The best classroom setup will inspire your students to love learning. A functional, well-configured classroom will truly buzz with excitement for learning.
Yeah, yeah, no pressure, right? Don’t worry. The teachers on the Teach Starter team have some classroom setup ideas to help you set up a modern classroom that will make your students feel welcomed and inspire them to dive right into the year. Find out how to set up an elementary classroom that will set you up (and your students) up for success this school year.
How to Set Up an Elementary or Middle School Classroom
We’ve got three words that will help you nail an elementary school classroom setup: Beg, borrow, and steal.
Beg:
You may have been allocated funds to purchase equipment (no, really, it happens sometimes). Chat with your administrators to see if they will release some money for you to purchase needed items.
Borrow:
Visit the library, resource room, other classrooms, the office — anywhere in the school that you may be able to borrow resources from for your classroom setup. Physically going to these places will give you ideas on what you need, and what you can save money on by borrowing. It’s a great opportunity to get to know your new colleagues, too.
Steal:
We’re not suggesting you actually steal items from anyone! Make sure you visit some other teachers in your school, particularly those with rooms similar in shape and size to yours, to steal amazing classroom setup ideas. Where has the teacher put the desk? What does the entryway look like? How are resources stored? How are items hung on the walls or bulletin boards?
Make it Feel Warm
How often have you heard house-hunters on one of those HGTV shows describe the feeling of finding the right place by saying “It just feels like home”?
We want our students to have that warm and fuzzy feeling of belonging when they walk into their classroom. That feeling doesn’t come from a perfectly curated ‘grammable’ space; it comes from a familiar and welcoming purpose-built space made with them in mind. Your amazing classroom setup will set the tone for the year you’ll share there together.
Having the students’ names visible in the room is a great way to make them feel at home. Regardless of their age, they’ll love seeing a little piece of their identity already incorporated into your classroom. Make things easy by picking just one classroom theme for a coordinated look, or pick and choose for an eclectic, fun vibe.
Create a Strategic Classroom Layout
The best classroom setups take the flow of the room into consideration. Will the students be walking through this spot to exit for lunch or specials? You’ll want to keep the path clear. Will all the desks be able to see the whiteboard easily with your intended classroom set-up?
Some things about your new classroom will inevitably be inflexible, like the location of the whiteboard and the phone. Use their locations as clues as to how the last teacher configures their room.
If you have a neighboring classroom with adjoining doors, look to see where the teacher has placed their desk, student desks, bulletin boards and technology. If it’s working for someone else, why not try it yourself? You can always tweak things to suit your needs throughout the year.
Don’t clutter up your desk with a ton of decor. It will become very full very quickly. At a minimum, you’ll need a pen holder, a paper tray, stationery storage, and space for a laptop and planner.
It’s OK if Your Classroom is a Little Bare
Do you feel like you’re cutting out 3,700 bulletin board letters and trying to get them ALL up, moving desks and chairs up from storage, trying to paint bookshelves … and it just isn’t all happening? Here’s the best advice a member of our Teach Starter team got when she was in the classroom. It came from a veteran teacher who saw she was struggling:
“The kids and parents don’t expect to see a fully functioning classroom on the first day. You’ll collect lots of student work to display within a couple of weeks. Leave yourself space to go with the flow once your kids are in the room.”
So take off all that pressure you’re putting on yourself to have a perfect, Pinterest-worthy classroom! And forget that feeling that you need to create every single thing from scratch. What your students need most is you and your passion for teaching … not something you spent hours outside the classroom creating.
It’s not cheating to simplify or buy a Teach Starter subscription that allows you to download all of your resources in one place whenever you need them instead of spending hours making them. It’s a matter of saving important time for your students.
Setting Up Classroom Seating
We’d be remiss to cover classroom setup without mentioning seating arrangements. The most important thing about creating seating arrangements is taking into account the students who have 504s and IEPs.
Some will have preferred seating close to the teachers, some will have preferred seating close to instruction, and others will have seating away from distractions. Arrange their seats first — it’s not only the law, but it will prevent you from having to redo your entire arrangement!
Need more ideas? We have more than half a dozen classroom seating arrangement ideas for different groups.
What Teachers Need to Know About Classroom Purchases
As a general rule of thumb, anything you purchase using school funds (the stuff you claim back immediately by submitting a receipt), belongs to your employer. It will have to stay at your school, even if you transfer.
Anything you purchase privately but for use in your classroom is yours to keep as you move about into different rooms and even if you change schools. Keep your receipts for these classroom setup purchases, as you might be able to claim them at tax time (check with your accountant). If you’re eyeing an amazing classroom resource that you couldn’t bear to leave behind, consider buying it yourself.
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