Do You Have An Ideal Classroom Layout?

As I’ve been writing about my first year of teaching in the series: Tales From A First Year Teacher, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about all the things a first year teacher goes through, especially that preliminary organisation.

I remember one of the parts that I was particularly looking forward to was arranging the physical space of my very own classroom. This included thinking about how I would arrange the desks and classroom furniture as well as envisioning what type of storage would be available. I thought that if I could make the space as inviting as possible, then hopefully my students would at least want to be in the room.

Now we all know that in my first year of teaching the space that I had on offer was not the best, to say the least (read about it here), but we all need to work with what we have. During the summer holidays I had been to a number of different fabric stores to purchase some bright, colourful, fun fabrics. When I finally met my classroom I was so glad that I had that fabric, it turned a drab space into something that wasn’t quite so bad.

This all brings me to my ‘dream’ that I had for my first classroom. I’m sure you had a dream about how you wanted your classroom space to look. Now I had big plans….I was going to have a listening post, mat space, pigeon holes for each student, beanbags, white board and black board, computer stations, investigation area, and a television.

When I think back to this now, I can only smile. Oh what big dreams I had. My first classroom didn’t even have desks the same size, let alone space for a listening post!

While at University I remember we were asked to draw a plan of our ideal classroom. Maybe this was not such a good thing to do, as I had really high expectations. I realised that I probably wouldn’t get all on my wish list, but surely some of my ideas would be possible….Check out my design below! You can also download the design here as a PDF: Ideal Classroom

My Ideal Classroom

As you can see, not at all possible with what space I had available in my first year of teaching. But there is nothing wrong with dreaming!!!

Over to you, what is your ideal classroom like? How did this actually compare to what you had in your first year of teaching? Please leave your comments below.