Starting the Year Off Strong

Setting up your classroom is everything. It determines how well your year (or at least your first few weeks) will go, as well as what your students know about you from the moment they walk in. There are so many places to get great ideas for anchor charts and ways to set up your reading area, writing area, etc. So, I’m going to just give a few small suggestions that I’ve learned that may make it easier for you to put everything together quickly (and take it down at the end of the year just as quickly!)

1. Use material for your walls. I buy a nice fabric and use it year after year as the background for my materials. Just adding borders turns any area of my wall into a bulletin board, which is great if you don’t have a lot of bulletin boards to begin with.
   

   Make walls “interactive.” HOOKS, for example, is an envelope that allows students to pull out different ideas for how to start their essay.

2. Use tape! I tape the materials/handouts/letters, etc. to the fabric. That way, at the end of the year, I just remove the staples that keep the fabric attached to the wall and roll up my walls. They are easy to unroll at the start of the next year and set up quickly!
3. Start a folder for each TEK in your file cabinet. All center materials, worksheets, and questions can go into that TEK. You’ll stop re-creating centers and materials because everything will be easier to find.
4. Ask for book donations. Having a classroom library from Day 1 is important for setting the tone that reading is important in your class. Half Price Books will give teachers a free box of books, if they have excess inventory. First Book is also a wonderful resource. They offer grants several times a year that provide free books, as well as discounted prices on books throughout the year. Donors choose is another great option. I know several colleagues that have gotten classroom libraries funded!
5. Set up a few composition notebooks to keep yourself organized – one for each class period. In it, you can keep track of your writing conferences with students, notes about where you left off, etc. I usually paste the roster to the back of each one so I can keep attendance on it by writing the page number students are on. This way, I know they were there and I can keep track of how much they are reading each week.

Plan as much as you can before the year starts because you know how busy it gets once it starts. Take a deep breath. You can do this. Enjoy your year!