Choice Lit Topic: Classroom Design
There’s been a remarkable amount of brain research demonstrating how crucial environments are for learning. Cozy, well-lit and well-organized spaces are essential for literacy learners of any age. The constraints teachers face in designing and organizing their classrooms are enormous — from irritated fire marshals to fear of lice infestations, with limited budgets always at the forefront. You’ll be inspired by these beautiful classrooms, created by teachers who manage to design spaces any reader or writer would love.
Results
The Sisters Redesign a New Teacher’s Storage Area
The Sisters help a new teacher, Amy, sort through junk she inherited from previous occupants of her classroom. They use the "piles" method to sort through materials, separating books and...
Let’s Get Rid of “The Teacher Shrine”: Organizing Meeting Areas, Walls, and Materials
In this brief classroom tour, Gail Boushey and Joan Moser ("The Sisters") talk about problems with teacher desks, present how they separate and define different curricular learning areas.
Inviting Students to Organize Books and Materials
Are you always looking for something in your classroom? Maybe it's that special pair of scissors, your attendance/grade book, or the long overdue library copy of Cynthia Rylant's The Journey: Stories...
Room for Beliefs: Linking Classroom Design and What We Value
Step outside your classroom door and look back in, as if for the first time. What do you see? Do you want to come back inside? Or do you want...
On Kidney Tables: Small Changes for Big Effects
Our staff is opening a new elementary school this fall, and we have been buried beneath the many decisions required to establish a new place for learning. When you start...
Tools to Redesign Your Classroom (TEMPLATES)
How can teachers get started with thinking through a new classroom design? In these two tools from their acclaimed "Trading Spaces" classroom design courses, "The Sisters" (Gail Boushey and Joan...
The Literacy Coach Work Area: Arranging Materials in Cramped Spaces
Many literacy specialists and coaches find themselves in cramped work spaces when it comes to their desks, storage areas for materials, and meeting rooms for conferring with colleagues. In this...
Using Foam Boards in Writer’s Workshop
Foam boards are an inspiration that came from my friend Ann Marie Corgill. She shared this idea with me when she was working at the Manhattan New School in New...
Community Language Board: Building Vocabulary All Year Long
The "Community Language Board" is where the class shares interesting new words from read alouds, sight words, and alternatives to common words in writing. In this video tour, "The Sisters"...
Reorganizing the Classroom Library
In this time-lapse video, Gail Boushey and Joan Moser help Carrie, a second-year teacher, begin to organize her classroom library according to themes and traffic patterns in the classroom.
Coaching Moment: Reorganizing a Classroom Library
It may sound like such a minor coaching experience, and yet it was so powerful. I was asked by a second-grade teacher to help reorganize her classroom library, so it...
Company-Ready Teaching
Friends who have never been to our house are coming over for dinner. Suddenly, I see my house through new eyes: dust bunnies in the silverware drawer, the paint on...
Setting the Room for Collaboration
Gretchen Schroeder offers advice on how to arrange a high school classroom for collaboration and connection.
Strategic Seating
In my seventh- and eighth-grade literacy-based history classes, I am a firm believer in daily collaboration. I want my students to learn content and practice various standard-based skills on their...
Personal Touches Early in the Year – Classroom Design Photo Essay Series
Early in the year, many of the walls in our classroom are bare, as we wait to fill them up with our learning - our new words, books we've...
Quick Take: Special Library Shelves
Christy Rush-Levine shares a few special shelves in her classroom library.
Avoiding Implementation Through Lamination
I recently attended a professional development session in which one of the speakers urged school leaders to avoid “implementation through lamination.” He was referring to administrators whose primary mode of...
Classroom Tours: Learning from Colleagues
A few years ago we had someone from outside our school community do a walkthrough of classrooms in our building, to help us figure out how we could create better...
Organizing Materials to Support Literacy Learning (Classroom Design Series Part 3)
The organization of materials is crucial in a collaborative classroom. In this kind of classroom, there is no “mine,” but rather “ours” when speaking of materials and supplies, and organizing...
