Setting up your classroom

For those of you who are about to start your NQT year in September, what should you be doing during the summer to prepare? If you can spend some time in your school one day over the holidays, then arranging your classroom will be a useful task.

You may have little flexibility in how the desks in your classroom are arranged, or you may not have your own teaching space to arrange, but it is still worth thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of different arrangements.  Basic rule, students will be encouraged to work with each other, but be more difficult to re-focus if they are sat in groups rather than rows.  Have a look at this discussion:

http://k6educators.about.com/od/classroomorganization/p/deskplacement.htm

Start off by thinking about how you want to organise the learning in your classroom, and then pick an arrangement that supports that, and remember, if it doesn't seem to work, change it!

And like with seating plans, you should plan this out when you're sat in your classroom as you can plan for things like awkward angles to the board or things that would stop you moving around the classroom.

How are you going to arrange your classroom for next year?