2e: Organizing Physical Space

Safety and accessibly • Arrangement of furniture and resources

2019-2020 School Year: Student Collaboration

The longer I teach the more I realize the value of learners teaching learners. I strive to arrange my classroom and design my instruction with this in mind. I think about arranging the furniture and learning spaces (both physical and virtual) in a manner that encourages learner collaboration. This model seems to be equally effective with both student learners and adult learners. The attached photos are examples of student collaboration that took place in my classroom this year.

2018-2019 School Year: Classroom Spaces

Maker Clubs are something that I have offered to our 3rd-5th graders each fall and in the spring. This year during our fall club, students worked on creating robots and programming them to do specific functions. In order to make this process more effective, I allowed students to work both inside and outside of my classroom in two intersecting hallways where I could easily observe them. Because this club ran just prior to the start of our school day, students had maximum use of space with the additional bonus of being able to share their work with peers arriving for the school day.

2017-2018 School Year: Furniture and Resources

My classroom is set up with 5 large tables arranged around a group floor space. The tables are set up to encourage group collaboration where students may choose to either sit or stand to work on collaborative projects. The carpeted floor space in the center of these tables gives us a comfortable spot to come together for whole group discussions and instruction. All of the classroom work spaces are set up to also be able to view the interactive white board for presentations.

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