Spaces & Places

I was so excited to get Spaces & Places: Designing Classrooms for Literacy by Debbie Diller in the mail this week. Yesterday was my last day of school with students, and although I am looking forward to rest and relaxation over the break, I am already so excited about next year. The gears are already turning in full swing. One area of excitement is that I will be getting a new classroom. Our school purchased two buildings last year and renovated the first one. The second one will be the middle school portion of the school, and next year they will be able to do the first phase of remodeling, including my new classroom. Thus, it was perfect timing to get the book.

I kept a pen close by as I was reading to make a list of ideas. Now I am tossing around ideas such as whether or not I want a teacher desk - something I had never even considered not having before. Yet, Diller's suggestion of saving space by having a table serve as small group meeting area during student contact time and teacher desk in the after hours makes sense.

I am going to take Diller's idea of mapping out a classroom plan on paper using sticky notes. I mapped out my room last year, but had not thought about using sticky notes instead of drawing the same floor plan over and over with different configurations. I feel even luckier because I can just copy my classroom off the contractor's floor plans, which will already have all of the permanent fixtures marked. Then I can play around with different classroom components.

Another area for excitement is that with a growing school we will have to purchase new classroom furiture. Whereas any other year I would not be able to give suggestions for classroom furniture as a whole, this year I can. I want to process the information, skim over the wonderful color pictures again and then meet with my director while it is still early enough to influence the type of furniture for my classroom.

I will be posting lateron throughout the summer with ideas on how I want to set up my room. I also went back and skimmed A Year of Reading's blog to find posts from the beginning of the school year about Trading Spaces, some fun posts that complement the book well (1, 2, 3, and 4).