Wendy+Seitz



Classroom Plan Annotation I want to give my students lots of reading material so most of the shelving in the room will be used for the class library. Reif talked about having a class library (pg 24) and the importance of having the students pre-grouped into tables (pg 23). Of course, tables could take the form of groups of desks or actual tables. I put the kids at tables made groupings of desks so that they could do group work more easily, without moving desks all over the place. I want the students to be able to do writing workshops and literature circles at their tables. I also placed an extra table in the room to allow for lying out of larger projects, conferences, leaving out piles of paper etc. (Rief pg. 23). Having furniture that is multi-purpose will make life easier and save on time in regards to moving furniture around. I want my students to be able to focus on learning rather than worrying about the room lay out. One thing I was aware of when I was planning the layout was to be cautious of having students’ backs to the board. I know how frustrating it is to constantly having to turn around and then writing on one’s lap etc. The tables I used help with that problem because of it allows the students to shift their chairs to an angle to be able to see the board while still using the desk. Atwell (pg 31) talked about giving her students plenty of time for free reading and I want to also use that idea. I like the idea of starting with a Friday period of free reading and then go from there. I want to be able to adjust the schedule to allow for mandated material instead of a reading warm-up, no matter how much I might dislike doing it. With providing plenty of reading time I can make sure that the time is well spent with good planning, including an outline of how the time should be spent between reading and writing times (Rief pg. 31). Over all I liked my classroom layout, especially the idea of having one to one laptops, but I’m not sure if it is really possible, at least in the near future

Other classroom tool: www. floorplanner.com