How to Plan for Your Next Art Room Setup to Go Off Without a Hitch with these 16 Suggestions
It’s never too early to have a game plan for next school year!
It can be overwhelming to walk into your classroom first thing and figure out how in the world you are going to approach your art room setup. Once you have students, any items still on your to do list typically go on the backburner. My county requires us to take down all posters, put all materials in cabinets/ the storage room and cover all shelving with bulletin board paper at the conclusion of every school year. I have to start completely from scratch every year. That being said, I have documented my must complete items to make it a little easier to begin. To clarify, this information is specifically for the elementary setting.
Must complete items:
- Create your lesson plan book, either digitally or a physical plan book.
- Plan your lessons/activities for the first week. I like to pair the not so exciting yet, important topics with a brief art activity.
- Obtain your master schedule and post your schedule in your art room.
- I take a poster board and write out my schedule for each day of the week. I cannot for the life of me memorize my schedule, so I refer to this all year long.
- Talk to kindergarten Instructional Assistants to ask them to join their class for art(or ask for parent volunteers).
- I have found that many parents enjoy volunteering in art class, if they are looking for an opportunity to help out. If prep or displays seem overwhelming to keep up with, you may be able to train a parent volunteer to help.
- Unpack and organize new art supplies. Double check that you received everything in your order.
- Review IEPs, 504 plans and any accommodations that you need to make for students.
- Create and post art class expectations.
- It’s a good idea to make a display that you can laminate and use year after year. Keep it simple/neutral so that you can pair it with various bulletin board themes. If you wish, you can also post information on how the students are graded.
- Complete your bulletin board(s).
- This is a great location to display your class expectations or setup a gallery to hold future student masterpieces.
- Make sure all of your tech is working.
- Think laptop, document camera, tablet(s), smartBoard (interactive whiteboard), projector.
- If you have a kiln, make sure that it is working properly.
- If need be, request repairs. Check to see that your shelves are in good shape or need to be scraped and refresh the kiln wash.
- Create table labels of your choice. Possible themes: art supplies, shapes, artists, numbers, colors, etc.
- It’s a good idea to laminate these!
- Obtain class lists. Create seating charts.
- Changes are inevitable, but it helps the first week classes to run more smoothly
- Prepare table caddies with basic supplies such as pencils, erasers, scissors.
- Organize commonly used supplies in easy to pass out bins. (Markers, glue, colored pencils, crayons, etc.
- You can color code/label to match tables for easy distribution.
- Make sure you have technique charts or references ready to go for a variety of media.
- Finish all required professional development and training.
- Not as exciting as art room setup but can’t be avoided!
If you enjoyed reading up on art room setup suggestions, you may also enjoy learning about how I use “Idea starters” in my lessons to jump start student ideas.
I have a free art teacher resource with checklists for both art room setup and what to cover during the first week of school. Just enter your name and email below to get this for free. I hope that it helps to make your life easier at the beginning of your upcoming school year!