Planning your learning room – a blank canvas

A blank canvas – key steps

Take stock of what furniture and resources you have to work with. What can be discarded? Be honest about how often you genuinely use certain resources, and discard those that you haven’t used in the last 12 months.

Create partnerships with adjacent classrooms. What can be shared between you? You can create even more space in your classroom if you share one set of resources between two or even three rooms.

Identify which resources and furniture are realistically required for a 21st Century approach to learning; helping to develop optimum skills and behaviours in your pupils for their future success in learning and life.

Pinpoint whether you already have access to required furniture and resources, or need to find them elsewhere. If they aren’t available, get creative with alternatives or interim solutions. This can often provide a chance to ‘test’ a practical strategy in action before investing in permanent items.

Clear the room. Once clear, use masking tape on the floor to ‘rezone’ and reallocate the space you have. Try and get all staff involved if you can, as it can prove a great learning exercise. Work together to clear and rezone one room, and then the thinking can be applied to all other classrooms. If shifting the contents of your room is not possible, draw your empty room on paper or PowerPoint, and use coloured blocks to rezone it.