I recently had a friend ask me how I felt about switching from desks to tables this school year and my response was quick--"I love them!" Of course, there are pros and cons to just about anything, but for me, tables made life in the classroom simpler. For one thing, they were a major space saver and helped to keep the classroom cleaner because it is easier to sweep under tables than individual desks. Also, I am a big believer in teamwork and tables are just so conducive to team building activities. Lastly, there was a lot less
junk in the student's areas because there was no desk for the kids to pile papers and miscellaneous items. One of the cons to having tables is that you do have to find a place to keep all of the student materials that would normally be kept in their desks! Luckily for me I have lots of storage options in my classroom that made this doable. The other major drawback to tables is that, if you have a student who needs his/her own individual space, you will have to find a spare desk for that child because (obviously) you can't disassemble the table. Here are a few pics of how I made tables work in my classroom this past year:
Black shelf {Wal-Mart purchase!} for math workbooks that would normally be kept in student's desks. I also use this shelf for puzzle storage, morning meeting materials, construction paper, and our sharpened & broken pencils buckets.
Each table has a bucket where they store their glue bottles, washable markers, and dry erase markers. Our class set of dry erase boards are stored on the bottom shelf and the class cubbies are on top.
I use an over-the-door shoe organizer with numbered plastic cups to keep the students' extra pencils and glue sticks.
This
all-purpose organizer from Lakeshore stores our reading practice books. I have numbered the boxes so that the students can easily and quickly find their workbook.
I am moving to 2nd grade next year and I'm using my tables again with my new students. I am planning on making a few adjustments to how I managed my tables this year, but I'm looking forward to setting up my new classroom with these tables!
