Your room is too small for all your resources and the large class sizes at your school! How will this ever work? Or maybe you’re a new teacher with a big beautiful room but don’t know where to begin. Let’s look at some best practices along with tips and tricks to set up an elementary music room!
Transform your chaotic classroom into a harmonious haven with these top tips for a super functional elementary music room set up!
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The Playlist
How to Set Up An Elementary Music Room
Looking pretty is not our goal here. We want this space to be as functional as we can make it!
The three main considerations are how the space can
- Facilitate student learning
- Prevent classroom management problems
- Aid the teacher in organization and daily setup
The below image is one of my classrooms. Looking at how it was set up can give us some insight into priorities (and concessions) that you can apply to your space. This was a K-8 school so some items were for the middle schoolers only.
Ways to Facilitate Student Learning
The main considerations for creating a space that facilitates student learning are seating, screen placement, and access to materials.
Let’s look at each as we set up our elementary music room.
Successful Seating in an Elementary Music Room Set Up
Seating needs to allow students to easily see focal points such as your presentation screen. In this example, the students sat on the floor in rows that were centered to the screen and faced it.
Seating also has to provide enough space between students for their comfort and safety. Good classroom management is highly influenced by your seating arrangement.
We used stools when we drummed and a circle formation for lots of activities.
Answer these questions:
🔷 Which way will my students face?
🔷 Can all clearly see the screen?
🔷 Does my seating arrangement help or hinder classroom management?
If you are using chairs for seating, you need to add more questions. How will you do movement activities? How will you move/stack the chairs when needed?
Instrument Placement & Options
Instrument placement considerations should be about trying to maintain good traffic flow as kids move around as well as the ability to easily get to and use the instruments. The image shows instruments (the ones we used the most) spread out along three sides of the room for easy access.
Ukuleles
Ukuleles were in a rolling cart that I pushed against the wall. To get the ukuleles, I’d turn the cart perpendicular to the wall and let two rows go at once to get an instrument, one row on each side of the cart.
Do you leave your barred instruments set up?
It’s so wonderful to be able to leave your barred instruments set up if your room is large enough. That doesn’t apply to most of us.
If you have rolling carts, you can easily roll your instruments into a formation. My older students helped me with this and my mantra was, “Push the cart, not the instrument!” If they push the instrument, it slides right off the cart.
Here are my bass and alto xylophones on rolling carts with sopranos stored on top. I never experienced any damage to my instruments doing it this way.
A shoe holder hangs over the door and stored headphones.
A JBL speaker tower (tall black in middle) is along that back wall. I loved that bass sound at the back of my room.
Barred Instrument Set Up
I had rolling carts for my basses and altos and stored my sopranos on top (yes, on top) of the sopranos. I used a U-shape formation with basses in the top left then altos filling out the rest of the U. Soprano instruments went on the floor in rows in the center of the U.
Tricks to Prevent Classroom Management Problems
The way your elementary music room is organized can significantly impact classroom management, either positively or negatively. A successful strategy involves teaching students how to properly set up and put away instruments, equipment, and resources that are thoughtfully arranged in the room.
This not only fosters responsibility but also allows the teacher to concentrate on the students rather than on managing the setup. Here are some music room arrangement strategies.
Split Up Like Items
Splitting up like items, especially larger instruments and equipment, can prevent congestion as kids move around the room.
For example, the 🟠 large and small drums are on the north side of the room and the medium drums are on the south side. Row 3 can get a small drum at the same time row 4 gets a medium drum because they are going in opposite directions.
The same is true for the stacks of red chairs. 🟥 I would ask row 1 and 2 to stack their chairs at the same time-row 1 to the north and row 2 to the south.
Purposeful Direction
Once your resources are in place in your music room, using purposeful directions is the key to effective classroom management.
Your directions should use who, when, where, and what. Here are some examples.
“Row 1 (who) walk and get a large drum (what & where). Row 2, when everyone in row 1 has a drum and are back to their seats (when), walk and get a large drum.”
“Partners, one of you (who) will get two ukuleles (what & where) for you and your partner. The other partner will return them (when) when we are finished playing.”
Answer these questions:
🔷 How will my students get instruments?
🔷 What formation is best for my barred instruments?
🔷 How can I spread out my instruments around the room to provide better traffic flow?
Aids for Daily Organization & Set Up
Student Procedures
As we’ve seen above, having procedures set up for students to do a lot of the set up saves a lot of time, prevents many classroom management problems, and provides more time on task for student learning.
Organization Tips & Tricks
Here are more tips and tricks for organization.
- Have a dedicated space for your personal and teacher items. Mine was the NE corner. The bookshelves held lots of my binders and teacher materials and the desk was where I did my planning. It was a no-student zone.
- Keep like (smaller) materials together
- Arts & craft materials were in the cabinet by the entry door. Students would go there when we did any kind of coloring, pasting, etc.
- Small percussion were in the bookcase by the door in small, solid plastic bins.
- Vertical shelving by the bookcase held frame drums and other single hand held instruments.
Answer these questions:
🔷 What new storage would really help me use my space?
🔷 Is my personal work space private?
🔷 Are my teacher materials easily accessible?
Get Your FREE Printable
Along with room set up, the start of the year is all about getting your Curriculum Scope & Sequence ready to go.
If you’d like a pre-made doc, here’s a FREE manageable scope & sequence TEMPLATE for K-5 elementary music, with very basic rhythm and pitch learning, and flexibility to adjust or add curriculum that reflects your teaching philosophy and your students.
Storage Annex Area
If you’re wondering what in the world was in that big storage area across the back of the room, it was mainly for my middle school instruments and music as well as elementary resources and manipulatives that I used on a limited basis.
Middle school items included choir music in file cabinets, 25 acoustic guitars, 4 bass guitars, 4 electric guitars, a large cart with amps/mixer/mics, 15 keyboards/stands, and more.
But I had procedures for them to get their instruments!
For guitars, the south door was ENTER and the north door was EXIT. For keyboards (partners), one person went to the hall and got the stands and the music binders and the other person went to the storage room and got the stand and the keyboard. (opposite directions again!)
When you have 25 or more middle schoolers all moving around the room, watch out!
Better have some good procedures in place!
Final Thoughts
When something in your classroom isn’t working efficiently and you suspect it’s the room set up, what would help the most?
- Re-teach the expectation because it’s a solid approach.
- Change the location of the resource because it’s a traffic flow problem that doesn’t work in that area of the room.
- *Change the procedure for getting/using the resource.
*Sometimes more intense steps have to happen… Maybe not everyone is able to move around the room and you have to select a few students to help set up. Or a particular class needs everything set up by you before they enter the room. Or a class is not going to be able to do certain activities until classroom management is much better.
Tips From Your Classroom
Please share your favorite organizational tip or trick in the comments below. When we share, it’s always an “aha” moment for someone!
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