Spaces & Places

This book is a great resource for new and veteran teachers! I have been teaching for 13 years and found myself in need of some new ideas to freshen up my space and get me more energized as I enter my 14th year of teaching. Not only did it give me some ideas for arranging my space, it also helped me to realize that less is better! I have accumulated so many materials over the years, most of which I rarely use. I have started to reduce my clutter and make better use of the limited space I do have for the things I use on a daily basis. It includes simple strategies and lots of pictures for those of us who are visual learners! I plan to share this book with my colleagues in the near future...I am not ready to part with it just yet!

You know when you've been teaching in the same classroom for while it's hard to come up with different ideas for setting up your room.( I'm not complaning I love my room!)I saw this book and decided to give it a go!There are lots of practical and inexpensive ways to set up your room.It helped me see my room in DIFFERENT light.There are also lots of tips about organizing your stuff. Yes,I'm a stacker and collector. But this book inspired me to clean out the clutter and get organized. I'm already planning to hit lots of garage sales and discount places to make our room an inviting and well organized environment.Thanks for the inspiration that I needed!

As a new teacher, I found many books- but this was my far the most useful and practical for setting up my room. The author walks you through brainstorming the areas you need and reminds you to center your decisions around instruction and your students. As someone who struggles with organization, this book really helped me set up for success and helped me feel less overwhelmed in my first classroom. The many pictures and ideas were inspiring, but the text really helped me set priorities to make my room functional and not just cute.

Having been a teacher for 29 years, I'm reluctant to buy many more books, but I heard about this book in a teacher workshop and decided to try it. It is full of great organizational ideas and color photos. The book recommends lots of teaching/learning centers and explains how and where to set them up, complete with color photos! Each center also has a reference page of all the materials you need. My husband laughed at me because I kept saying, "I LOVE THIS BOOK!"

I am a System Wide K - 5 Literacy Coach serving 12 schools. I've shared this book with many teachers. They love the colored photographs and research conducted about classroom design. Many teachers are now ordering their own copies. It is a wonderful resource for me to use when discussing the topic of classroom organization and design. I especially enjoy the color chart and what the desk arrangement says about how I feel about my students with regards to participation.

I love this lady! Her books are well organized and well thought out. She includes helpful tips and you can tell she has classroom experience. For those of you with small rooms, awkward shape rooms, random furniture that must stay in the room, or those who just want to make the most of their teaching space -- this book is for you! What a great gift for new teachers! I know one book my next student teacher will get upon graduating...

I've been teaching for years and it shows! I have stuff from every elem. grade level. It's time to get organized and forget "my" stuff and do more kids stuff - and it's cheaper than buying at the teacher store. This book is great for a step by step approach. More ideas for low elementary but still helpful for up to 5th!

I borrowed this book, and have since ordered my own copy. I rank it right up there with Harry Wong's The First Days of School and Kagan Cooperative Learning Training. These two things, I've said for years, have changed my life in the classroom. This book is like that. After 15 years of teaching in a cluttered space, and being overwhelmed about how to make changes to become more organized, Debbie Diller understood how hard it can be for some of us more "creative types" to see the big picture and create an open, kid-centered space. She took me step by step, and now my room looks so amazing, I've posted pictures on my facebook, because organization and neatness are not my strengths! Great book!

I really love this book. I have spent time this summer making my classroom library the "heart" of my room. There are so many ideas, and the steps to reorganizing my room were simple to follow. I love the result. Spaces and Places is an easy book to follow and has lots of pictures. I highly recommend it to any teacher.

Debbie Diller's books are so great! I love that there are so many pictures to go along with what she is talking about! Bought this to go along with her Math Work Stations book!

Great book!