Take an inventory of the existing furniture in the room and compare it with how many students you will have. Arrange the tables where students will work while seated towards the middle of the room. You will want to keep the floor in front of the bulletin board clear for students to sit during calendar activities. Where you place your desk may depend on available outlets for power and network computer access.
Set up a bulletin board with a blank calendar. Fill in calendary daily, using dry erase markers. Make sentence strips attached to the board that say, "Today is"; "Yesterday was"; and "Tomorrow will be". Individual days of the week written on sentence strips can be attached and removed daily by attaching velcro the the back. The same thing can be done with the seasons and additional sentence strips.
After you have the names of your students you can print them on colorful name markers found at teacher supply stores and tape them on tables where you would like the students to sit. Using sentence strips, you can make and tape labels to common classroom objects such as the door, sink, centers, and desk to help with sight word recognition.
Set up your learning centers and a student storage area. If you have a sink, the art center should be near that sink. The area where students will hang coats and bookbags should be close to the door to establish the routine of entering the class and unpacking before going to a designated area.