Teacher Week: Day 3: Organization

Happy Wednesday Friends!

Well on Monday I said I was hoping to link up with Blog Hoppin all week...what I forgot about was the Tuesday post about showing off your room. And mine is simply not ready. It is not NEARLY as bad as when it was HERE, but its not anything to be showing off.

            

Today's topic is organization, which I LOVE! Things sorted and labeled and facing the same way make my heart super happy.

I thought I would share a few of the ways I have things organized. I find that especially in my " space challenged" room being organized is so important to my sanity and sets a good example for the students.

 We do AR at my school. I am not the biggest fan of it, but it is what it is. I have all of my books labeled for AR. If you click on the picture you can see that each of my books has a sticker. The sticker on the book corresponds to the level in AR.

I used to have ALL of my books organized into AR levels and just sitting on the shelf. Well, I can keep them organized and beautiful that way, but 7 year olds cannot. :)

So a couple of years ago I got a ton of plastic tubs at the Dollar Store and sorted my books down a little more. I do still have some books that are just arranged by AR level. But now I also have them grouped by series, genre, and author.

When they are first introduced to the library in my room we go book shelf by book shelf. I take all of the books out and walk around our room dropping the books as I go. Then I divide the kids up unto teams. They have to take a tub and find the books they think belong in the tub. The first team done is the winner. It is a fun way for them to be introduced to the organization of our library.

This baby is one of my proudest accomplishments. Picture this: Me, 6 months pregnant, on my way to school and running a little behind when suddenly I spy this set of bins by the side of the road. The people who are getting rid of it have a FREE sign on it! So what do I do? Call one of my teaching partners to tell them I may be a little late and haul it into my car of course....while 6 months pregnant!

I love this to organize my math manipulatives for two reasons. One reason is each thing has its own tub so everything isn't thrown together. The other reason is its out in the open for the kiddos to use. And because everything is labeled they know exactly where it needs to go!

 

 

I love holidays and seasonal items. I wish I had the space in my room to have my seasonal items stored neatly in tubs with a super cute label on the outside. But I don't.

 

However, I have always thought it was important to keep seasonal items together. I have a filing cabinet in my room where I store all of my seasonal stuff.  I have a large manila file folder where I house black line masters for activities and crafts that is labeled with each month. I use that as the dividing line between each of the months. I also store any books that go along with that month and any station activities in there as well.

 



 

Now, while I do love a good label I don't love taking time to re-label things year after year. This cabinet stores a lot of art and crafting supplies. So while I do think it is important to label things in your classroom, especially things used by your peanuts, I don't think everything needs to be labeled. If you use clear boxes, like I do, then you can save yourself from having to label and re-label if you consolidate or change things around because you can see in the box. Just keeping things neat and tidy is a form of organization in and of itself. :)

Well, that is all for me. I hope I helped give you a new tip or idea for organizing your classroom.

Do you have something fun to share about organization? Go link up!

~Jean~