Staying Organized!

Trying to stay organized as a teacher is a difficult task as you are teaching, creating lessons, creating journals and artwork with your students and using different materials as you teach. Figuring out where to store everything that you need in a classroom and having to deal with the storage that is available in the class is not easy task, in this post I will share with you some tips I have for staying organized! 

Below is an image of how I store portfolios that the students create all year long. At my school the for student portfolios are divided into six sections with three pieces of student work throughout the year to show the students progress. I use hanging folders that have been re-used year after year. I use a label marker to create a folder for every student in my class and as we create a portfolio piece I store the student's work in their assigned folder. 

Materials Needed

• Hanging folders
• Label Marker 

Below is an image of my "teacher" supplies including special markers, chalk, colored pencils and crayons. I keep these in my teacher cabinet for special projects that require fine motor skills and to ensure that the pencils are always sharpened, the markers are not dried out and the crayons and chalk and are not broken. I found these smaller caddy at Target in the dollar section! The dollar section in any store in a teachers best friend!

Below is a picture of the student caddies. We have four tables in my classroom and each caddy has an assigned table that the students are aware of and when we go a class project one student will get a caddy for their table. In each caddy there are markers, pencils, crayons and sometimes scissors. These caddies can be found on Amazon.  These caddies were passed down to me from the previous teacher, and they are perfect because they are plastic which makes them durable and easy to clean!

Below is an image of the students' markers that they use for coloring during free choice in the mornings and afternoons. My students are four years old and in the afternoons three year olds also come into my classroom, which makes putting caps on markers still a difficult task. The students have their own container of markers, which gives them a sense of responsibility, because they know that the teachers will not give me new markers if all of their markers are dried up. I started this at the beginning of the school year and thus far have only had to give them new markers twice! I recycle the markers from the student caddies shown above to the students' free choice markers below. 

 In the two below images this is how I organized all of the books used for different lessons. Before the books were in these same cabinets, but everywhere! I change the books in the students' library based on the theme of that week, so finding the right books before was not easy! I purchased these standing folders at Amazon though IKEA.  The containers are cheap, easy to assemble and the perfect size to fit into the cabinet with the doors shut! I used my favorite tool, the label marker, and organized the books based on their theme. Books that are too big to fit into the standing folder I put them next to the correct folder to help stay organized! Now changing out the books weekly is easy and it saves me time to do other things in the classroom.

As you can see we have a lot of books in my classroom and I wanted to make sure all of the books were being seen and used in my classroom. My students look forward to the new books that I put out every week. Just by organizing the books I am fostering life long readers!

How do you stay organized in your classroom?