Classroom Organization to Maximize Teaching Time

Organization..need I say more. It's the one thing that we all want, but somewhere along the line we lose it!  Organization is important for one reason...it maximizes teaching time!  Even though we like things to look a certain way, organization helps us locate items quickly to use during instruction. When kids know where things are kept, it allows them to become much more independent!

Here are a few tips to keep you organized:

• Use those plastic drawer organizers to organize everything from alphabet, to games, to art supplies, to letter stamps. We have lots of them!
• Use rolling laundry baskets to organize big books. Megan’s dad cut her some pieces of Masonite board to put between the sections so that we could sort and label the big books. Labels are (here).
• Use different colors of file folders for each kind of journal. We have one color for math, one color for phonics, etc.
• Use portable file boxes and hanging file folders for writing folders. This makes it where you can move them to various locations for writing time and not have all of the kids going to the same place to get their writing folder. The hanging files are labeled with their names so that the child can find their name quickly and remove their writing folder that is inside of the hanging folder. It also makes it easy for them to put away!

• Instead of having all of your books in one area in the room, spread them around the room in various locations. This way you won’t have all of your kids looking in the same spot.  Also, we sorted them by genres so that the children can easily find the kinds of books they are looking for. (Within the genres they are sorted by topic.) The one display type shelf is used to display books that relate to the current topic of study in science or social studies. To read more about this go (here).

• Megan has the tall organizer by her “teacher table”. It contains all of the things that she might need to run her small groups.
• The hippo sign is one of 5 different animal signs, one for each area of the room. They mark the center areas so that the kids know where to go each day. For more about this idea go (here).
• The 3 drawer shelf is for math can do centers. There is one of these in each of the 5 areas so that when the kids finish up their math “have to” then they can look in the drawers to find other math manipulatives, books, games, etc to use until time is up. To see how we manage this go (here).

• Megan and I both like to have lots of cozy places for learning. Our rooms are not filled with desks or tables leaving lots of room for benches, sofas, and pillows!

I know Megan did a post last week about her classroom, but I just had to share a few more photos…I’m sure you don’t mind, I know how we all like to look at photos of each others rooms. Megan shared this picture of her dad hard at work moving the furniture, but did you wonder where baby Matthew was? It’s kinda like where’s Waldo!

And here it is all set up! Yep 5 hours later….When I posted that on Facebook, people were like “What? How can that be?” Well, first of all there were 3 of us. Secondly, we didn’t replace any of the bulletin boards, wall décor, or fabric. It was all the same from last year. And lastly, I’m just a little bit bossy!

And, so now we have to come to end of my summer travels. I’m off next week to OK; but, then I am home for quite a while. Wonder what I will be doing? Well I need to revamp some of my sessions and spruce up some power point presentations, I have a Spanish translation project I’m working on, I have a few projects for tpt that I want to finish, but the main thing I will be doing is….

being a Gammy to one very sweet little boy! Hugs!