Are you feeling the August panic?
We know that when your students walk through the door this fall, you’ll have to be ready for anything. The school year is stressful and right now you have a chance to get ahead. You can’t anticipate every challenge you’ll face in the upcoming year, but the physical space of your classroom can make a big difference in terms of your stress levels.
We turned to Scholastic.com to get some great organizational tips that will keep you ahead this year. Then we pulled together a Pinterest board full of other great ideas for you to try out in your classrooms! We hope that if you start thinking about organization now, you’ll have a much smoother, happier school year.
https://www.pinterest.com/adoptaclassroom/classroom-ideas/
1. Teach your students good habits—they’ll thank you later
The easiest way for you to stay organized is to get your students in on it. For younger students, color-coding folders for different subjects will help them keep all their papers in the right place. As an added bonus, this system makes it more difficult for them to forget to do their homework (or at least gives them one less excuse)!
Are you finding that your students’ desks are full of food wrappers and random junk? Introduce the neat desk fairy. On random evenings, check students’ desks to clear out the garbage and check-in on their organization, then award the cleanest, most organized desk with a prize (or certificate) the next morning. This positive reinforcement should give your students great motivation to keep neat, and if you stick to random days, they’ll never know when it could happen.
2. Tubs, bins, and shoe boxes for you
If you’re having trouble finding a home for all your necessary classroom supplies now, it will be easier to put them back in place later when things are more hectic.
If you switch up decorations in your room, try a different bin for every month to make things easy. Use shoe boxes or more creative carriers to keep commonly used supplies, such as pens, pencils, markers, and scissors, in easy-to reach places for students. That way, you’ll save time during lessons and kids will know where to put supplies when they’re done with them.
3. When all else fails…cover it up
via Scholastic
Give yourself at least one little corner to be messy. It’s not that you want to let a few things pile up, but you know they will. If you have a space for that to happen then at least it won’t be as overwhelming. For example, find a space under a sink, cut an old shower curtain, and attach a curtain rod to create a hiding space!
Feeling confident about organization? Check out our other Cool Tool Posts to get more ideas for your classroom.
Does getting organized sound expensive? Register with AdoptAClassroom.org for help funding all of your classroom needs!
