When I look back to my first year of teaching and my first classroom, I cringe a little thinking about it. I walked in not having a clue, but with all the ambition in the world; that is until my students showed up LOL! That's when I knew I would need to make A LOT of classroom procedure changes. And boy, did I!
My classroom was bare and I did not have the money to make it "pinterest-y", but I knew my students needed to understand that everything had a place. My classroom management would come, which honestly is the most important thing to establish in ANY classroom for those of you just starting. I had to build those skills over time, but what I knew I could do immediately is create a classroom that could relatively function without me overexerting myself through organization.
I started small in my first classroom, but built on it for the next few years. So below are a few things that helped me and my students!
Placing community supplies in bins, such as the ones I've used from Hobby Lobby. Not only that, but LABELING them to belong to each table. I would challenge the students to make sure it looked the same everyday (same number of pencils, glue sticks, scissors, etc.) to hold them accountable. BOOM, less work for me :).
Spiral Notebooks for each students when it came to centers were a MUST, as well! I love centers. I love reading centers! I love math centers! I've even attempted science centers in the past! The reason I love them so much is because it allows my students time to truly apply of what they're learning along with their peers. They OWN their learning in those moments and it's a beautiful sight to see :). As much fun as they were having, though, my students knew they absolutely HAD to RECORD their knowledge. This helped me because at any given time I could monitor to see their thought process. That's where notebooks came in handy! We set it up a specific way where they would have to write the date and the question they were answering and then their answer. At the beginning of centers, they knew to find their "center notebook" at the bottom of their table's Sterilite drawer and at the end of centers, they knew that's where they had to return it. BOOM, no more loose papers all around!
Lastly, having a supply area of some sort has always helped me in the classroom. Yes, in a perfect world, all of our students would come to school on the first day of school with all of the supplies on your list and THEN keep track of it the ENTIRE year. Yes, it would be teacher paradise, but as we know, this is never the case. There are times when our students may need an eraser, or a pencil, or a scrap piece of paper, and of course they ask you for it. I tell my students "Ask 3 Before Me", when it comes to supplies, but when they truly are in need, they know EXACTLY where to get it. When I taught second grade, I had the luxury of having a wheeled supply case, but in other years I utilized dollar tree storage bins. No matter what you choose to use in your classroom, the KEY is to LABEL, LABEL, LABEL! I mean, go label crazy! This helped me and my students find supplies quickly and easy.
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