Organizing a classroom seems like a tedious task. Now add on the task of trying to organize your students and that seems even more daunting. Recently, I have tried to take back my classroom. My students have always been pretty tidy and kept their things near their own space. As we are getting closer to break (and the middle of the school year) I am ready to ween off of me doing everything and having the students take over more responsibility. That is why I have implemented many new jobs in my classroom that may make some teachers think it is a lot of work but once you get it up and running it is really simple and very efficient.
This is how my classroom is currently set up. I have the students grouped into groups of four. Each table is assigned a color. In our classroom we have the pink table, green table, blue table, and purple table. All the bins for their table are color coded to the their table name.
At each group's table they have assigned jobs. The following our their jobs that they do every day on top of classroom jobs:
Table Captain: Keeps everything at the table running smoothly and marks the behavior in the agendas at the end of the day (unless the student is on yellow or red).
Paper Collector: Collects the paper after each assignment throughout the day.
Folder Helper: Helps with our daily folders (more on this in a minute)
Supply Manager: Helps manage the table's supply bin.
This is a view of their supply center. Each table has two file bins that are stacked on each other. This was a more cost efficient shelving unit for my classroom. The bottom bin holds the bags for their reading books. They use these books during independent reading. The top bin holds their community supplies. In each supply bucket is enough supplies for each member of the table. The top bin holds their reading books for early finishers and our daily folders.
In the daily folders are the copies for their work each day. Yes...all the copies. This includes their homework, center work, journal pages...everything! At first this seemed like a crazy ideas, especially with second graders. However, my students love it! In the morning they take out their homework and place it in the homework folder (no more stuffing homework folders for me!). Then they glue in their journal pages. Throughout the day during our daily lessons, I hold up the corresponding worksheet that they need to remove and they take it out. It saves time on passing out papers and has toned down the students being off task during the time it takes to pass out papers.
This is just a glimpse of how I organize my classroom. Look for future posts to learn more :)
