Setting Up My Classroom, part 2: Organizing My Teacher Resources

First I would like to explain that I really enjoy organizing things; I just don't always have time to get organized. That's probably why for the past 3 years, my classroom has been a disorganized mess, and impossible to find anything I need--first from a lack of time to get set up (as I mentioned before, my first year teaching, I only had a few hours to make my room look presentable) and then from a lack of experience (even the past couple of years, I still don't think I had figured out the best way to organize a classroom). This year, however, I am taking my time during these two weeks before school starts to really get my classroom organized and in order. To be honest, I find this task extremely fun to do. So today I am very excited to share with you how I have organized one of the big cabinets in my classroom.

In previous years, I had viewed the big cabinets as sort of a "catch-all" for anything I didn't know where else to store, and wanted out of my sight. They always ended up overflowing with paper towel rolls, boxes of Ziplock bags, extra school t-shirts...who knows what else? They tended to get to the point where when you opened the doors of the cabinet, things would start falling out. It kind of reminded me of The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room, when Mama Bear opens the cubs' closet door and an avalanche of toys knocks her to the ground. I didn't want that to happen again this year.

So I took a different approach this year. I was trying to figure out what to do with all of my teacher resource books because I do have a lot of them, and I didn't want to take away bookshelf space from the students' supplies and books. I decided to try storing them in one of the cabinets. Here are the results:

I'm a big fan of this so far. After all, the kids don't need or want to see what teacher resource books I have, so what would be the point of me having them visible?

Here is a close-up of one of the top shelves. This shelf holds general resource books on the left in alphabetical order, and the right side holds books related to management and CARE for Kids (Jefferson County's school community initiative).

This picture shows the next two shelves. The one on the top is my literacy shelf. The left side holds books related to reading skills in ABC order. In the middle, I have the bin that holds the books for the Making Meaning literacy program. On the right side, I have my writing resource books in ABC order, followed by my Rigby teacher's manual.

The bottom shelf in this picture is a science/math shelf. I organized these materials a little differently. First I have my science module teacher manuals, with their corresponding student books next to them. In the middle, I have some random science resource books in ABC order. On the right, I have my Math Investigations II teacher guides.

Finally, the shelf on the very bottom holds the remainder of my math teacher resources. The old Math Investigations program is in the box on the left, followed by an assortment of math teacher resources in ABC order. The bin on the right holds some blackline masters for various Math Investigations activities. Stacked on top of the bin are some educational games.

So I'm pretty happy so far with this new system, and I'm excited to see how it works for me throughout the year. I hope some of you found this to be somewhat useful, especially if you're trying to figure out how you want to organize your own classroom materials, and otherwise, I hope it wasn't too boring for you!