Number Your Students
List your students in order by last name and assign the children a number that correlates to where they fall on your roster.

This is the best thing you can do in terms of making your teaching life easier. Using a number system will prevent you from needing to recreate many things annually. It will provide you with a quick method for taking attendance (fire drill, field trip, etc) when a list is not readily available. It will also allow you to quickly file paperwork relating to specific students.

Spend some time at the start of each school year practicing counting off by number.

Instruct the children to write their number in the top right-hand corner of every assignment. This will make it easy to see whose assignment is missing and to record things alphabetically into your grade book.

As you are arranging your classroom think about what you want your children to be able to access and which items you would prefer to not have readily available. Make sure students can easily and safely get to the supplies you will expect them to get on their own. Label the space where the item resides as well as the item itself. Use pictures in younger classrooms.. Likewise, items that you do not want children to pull out then store them in a place that is separate from the other items.

As you are preparing for the new year and organizing student supplies, prepare a couple of "new student" kits. As you return from winter vacation and are told at 8:15 a.m. that you are receiving a new student you will be glad to have everything in one location.

Take advantage of wall space and go vertical. Wall space can be used for centers, file storage and so much more. Think creatively. A shoe organizer works great on the back of a closet door for holding supplies. Print monthly calendars online and display the entire school year at a glance. It's much more efficient than having a traditional oversized desk calendar.

Adopt my favorite mantra, "If it's free…It's for me!" Scour store shelves during the back to school sales to find great containers for storing items in your classroom. The stores typically welcome you "taking their trash."

Cover open shelving. Regardless of how organized your shelves may be, there is a good chance that they provide stimulation and visual clutter to your students. Covering open shelving not only will help simplify the look of your classroom, but it may also provide additional display space. It is important to determine how easily the items being stored will need to be accessed. There are several options for covering them.

• pocket charts -pocket charts provide a display opportunities as well as interactive centers. Because they are made of a soft fabric, they can easily be trimmed to fit if they are too long.
• fabric or felt - you can then use the space as a felt board or pin items to it
• paper -create additional bulletin board space by hanging paper over the shelves
• a map
• a white sheet- great for projecting the overhead or LCD projector.
• shower curtains or shower curtain liners

Below is a list of options for hanging the above items:

• wire
• adhesive hooks
• small nails
• tape
• velcro

If you are short on storage create an extra closet. Simply cover a table with a floor length table cloth or attach a table skirt and use the space underneath to store items in plastic tubs.

Think deeply. If your closet or cupboards have deep shelves consider storing seasonal items behind more frequently used items.

Consider having students use their desks as tables and not letting them store their personal items inside. Instead use the desks for storage of classroom items. Just be sure to keep track of which desk houses which items.

Create extra shelves within your shelves and closets. Combine a shoe shelf, dish stacker, or hanging shelf to existing shelves to create extra storage space.

Supplies

Decide what you plan to label and print all the labels a student will need onto one sheet. If a new student joins your class mid-year, you'll simply need to print an additional sheet.

ART SUPPLIES:
I purchase a plastic pencil box for each child. The boxes can be used for many years. Each box contains the following:

• a pair of child scissors
• colored pencils
• a pencil sharpener specifically for the colored pencils
• crayons
• markers
• a glue stick

Each individual item is labeled in black sharpie with the student's number.

The art boxes as well as a set of watercolors are housed in a wooden shoe organizer and are only taken out as needed for special projects.

The individual art boxes are filled with the basic colors. With the exception of the glue stick, the supplies should last them all year. If a child needs to replace an item from their art box they may "purchase" a new one at the class store using the class credits.

I also have a collection of special art supplies (glitter crayons, a wider variety of markers, etc) available in the Writing Center for publishing special projects.

PENCILS:
Keep it simple! You would be surprised at how much drama a lost Hello Kitty pencil can evoke or how much distraction a mechanical pencil can cause. Those issues can easily be avoided by only allowing standard yellow pencils in the classroom.

Provide each child with two pencils that are labeled with his/her number at the top and an eraser. If the pencil breaks or becomes dull the other will be available quickly.

Place a handheld sharpener at each table. Require children ask permission (with a silent hand signal) to sharpen a pencil. This allows them to do so quickly and quietly without causing distraction in the classroom. It also prevents them from "sharpening as a hobby" or fashioning 2-sided weapons out of a Dixon Ticonderoga.

Another manner of managing pencil sharpening is to place two containers in a central location. Label one, "to be sharpened" and the other "sharpened." Children can trade pencils as needed.

Keep a basket of sharpened pencils at your small group area so that children do not need to go back to their seats for forgotten supplies.

WORKBOOKS / NOTEBOOKS / ETC.

Write each child's number onto the spine or cover so that you can quickly tell at a glance who a misplaced item belongs to.

If you opt to not use individual desks there are a few different methods for managing student books:

• Store the class set together. When it is time to use them ask specific children to "Take 5." For example, if you have 20 students you may ask four students to "Take 5." Each of those four students would take five books from the area in which they are stored and pass them out to their owners. It is important to have them just take the top five or the first five to prevent them from digging through the pile to find the book belonging to their BFF.
  
  
• Store them in zones. Place plastic crates around the classroom. Assign a crate to the children who sit in that area. Keep all of the books for that group in their crate. You can either have one child from each group get the books for their zone or have each child retrieve them on their own.
  
  
• Store them in individual boxes. Assign a box to each child. Ikea carries cardboard magazine organizers that work well at a very reasonable cost.

TP IDEA
You'll go through A LOT of tissues during the course of a school year. Instead, attach a toilet paper holder to the wall and have the children use that to blow their noses. You will not need to store donated boxes of tissues and can just ask the custodian for a new roll as needed.

MATERIALS & MANIPULATIVES:

Although there is an initial cost investment, purchasing plastic drawers is well worth it. They come in all shapes and sizes and are stackable. It is so much easier than sifting through files and the drawers house 3-D items nicely. It also makes putting things away very simple which helps to maintain an organized environment.

Instead of writing on transparencies with an erasable marker, cover the page with plastic wrap. This allows you to write with a sharpie which is much easier to see and won't smudge. Afterwards simply throw away the plastic wrap.

To minimize the noise made from math manipulatives, create mats for the desks and tables. This will reduce the noise level, prevent items from sliding onto the floor and define a work space. Rubber shelf liner is ideal, but felt would also work well. It comes in a roll and you can simply cut off an appropriate amount to create an instant math mat.

PAPER:

Create a system for managing your copies. Label hanging file folders 1-31. Each represents a day of the month. Slip copied papers into the folder associated with the day you plan to use them. This system lets you easily move things around if you don't get to it and provides long term planning options.

Find alternatives to using copied assignments. Below are some examples:

• Use notebooks
• Showerboards can be cut into dry erase boards
• Have students work on the computer and save their work in a folder to be assessed.
• Videotape oral presentations
• Photograph math manipulatives to document what children have done.
• Write a daily morning message on a white board instead of chart paper.