I was very fortunate to have extra time at the end of this school year for closing out my classroom and preparing for next year. This year has been very strange. Having school closed from March 13th- End of School (June) fortunately allowed the teachers in our school some extra days in their classrooms the last week that we would have been teaching in person. During that time I was able to tackle organization projects I hadn't gotten to in the two years I've been at my school. I'm so thankful for the extra time. As you know, I am a highly organized person, its the way I function best and I know my students appreciate it as well. In an uncertain time (Covid-19 Pandemic) I was thrilled to have something to control that would help me whenever things do return to "normal".
So let's take a tour of my classroom!!
So let's take a tour of my classroom!!
This pano makes the classroom look a little larger than it is. The addition of the carpet (the previous teacher didn't have space for a rug that I know about) made less room for my tables which makes those two areas of the room a little tight, but that's OK, I definitely needed a rug area for the littles. For more info on the carpet check out the K-1 procedures post.
I have four sets of upper cabinets on the first wall. During this re-organization time I have designated these for 3-D student artwork storage. I wasn't managing the organization of my space very well these last two years (I was getting my bearings in a new school and slowly making changes to fit my teaching style and needs). One thing I noticed this year was that I needed to designate a space for storing in progress and finished 3-D artwork. I am so fortunate to have cabinet space I could dedicate to this! I plan to make some curtains for the open cabinets to hide the storage but for now they are open and that's OK.
The next set of upper cabinets are for drawing materials and tools. I have a set of 8 bins for each material which are the stacks of white bins. I have 8 tables so these items are already distributed into 8 sets. The lower half of the open cabinets I use for storing materials a grade level may be using when school is in session, check out more about daily material management here. In the cabinet above the sink I have scrap paper bins, glue and cleaning supplies. While this may not stay this way, the solution works for now. This cabinet is a little harder to get to because the sink comes out and so you can't really stand underneath the cabinet. I will most likely be rethinking this area eventually.
The last set of upper cabinets are designated for paint and paint supplies. The art teacher before me acquired two sets of caddies which is great. One set is all blue and I adhered a color circle with contact paper that corresponds to their table color and the other set is rainbow with two extra blue for my "black" and "white" tables. I have 8 tables so ROYGBV and Black and White. Our school district has a supply warehouse for all teachers where they keep in stock (theoretically) supplies for all teachers included art, music, PE, etc. They only sell paint at the warehouse in these 16 fl oz. bottles. So I have a stock of these bottles in the classroom and a stock in the storage room with the idea that hopefully I can tell that I'm about out of a certain color in time to order more (this uh oh has happened to me more than once!). I also have a set of skin tone paints at the top. And the more cluttered "stack" at the bottom right are bottles that I have mixed a new color in. Next are brushes and other painting supplies like water bowls, q-tips, skewers and palettes. And the in the last cabinet tempera and large containers. I forgot to take a picture of the watercolor cabinet but it's below the last cabinet on the bottom. More about how manage, organize and distribute paint and supplies in a future post.
I am so fortunate to have another set of flat files other than the ones I store artwork in on the other side of the room (under the 3-D storage cabinets). In the top drawer I store things like copy paper (for printing and also for when I don't want students to use nice drawing paper), card stock, laminating sheets for my personal laminator, dividers, sheet protectors, and various signs/labels I may need to hang later. The next three drawers have example artwork organized by grade. This was a project I worked on during my workdays this year! I had example artwork completely unorganized in various portfolios and it was a mess. I made huge portfolios with tagboard folded in half and labeled with each grade level. I started by making a stack of each grade levels examples and then I paper clipped multiples (my examples and students or similar examples) as well as whatever other resources needed to display during that project. For younger grade levels I teach multiple lessons on color so all of those projects are in one file folder so I can easily pull out all the color lesson at one time if I need to make a decision of which to do or even which to do first. Then I put two grade levels in each drawer (with the exception of the "Art Club"/"Collaborative" folder which is underneath the Kindergarten and First grade folders)
Here is my solution to handouts! I came form a one-to-one device middle school before coming to my current elementary school. Because my middle schoolers brought their device to art I never gave them handouts, like EVER. Moving to elementary school I had to really rethink handouts and specifically storage. I will go into WAY more detail in a future post but here are binder organized by topic and inside are the sets of handouts for that topic/lesson all in sheet protractors ready to distribute for each lesson.
If you want to know more about how I organized my whiteboard you can check out my first blog post which goes into a little more detail about how I organize my whiteboard.
My second whiteboard has my Leadership Roles (jobs) and Goals with room in the center for announcements. Next to the whiteboard is my goal tracker board. You can find out more information about Leadership Roles and Goals by clicking the links.
The last peak into the classroom (before we get to the storage room) are the stools. Ugh, these stools! I could make several complaints about the stools but I'll spare you. My floors are concrete and the stool feet are plastic/metal, so they scrap loudly against the floor and NO, my students WILL NOT JUST PICK THEM UP to push them in (insert eye roll here)... so I have socks! The teacher before me took the time to cut tennis balls and theoretically they works great. Especially the ones she made a smaller cut into because they wouldn't come off the foot. Unfortunately many were cut too big and would fall of all the time or students would take them off and throw them. They were a HUGE distraction my whole first year at this school. Plan B, felt rectangles for socks! So at the beginning of this school year I cut rectangle out of felt and rubber banded those babies on the feet and BAM, socks! They worked GREAT. They did start to wear out by March but the problem was that I tried to skimp on the felt and the rectangle I cut were a little too small for the rubber band to fully wrap around the foot so some fell off pretty easily. This time I didn't skimp and I think they are more secure! So I used a 9" x 12" pieces of felt and cut it into 1/4's I then folded that 1/4 and rubber banded around the foot. So I needed a 9" x 12" piece of felt for each chair. For me that was 4 sheets per table. Felt is pretty cheap and the whole project cost about $10-$15.
Finally, the storage room!!! When I first got to this school I took inventory and then barely touched anything. During these work days I got in there and really starting gutting it. I had things I'd never use (old paint etc.) and materials that aren't age appropriate for my students (planning a trade with some high school teachers in my district). So removing both items I don't need and items I'd like to trade I was able to start making room to organize the space in a more logical way! I'm so thrilled with what I was able to accomplish even though I didn't make it to the last two shelving units and there are a few things on the other shelving units I need to address. I could probably do a whole post on the storage room so maybe when I get back in there next school year and finish it up I'll make a post about how/why I organized it this way!
Although I have a great solution now and I made a lot of progress over these work days I'm sure I'll be making changes over the next few academic years. I will be sure to update you on the the changes that are working!
As usual drop a question, suggestion, tips and tricks in the comments below!
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