Classroom Organization Hacks

1. Space Savers - get rid of the unnecessary and unwanted furniture. Opt for part of the counter to store your personal belongings and paperwork and ditch the teacher’s desk. Most teacher’s I’ve worked with spent little to no time at their desks, use that room for something more valuable like a reading nook!

2. Use Clear Containers – I recommend clear containers to ALL of my clients whether they are a teacher or not. Solid containers may appear to be tidier and uniform, but a clear container allows you to see inside and avoids you and your students digging through to find something specific.

3. Mail Time! – Use a mailbox system to help organize the amount of paperwork that is being passed from you to your students. Don’t get trapped into buying a mailbox system from the Learning Store, instead use a shoe organizer – it’s cheaper and works just as well! Buy a vertical file organizer to use as your mailbox, you could even go as far as having multiple “mailboxes” for certain items. Students could drop their homework into one, permission slips and parent forms into another, and so on!

4. Color Code your Curriculum – This may sound obvious, but I like to take it to the extreme! Have different colors for each category of study, for example math is red and English is yellow. Using the same color system with your personal files, classroom materials, and learning materials will help your students develop the same color-coded system. Talk about full-circle organization!

5. Designate a time to purge and file – Set aside 30 minutes a week to get yourself organized to maintain your system. You could set aside the 30 minutes for your students to do the same to make sure the classroom remains orderly. Have your students help put books away, and get their tables or desks in order each Friday before leaving.