Wednesday, September 10, 2014

What's New in My Elementary Room!

Well, this organizational technique isn't exactly new...but I wanted to share.  This is how anal I am about organization at school...I wish I could be this organized at home!  Every year when I unpack my supplies, all of the paint and glaze gets the date written on the cap and I always rotate stock.  I also must have everything organized in the color of the rainbow!  I did a little moving of supplies and finally got all of my paint off of the exterior wall of my room.  There has been so much paint that has been ruined from the extreme cold temperatures that happen at those walls.  When I moved into the classroom four years ago, I threw out TONS of paint that was really old, had separated or became super chunky and smelly from getting really cold.

Next comes my supply bin storage.  In the past, the bins were placed in one spot and the crayons bins were stacked in another.  In an effort to try and teach the students better organization, I have placed a colored dot on the counter where their supply bin AND crayon box must go.  I'm hoping that they will start to be more mindful of keeping the pencils in the pencil box, keeping the glue together and not mixed in with the scissors...we shall see how this goes!

Once again, I have the "New Pencil Jar", where students can get new pencils when theirs become very small or broken in their supply bins.  They put the bad pencil in the red jar and take a new pencil from the green jar.  My Sharpies, which I posted about in the previous post, are located on the table, as well as a box of replacement glue sticks.  
The bottom two pictures show the new supply bin set-up on my counter.  In between the warm colored bins and the cool colored bins is a paper shelf with the colored construction paper and white drawing paper.

This is a new classroom management idea I found on Pinterest.  I found this awesome velcro board at Biglots for $3.  I wrote down my five most commonly abused classroom rules and/or procedures, and made some green, yellow and red faces.  I laminated them all and velcroed them to the board.  Most teachers in our district use the red, yellow, green stoplight idea for discipline, so I'm hoping this will work well, especially for the younger kids.  I have this on my door facing the hallway so that their teacher can see how they did as they come to pick them up.

This is also a new classroom  management technique I am going to try and use for the younger grade levels.  Again, this is another Pinterest steal.  What's great is that this correlates really well with the smiley faces on the door!

Last but not least is my "Art Applause" box.  I wanted to come up with a way for students, faculty, administration and community members to give the students positive praise for their artwork.  This is a great way for the kids to be "bucket fillers", if you know what that is.  It's also a creative way to encourage positive reinforcement and should gain me some points on the Marzano rubric for my APPR! ;)  I have some blank slips left out on the table with a pen.  I will encourage everyone to write a nice message to an artist whose artwork is displayed and drop it in the box.  Every week I plan to empty the box.  I may staple some of the nice comments on the bulletin board with the artwork.  Every student will eventually get their comment to take home.


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