Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Inside My Cupboards


I spent the entire day cleaning and organizing my binders and resource books. I decided that I need to stop shopping on Amazing late at night.

All of my teaching materials are stored in binders. I like how binders allow me to see everything as I browse my resources. Files are just too messy for me, even when they're organized. (Read more about my file organization here.) I only use file drawers to store copies and information that I refer to frequently.

So here is my wonderful wall of storage!


Here is a peak inside the top cupboards. This one contains 2nd semester textbooks, and my socials studies and science resources (most of them are stored in a separate cupboard that is shared by the 2nd grade team).


Here are my math manipulatives:



Here are my math resources, and our reading curriculum, Storytown (which I don't really use). I LOVE how nicely the Ikea magazine holders work for categorizing my resource books.


ELA resources: I used to care about color-coding my binder spines, and making them look really nice, but that is one thing that I have let go of!


ELA manipulatives: It looks a little crazy here, but many of these things will be used right away at the beginning of the year, such as word work materials. I don't put them out ahead of time, because I want to get to know my students first. I have a lot of different materials, and different classes have different needs/interests from year to year.


The top shelf of this cupboard contains some guided reading materials, and books that I don't keep in the classroom library (most of them have flaps, or weird things that fold out and would get ruined easily). The next 2 shelves contain my guided reading materials, which I like to keep "hidden" for 2 reasons: 1) I have the space in my cupboards, and 2) It makes my room look less cluttered. Thankfully, my school has a great reading resource room full of books, so I don't have to store very many guided reading books in my classroom.

The bottom 2 shelves contain file folder games for small group learning, and extra school supplies.


This is where I store "household items," such as tissues, sandwich baggies, plates, etc. This cupboard will be FULL after open house!


I also have some great build-in drawers! Here are my extra accents, postcards, nametags, etc. (can you tell I've worked at a teacher store for 3 years?):



These drawers contain supplies for students:




The last few drawers contain my office supplies:



I have 5 really large drawers that are perfect for storing bulletin board sets. Here is the top drawer, which looks a bit messy! It contains pocket charts, sentence strips, and birthday stuff (they get to pick out a book for their birthday). Organized chaos:


My bottom cabinets have these great pull-out drawers (3 sets total...I won't show all of them). Here are the recess games:


Wow, that was a lot of pictures! Some people will probably thinking I'm weird for posting pictures of the inside of my cupboards, but I know that the crazy organization people, like myself, will enjoy them. :)

Time spent at school today: 8 hours
Cumulative hours: 118.5

9 comments:

  1. I only dream of being this organized! Love your cupboards...they have such a great design to them. Your classroom looks lovely! What lucky students to have so done as dedicated as you as their teacher! :)

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  2. *someone not so done* lol auto correct.....

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  3. Thanks for the sweet compliments, ladies! :)

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  4. Your organization gets my heart fluttering! I have the same drawers, and try to make them look the same! :) Looking fantastic!

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  5. Looks absolutely neat and organized! I love the way the items and files are stacked neatly in their respective places. Do you also backup your important files online? Although online storage isn't the only thing you need to consider when you're backing up important files. You need to have access to offline copies at any time too, that's stored somewhere permanent and safe.

    Williams Data Management

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    1. I have electronic copies of most of the things in my binders (all of the important things, at least). I back everything up in the cloud, on my district's drive, and on 2 different traveldrives. :)

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  6. Thank you very much for your post. Last year I was in the USA and saw amazing classrooms for primaries. Now in Ukraine we are on the stage of implementing Daily 5 into the learning process, so your posts are very helpful and inspiring. I teach English at school, so it would be very kind of you to share some electronic copies for teaching literacy.

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