Kristyn's Classroom *Organization & Management*

Building & Maintaining your own Classroom Library First starting out teaching, it can be hard to acquire a whole collection of books to create a class library. Don't worry! Definitely don't go out and spend your life savings on all new books. There are easier and cost efficient ways to acquire a classroom library in a short amount of time. Some tips I would suggest for starting your collection is to check out yard sales where you can get books for a quarter or less. Also, post on social media that you are in need of a wide range of children's books and see if any of your family and friends are willing to donate or sell their old books to you for a decent price. Keep collecting books and your library will grow more and more each year. Even reach out to parents and see if they are able to donate any books to their child's classroom. Parents love to help out! *If you want some great children's book recommendations and lesson ideas to go along with them, ...

Technology Tips & Tricks If your school is fortunate to have technology available for your classroom, then please keep reading for some helpful organization tips. If you have desktop computers or laptops, I would set up a station where students can access these technologies with seating available. Stools are great-and low cost! If you use certain websites like Epic! (great tool for reading!) then you will need to give your students a login and password. To make your job and the kids jobs a little easier, a great simple idea is to purchase a few stand up whiteboard displays like the ones pictured below. Write down the password so that students don't have to ask you what the password is a million times or lose the paper that it was written down on. Now if your class has iPads or tablets available, I like to store these in a bin and I would definitely recommend getting protective cases for these as unfortunately kids DO break things! I would also like to share a few apps...

Teacher Reminder Display As teachers, we are hit with a lot of information we need to remember on a daily basis. Students come in with notes from parents. Newsletters, homework, announcements-you name it! Sometimes if we don't write things down we forget! A cute little display like this one using a picture frame can easily solve this problem. Personally, I love to use sticky notes and I end up finding them all over my desk. With this useful display, I am able to put this on my desk and stick my important sticky notes onto the glass of the frame. You can customize the categories into anything you wish by simply typing up a template on Microsoft Word. I personally love to give reminders to myself because it makes me feel organized and on top of things. I hate to forget important information. I write in my agenda book daily as well. Lily Pulitzer is my go-to agenda book! They are the cutest designs and come with stickers.  Who doesn't love stickers?!   I use this as m...

Reward Systems for Classroom Management This marble management is a great idea for managing behaviors in the classroom. Displaying a "marble jar" like this on the board will motivate students to behave so they can earn a class reward. These images and texts can be printed and laminated and taped to the white board. Super simple! You can decide what your goal amount of marbles is and write it in with dry-erase marker. The great thing about this is you can always change the goal and make it higher as more of a challenge as time goes on. You can also change the reward. Rewards can be anything you choose. Perhaps you could do a pizza party (depending on allergies in your classroom!), movie day, or something as simple as letting students sit with a friend as pictured above. I recommend displaying it somewhere where the kids will constantly see it and be reminded to behave. Another way I did this in the past was having the reward, which in this case happened to be a picnic, sp...

Create your own Voice Level Chart Now I know what you're all thinking. The answer is yes!! These buttons do actually light up! This awesome light up display features different noise/voice levels for students to use during different times of the day. Are your students taking a silent exam? Go ahead and push the "No Voice" button. Are your students doing presentations? Press "Speak Up" to let students know it is okay to use a loud speaking voice so peers can hear them. This is such a great classroom management tool. We all know that students can have a hard time being quiet when we ask them to. As a teacher, it can be a struggle getting your students to stop chatting during a lesson. With this tool students will know exactly what level their voices should be at at all times. The best part is that all you have to do is push a button! If your class is having a hard time even after introducing this display, then you can create consequences for students who do no...

The "Ketchup" Folder The insanely cute "Ketchup" folder is designed for students to retrieve any missing work they must catch up on if they were absent. This low-cost display will get your kids excited about catching up on work! It also puts less work on you as the teacher because all you have to do is put extra worksheets in the folder. It is the student's responsibility to check the "Ketchup" folder if they were absent the previous day(s). It can be really hard to remember who was absent what days and trying to track these students down and give them the work that they missed can be a challenge. This is an easy solution. Students will love the name of the folder as it is kind of silly. It will get them a little more excited about doing make-up work :) All you need for this display is any old folder you have laying around. You can type up your own display however you like. Be sure to add a big image of a ketchup bottle as a nice visual. Visuals a...