This may sound a little silly, but the best classroom 'hack' ever is to stay organized. Seriously! When you are organized, not only does everything look nicer, but you know where everything is! When preparing for a lesson or activity, you won't spend an entire conference period searching for supplies and gathering them all. When I first started teaching, that was me. I would spend an entire conference period or stay late after school gathering materials needed for the following school day. Now, it takes me minutes to gather materials because I know where everything is.
Want to get organized but don't know where to start? Break it up for yourself. Start with one area like your library, or your cabinets. Pull everything out and first sort out what is broken, has missing parts, or what you honestly don't need. As teachers we collect SO MUCH that we don't even use or need. Try the Marie Kondo method and sort out things that bring you (and your students) joy and are used and get rid of the things you honestly haven't touched in years. Take those things home, store it somewhere else, give it to another teacher in another grade... only keep what you and your students actually use. I sorted my cabinets by subject area and then organized by concepts or skills (see image above). As much as I wish all my storage containers matched my room's color scheme or were similar colors, at the end of the day it doesn't matter since they are hidden away in a cabinet. These #BigLots and #DollarTree storage containers get the job done. As much as we all want those Pinterest Worthy Classrooms, sometimes our budget stops us at Dollar Tree and that is OKAY!
So again, organize your classroom! We already have too much to stress about as classroom teachers, make finding your resources one less stress to worry about.
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