Tip Tuesday: Organizing Supplies

My students are working on a project in class this week and next.  We've bee reading Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief in my 7th grade English class and for our culminating project for the unit, students are choosing an original Greek myth to reinterpret for a modern audience as either a children's book, graphic novel, or an illustrated short story.  The artistic element is just another way to communicate ideas along with the written work and we've been doing some drawing basics as mini-lessons this week.  It's been a lot of fun.  

Part of the challenge, however, is managing materials and supplies that my students use in class.  Enter my supply boxes...

​Earlier in the year we started creating Interactive Notebooks (my first attempt at these!) and I quickly realized that my previous approach to distributing supplies wouldn't work quite as well as I'd like with the constant use of scissors, glue, colored pencils, etc., etc., etc.  I created supply boxes for each table in my room as a result.  

The above photo is from my classroom.  I have tables that fits a pair of students.  I've labeled each seat in pink with a number and in blue with a table letter.  The table letter also corresponds with supply boxes for each table.  For my classroom, these supply boxes are supplies for each pair of students.  

These boxes are a pretty easy fix to distributing the most common supplies in my room.  I have two students for each class that are in charge of distributing, collecting, and maintaining them.  Mostly that last part of the job description requires them to communicate with me when supplies run low or if a box is getting particularly messy.  I just did an overhaul of the boxes this week because we're about half way through the year and they needed some love, but overall this system has cut down a lot on my involvement with supplies. 

Each box has: 

• 2 scissors
• 2 yellow highlighters
• 1 non-yellow highlighter
• 1 glue stick
• 1 pack of colored pencils
• 1 color pencil sharpener
• 1 blue Sharpie
• 1 pack of sticky notes

Every classroom has different needs, but these were the main items that I felt like I was constantly managing.

​Hopefully, this is a tip that can help you and your classroom management systems too.  

Always,
​Ali

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Alexandra Stewart

Ali is a career-changer who came to education in 2013 through Teach for America.  She is currently a middle school English teacher in rural New Hampshire after spending her first six years teaching in Boston Public Schools teaching middle and high school English, ESL, and Special Education.