I just recently moved into a special education position and spent a lot of time getting my classroom ready. I love, love, love the end result. In fact, I love it so much and am so thrilled with it that I decided to take some pictures and share the setup with you!
This is my eighth year teaching so I have collected a lot of office supplies and things like that. If you are looking to start your room fresh, save and collect. It takes some time. Trust me.
Let's start off with my calendar. When I found out I would be taking a special education position, I began my TpT search for the perfect product to help keep me organized. I soon began to realize that I preferred a physical type of organization over a digital type. I absolutely love adorable planners and calendars so I marched myself right to Wally World, spent like an hour looking around at them all (on my date night), and found this Mead planner for right at ten bucks. That was a little steep for me, but I knew it would be well worth it and I knew it would make me smile every time I saw the cute thing on my desk. So to keep myself organized, I color code my system with highlighters. I use blue, orange and pink. Blue=Call a Parent, Orange=Due Date, and Pink=ARC. I also like this type of calendar because I can close it and the information is covered when I'm not in my classroom which is a lot of the time.
Next, we can look at how I keep up with my student papers and keep my classes separate. I've had this drawer bin thing for years and I remember when I purchased it. I actually found this thing at Joann's and they had it on sale and had actually priced it incorrectly. I was also able to use a coupon with it and before they knew it, I ended up paying about $22 for the thing which it is regular $50 plus. This chic was thrilled! So back to my organization. I have three different grades that come into my classroom. I labeled each drawer by their grade using some chalkboard labels I found at a Michael's a hundred years ago as well as a chalkboard crayon my sweet hubby found for my at a Dollar Mart! Yes, that's right, the Dollar Mart! Let me just say that's the most awesome chalkboard crayon thing I've ever used! It's stands out so much more in person. My desk didn't have any drawers which was fine with me, so the rest of the drawers were used to hold some of my desk supplies.
The picture below shows my shelving area. This area holds my photo albums. Things that make me smile basically. Pretty colored binders, folder organizers and some school supplies such as glue and things. If you look closely, those folder organizers on top in the middle are adorable blue and green colors. They were hideous black! I took those things right out in the yard and spray painted them with some Krylon paint that sticks to plastic. By the way, I found them for free!
Something I really struggled with the last few days was getting my Aimsweb/Progress Monitoring system organized and in place. Normally, I've only ever progressed monitored five or six students at one time and I never felt confident with it. I created a color coded system as now, I have twenty-five to keep track of. I know I've mentioned color coding a few times, but this just works best for me. If you look at the image below you'll see colored dots on each folder. Yes, I could've bought colored file folders, but these were free and the dots were so much cheaper. Don't judge. I have pink (also in pink hanging file folders). These are my K-1st graders. I have orange (also in orange hanging file folders) for my 2nd-3rd graders. I have green (also in green hanging file folders) for my 5th-6th graders. This system helps me to stay organized and know where my paperwork is and who I'm working on at the time.
The last thing I finished up late this week was my board where I keep an agenda basically. Having this really helps me not to forget what I'm doing each day. I came home one evening and decided I needed some vinyl for my Cricut to create this. Low and behold Amazon (the most amazing place in the world) had all kinds for $3.50 a roll when my local store was selling the same thing for $15 a roll! I set to work once it arrived cutting my letters for the subjects I cover with my students. I also purchased the glitter tape at the Dollar Store for a buck! Ta-da! That's my classroom! I hope you love, love, love! Please ask any questions if you'd like! If you need help with your agenda letters, please don't hesitate to contact me!
