With Organization Comes Clarity

I'm not sure about you, but when I walked into each of my classrooms (I've had 3 in 6 years), I've been overwhelmed.  Just like any good reality organization show, I follow the practice of making piles.  There's always a "keep" pile, a "donate" pile, and a "toss" pile (aka trashcan).  But before I begin organizing the stuff, I like to develop a sense of order by arranging the furniture.

My first day in my classroom was spent shuffling furniture from one spot to the next.  My spacial awareness is somewhat... lacking.  Knowing that, I brought a yard stick and a tape measure and I borrowed some "moving men" from the teacher next door.  The "moving men" are made out of felt and are discs that can be placed under each corner of heavy furniture.  My new kindergarten teammates kept offering to help me move furniture, but I really had no idea where each piece of furniture would eventually end up.

Here is the view from my classroom door.  My student tables are front and center, in a kind of windmill arrangement.  Behind the student tables are 2 bookshelves that used to be connected to each other.  The bookshelf  facing the student tables will hold math manipulatives and the bookshelf to the left (hard to see in this photo) will hold materials for small group literacy centers (stamps, word games, leap frog, leveled readers, and more).  These bookshelves act as a barrier in front of my small group table.  I've never put up a divider like this in the room.  I usually like full disclosure- a nice, open classroom where I can see what everyone is doing at every minute of every day.  I've tested it out and from my spot at the small group table, I can see the entire classroom.  

Here is the view from the teacher desk.  You can see my small group table.  The bookshelf to the left of the dolly is where all of my small group literacy items will be stored.  In the top left of this photo, you can see the five drawer storage cabinet.  This will be a great spot to hide those posters and all of the various types of paper.

This is the view from the morning meeting/calendar time area of the room.  Not much to say here...

Earlier I mentioned that my first step is arranging the furniture.  As you can see in my photos, the second step is pulling out everything that's hiding in drawers, cabinets, and closets and sorting.  This is when those three piles (keep, donate, toss) come in handy.  I went through all of the manipulatives, reading materials, art materials, and miscellaneous items that were in the classroom and sorted.  All of my reading items went on the small group table, all of the math items went on a student table, etc.  

When thinking about organization, it helps to see everything you have... and boy am I blessed with a lot of stuff!  Just by looking at the piles, you might think that this was a blog about a hoarder.    Don't worry.  Like I always tell my husband, it always looks worse before it gets better.