No More Messy Student Desks!

I am pulling this post over from my other blog because I know it is something we all struggle with in the classroom.  Right before break, we ran out of time to clean out our desks so we'll be doing that first thing on Monday!

We're about half way through the school year and the newness of the year has worn off off.  Our desks are messy with papers to grade, parent letters to answer, and post-it reminders to complete.  

And if your class is like mine, your students's desks are not in good shape either.  Papers are getting shoved into desks, notebooks are being pulled out at the wrong time, and work is getting lost.  Does this look familiar?

This desk wasn't even the worst of the worst.  I would be too embarrassed to show you that one!  

Well, first things first.  Make sure that small supplies are put away being put back into the desk.  That seems easy enough, right?  Yes, but so many kids need a reminder to do that. 

Also, if you notice in the "before" picture, this student had a few pairs of scissors in her desk.  One day, her desk was so messy that she could not find her own scissors and had to borrow a pair.  Well, that pair got sucked into the messy desk vortex too!  Make sure they only have their own materials in their desks!

Something that is very helpful is color-coding for subject areas.  I know it is common practice, but if you're not already doing it, I highly recommend it.

In our school, we use blue for Social Studies, red for Math, yellow for ELA, green for Science, and purple for the Take-Home Folder. That might seem like a lot of folders, but having a folder for each subject really combats having random papers floating around inside the desk.  

We have our students keep spiral notebooks for each subject as well.  The notebooks are difficult to tell apart when looking into the desk.  To solve that problem, I have students color the edges of their notebook so they can see the color from the side.  

This prevents students from having to pull out all of the notebooks while searching for the correct one.  It wouldn't be much of an issue but the other notebooks usually get shoved back into the desk in a hurry.

I like to have student stack all of their folders and then all of their notebooks on one side of their desk.  Notice how easy it is to tell which notebook is used for each subject!

Another quick an easy trick is to write the subject on the text books.  This makes it much easier for students to quickly grab the right text.  This is especially helpful for textbooks that look similar.  

And, Voila!  A neat and clean desk!  A place for every paper.  A spot for each pencil.   Everything is easy to access.  It makes me feel so much better to see a clean desk!

Now, if students would automatically keep their desks clean!  Ha!  I'm pretty sure that is NOT going to happen...unless you make it a priority.  Simple verbal reminders can go a long way.  Also, setting aside time to straighten up once a week is helpful.

In the past, I have conducted random "desk checks" after school and left a note on the desks that didn't pass inspection.  

What other tips do you have to help keep student desks clean?  I would love for you to comment with more ideas!

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Thank you for visiting and I hope to see you again soon!

A Simple Way to Keep Behavior Charts Organized

Hi!  My name is Nicole Chavanne and I am so excited to join this wonderful blog!  I am a mom of two littles and a 5th grade special education teacher.  My life is busy so I try to keep it as organized as possible.  I've had to let some things go since becoming a mom, but I try to think of little hacks to make life easier and more organized.  I can't wait to share ideas and to learn a lot along the way!

As a special education teacher, I have worked with my fair share of behavior charts.  I have a love-hate relationship with behavior charts.  I LOVE them because I have seen them make a huge difference in the behavior of some kids.  I hate them because I hate clutter.
  

I like to keep behavior charts because they can show me patterns.  Maybe a student always has trouble on Tuesdays.  Maybe most of their behaviors come out on days they do not have Occupational Therapy.  It is so much easier to recognize patterns when I can see the data.  

But, I like to send behavior charts home.  Parents need to know what is happening in school and often, the parents I work with have worked out a home consequence for good/bad days at school.  It is so wonderful when I get to work with dedicated and supportive parents!

So, my choices are:

1.  Make copies each day before sending home so I can keep a copy for my records.  This choice is terrible because I need to waste precious minutes during the most hectic time of the day to go to the copy room.  Not to mention, I would be killing so many trees!

2.  Send the original home and have the parents sign then return.  Well, this is terrible because sometimes the behavior chart doesn't come back and I lose that day's data.  Also, it prevents the parents from being able to try to keep track of patterns.  And what about the parents that want to celebrate a GREAT day by hanging that puppy on the fridge?

3.  Chart the results of the day's chart.  I used to have a table set up where I would enter the number of points a students would earn for the day and a small note.  It was never enough to really get a picture of what happened during the day and I was always having to tuck pieces of paper with notes in the back or make a copy of the behavior chart on really bad days.  

No matter what method I tried, I always ended up with a huge pile of unorganized behavior charts from multiple kiddos because who has time to organize them into a binder right away?  

Not great choices.  But that is what I've done for YEARS!  

Another thing I have done for YEARS is have a home-school journal with some kids.  Each day, I would write a short (or long if it was one of those days) blurb about the day.  Each day, the book go home and would come back the next day. That notebook held a wealth of information!  Hmmm...  That got me thinking!  

Wait for it...

Ta-da!  I just took a bunch of blank behavior charts and bound them into a book!  Then, the book can go back and forth between school and home.  There is a wealth of data in one place and I don't have to worry about organizing loose papers each day.

It is simple (I like simple) and it solves my problem (I LOVE that!).  

Say it with me, "No more behavior chart clutter!"

To see some of the behavior tools I have used in my classroom, check out my other blog or my TpT store.