Organizing My Classroom

In this Instructable, I'm sharing my top 3 methods which I employ to organize my class.

They are:

1) Use Me Smartly Dustbin.

2) Ask/Comment Wisely Sticks.

3) Colour Cups

Let's find Why and How of all of them.

The materials required are pretty cheap and one can tinker with the dimensions according to ones need.

It's more about the idea than the Material.

Materials I used:

For Use It Smarty Dustbin

1) Cardboard Boxes

2) Cellophane Sheet

3) White Chart Paper

4) Colored Cotton String

5) Glue and Adhesive Tape

For Ask/Comment Wisely Sticks.

1) Craft Sticks ( 3 for each student)

2) Water Colours

3 Paint Brush

For Indicator Cups:
1) Paper Cups (3 for each student)

2) Paint ( Red, Yellow, Green)

3) Paint Brush

*ALL THE 3 ABOVE PICTURES ARE FROM PINTEREST AND ARE JUST FOR ILLUSTRATION PURPOSE*

Like all the kids, my students too loves paper and waste them a lot while playing Tic-Tac-Toe, scribbling, making airplanes or just making paper balls and throwing them around the classroom. As a result, our classroom dustbin is always overflowing with papers.

Yes, time and again we remind them how papers are made and how they can save trees by not wasting papers but Kids are Kids!

During this summer vacation, I tried looking over the internet to find an answer to this problem. While there are some excellent ideas of gamifing the process but I belives that all those ideas will work great everywhere but the classroom. As here they will find a new game to waste papers on.

The classroom is more about producing less waste than throwing them in dustbins like on the streets.

Kids Love Rewards and Hate Penalties! This is a simple Reward and Penalty based dustbin.

I used an old computer monitor cardboard and cellophane sheet to make this dustbin. As you can see the front of the dustbin is open and covered with a cellophane sheet. The dustbin has three parts marked with BLUE and RED thread, which indicate differently levels

The dimensions, Rewards, and Pananties are up to you and can be altered daily/weekly.

For my 4th-grade student Candies were the obvious choice. The instructions were simple:

# If after the day the content of the dustbin is below the first thread(Blue), each one of them will get 2 candies.

# If after the day the content is up to the second thread(Red), each one of them will get 1 candy.

and

# If the content is above the red thread. each one of them will give me 2 candies.

Simple ;-)

There are always a bunch of kids in a class who love to answer. The moment the teacher asks a question, they have to speak. Often without realizing that their answer is incorrect. This sometimes creates confusion and often shakes the equilibrium of the class.

So the idea here is to give students three popsicles sticks per lesson. Students are only able to use the sticks to ask a question or make a comment, and they must hand you the stick. If their answer is correct they will retain their stick. Once the sticks are gone they are not allowed to ask any more questions for that lesson.

This calm down the noisy ones and give an opportunity to the shy ones to open up.

A set of color cups is an amazingly versatile classroom management tool. It is helpful for both teachers and students.

I use a colored cup system to keep voices at an appropriate level in the classroom. Green cup is to show the noise level is acceptable. When the class is too noisy, the yellow cup is placed on top to serve as a warning. If the noise level continues to be inappropriate at the table, the cup is changed to red and student need to face a consequence.

During a lesson, starting with a green cup on the top if a student thinks that I'm going too fast for him/her they can place the yellow cup on top and if they do not understand anything at all they can place the red cup on top.

When students are working in teams or on an individual written assignment, have them place the green cup on top to show that they are working fine without problems or questions. If they have a question but it’s not urgent, they place the yellow cup on top. If they have a question that must be answered before they can continue, they place the red cup. This works well because when you are circulating through the room, you can easily monitor team progress.

Thank you very much for sparing your precious time and don't forget to Vote this instructable.