Organizing Your Supplies

FACS teachers are known for using a wide variety of materials to enhance their lessons.  As stated in a previous article, when requiring students to use other materials to complete assignments, you want to make sure that these materials are readily available.  Of course, these materials need to be visible yet organized.

Materials needed:

• Mini storage drawers (either 5 or six drawer)
  • Depending on how you will organize your materials
• Index Cards for labeling

I usually organize my materials into the following categories:

• Markers
• Crayons
• Scissors
• Rulers
• Construction Paper
• Printing Paper
• Glue

Other Categories

• Sewing Supplies
• Arts/Crafts
  • Ribbons
  • Yarn
  • Paint
  • Glitter

A good idea is to set this up as a student supply center in itself and place a stapler and tape over there as well.  This keeps the students off your desk and/or having to interrupt you to get permission to use your equipment.

Another good tip is with all systems, they must be worked in order to prove useful.  So, encourage your students that if they take it out, they must put it back and in its correct place.  You may want to remind them that if it is not kept organized that you will remove it and they may have to provide their own supplies.

Board Configuration

Every school has their own type of board configurations.  Some schools require that all board configurations be the same throughout the school and other schools leave it up to the individual teacher.  Most board configurations contain:

• Standards, benchmarks and/or objectives
• Bell ringer (activating that students can do on their own while you conduct the roll and other housekeeping duties)
• Essential Questions (usually the objective stated in the form of a question to get the students thinking about today’s lesson)
• Vocabulary List (to be covered for the day or week)
• Agenda (detailing what you will be doing in class today-assignments, activities, etc.)
• Closing activity (review of what was taught today, or some sort of activity such as ticket out the door)
• And Homework.

To me, it seems as if it’s your lesson plan on your board.  So what I did to keep it fun and interesting was to label my board into three distinct sections:

• Appetizer-this was my do now activity
• Main Course-was basically my agenda listing all assignments/activities we would be completing for the day
• Desserts-closing activities and homework assignments

(Not to mention I was teaching all Foods classes, but be creative with whatever you teach)

You should have seen the students’ eyes and excitement when I was explaining to them that we would be having appetizers, main courses and desserts every day.  It was so entertaining!!!!  My standards were displayed in the following manner.

Displaying Standards

A good idea for displaying your standards is to type one standard per page and enlarge the font so that they can be read from far away.  I put a small illustration on it (for color) and laminated them.  I then added Velcro to the backs of them all and attached them to the wall around my board.  I placed one Velcro sticker on my board configuration and this is where I would display the standard that was being covered for that day or week.

MORE COMING SOON!!!