colour-coded baskets

I’m a bit of an organizational freak. I teach 9 periods/day, and have basically no down-time whatsoever what with choir practices, meetings, duty, and now I’m helping out our awesome phys. ed teacher with gymnastics. I need to have all of my supplies and paperwork – whatever I’ll need for each class – ready first thing in the morning because I usually don’t get much time (all of you music teachers know what I’m talking about!) to eat, let alone get something ready during the day.

I’m a little bit OCD on the colour coding. Everything I do is colour-coded specifically to the grade or activity that I am involved in.  We use “Share the Music” as our main text, so I’ve colour-coded all of my grade-level things according to the colour of their textbook (i.e. grade 1 = yellow, grade 2 = red, grade 3 = green, grade 4 = purple, grade 5 = orange, & grade 6 = light blue).I’ve also got my choirs and ensembles colour coded.

Here are some of my insanities:

• I have colour-matching post-it notes, for any sheets needing to be photocopied, filed, handed back, etc.
• I write everything in my daily plan book with coloured pens matching each grade level.
• I write notes to my classes (i.e. page numbers for texts, or the to-do list for the day) on the whiteboard with a marker in their corresponding colour.
• I keep a separate binder (with a coloured label) for each grade, containing my monthly units, worksheets, lesson plans, transparencies, etc.

I know…It’s insane.That’s not even the tip of the iceberg.  However, my favourite colour-coding thing that I’ve done so far (second to my triplus fineliner coloured pens) is coloured baskets.

Late in the summer I stopped into the local dollar store to look for some classroom supplies. I found baskets of varying shapes and sizes, and in a rainbow of colours! I bought a basket in the corresponding colours to the classes that I teach. Now, when I prepare for the day (either the afternoon before or early in the morning), I simply deposit any and all supplies I might need (i.e worksheets, story book, work to hand back, art supplies, handouts, pencils (I’ve got plastic pencil cases with colour co-ordinated tops with class sets of sharpened pencils and erasers. ), etc) into the appropriate basket.  Then, when each class comes in, I just grab their basket from my shelf and voila! I have everything I need.