Music Journal Storage

Earlier in the summer, I posted about my Back to School Find; file crates.  At the end of last year I was so sick of getting materials to kids because of the way I had them laid out.  My supplies were in one corner and it created a traffic jam and instead of taking 1 minute, it took 5.

Over the summer, I purchased some storage containers from Target, the Dollar Tree and Walmart to help keep things simple and fast.  Behind each riser I have a place for students to store their music journals, as well as storage for pencils, clipboards, dry erase markers and any other small material we need.

The file crates have really simplified things.  Last year I did not store the kids music journals.  This became a big problem because kids would lose them or classroom teachers may forget if they were coming right after lunch/playground.  This year the journals are always in the room when we need them.

Each team has 2 crates (I had to go back and buy more because I seriously underestimated how many kids I have!), and inside the crates are hanging folders labeled withe their classroom teachers name.  There are also numbers attached to the class I see first on each day of the rotation.  So, if I see Mrs. Smith, Ms. Jones and Mr. Johnson's class on day one, in that order; Mrs. Smith's Class has a number one stapled to it. (Hope that makes sense.)

When the kids brought their folders in during the first lesson, I gave them each a label with a color coded dot.  They put it on their folder and write their name and their teacher's name on it.  This let's me easily put their folder away should they leave it out by accident.  If you click and enlarge the first picture in this post, you can see the labels.

When the kids come in their Section Leaders pass out the folders and we get started on our lesson.