Back to School Success: Sorting Supplies

Back to school night/open house is always a zoo!  Each year I read blogs and find new ideas of what I can do.  One tip I read about on multiple blogs was to set up bins around the room for supplies.  Genius!  This saved me sooooo much time on the first day of school.  No, not all students brought their supplies that night.  No, not all students showed up that night.  But, you know what?  It saved me from 20 students rushing me on the first day when I called out to collect each supply.  It also allowed me to have a lot of that stuff already tucked away by the first day of school.  In my classroom, I have always had things be community supplies, so almost everything was able to be sorted out.

How did I do this?  I had a PowerPoint looping through with directions of what I wanted them to do and in what order.  The directions were also printed and at each table.  Parents had to sign in, find their child's spot, fill out a survey for me (look for a future post on this!), and label and sort their supplies into bins or spots in the room.  I had signs and an actual supply already in each spot to hopefully make this run smoothly (see the picture above).  It did!  Before the students arrived the first day, I had things put away and ready to roll.

Interested in doing this for the upcoming school year?  Click on the picture below to see the signs in my TpT store.  There are three separate products depending on language.  All of the versions include signs with just clip art of the supply and no words as well as both color and black and white versions.  To get them just in English, click here.  For the signs just in Spanish, click here.  If you want both the separate English and Spanish versions as well as signs in both English AND Spanish, click here.

A bonus tip: One thing I wish I had done to make things run more smoothly was make labels with student names on for their supplies.  I had Sharpies out for parents to write names on binders, folders and notebooks.  This year I plan on having labels out at each spot with the names printed on already.