Thursday, May 29, 2008

In addition to updating our teachers' lounge, a couple of us worked on organizing the school's math resources while our student teachers did their independent teaching time. For the past few years those resources have been in a trailer along with the office space for our math specialists, meaning they were rarely used. Our principal has been trying to find a way to get the office for the math teachers into the building so that they are in the midst rather than removed. She found a small space for them so we moved the materials to our AV room off the library. In the process we did a few really smart things (thanks to the brilliance of various people):
  • We moved a lot of materials back into classrooms. We did so by marketing the items and putting them out in the teachers' lounge. Even things we thought no one could possibly want disappeared quickly. That cleared out a lot.
  • Our next step was organizing what was left. We purchased new containers so that things would stack neatly. When we moved things into the new home, we labeled everything, including listing instructional ideas for the materials.
  • Finally, we wanted teachers to be able to determine what to use when they need materials. So, we created a group on flickr with pictures of all of the resources. Each picture is tagged with possible uses and more detailed instructional uses are listed with the picture. This way teachers can search for fractions or addition to find useful resources. As teachers find new uses for the materials they can add tags or comment on the picture.
This is all very new for us, so it remains to be seen how well it will work. We have high hopes however.

1 comment:

Julie Pippert said...

I tried to help the teachers at my youngest's preschool by watching kids while they spent days after school ended cleaning and organizing. It's a BIG job. Wow. Kudos for getting the math stuff set up so nicely.