With back to school just around the corner, I figured I would gather some tips, tricks, and a great freebie for you to get ready for the year! These are all things I use personally in my classroom and stand behind that ALWAYS make my year a tad bit smoother.

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My first tip has to do with organization and the use of binders. Binders are a HUGE time saver for those things we need to keep in paper form. Yes, we are in living in the digital world, but sometimes it’s easier to grab my binder of masters, run down to the copy room rather than search through my drive to find what I need. As you can see, I have almost every subject there at my fingertips in case I need to help with any additional intervention or lesson.

Additionally, if you do work with a binder system, you MUST have adorable binder covers. It gives your bookcase and/or desk a little extra flair. And who doesn’t need that?! Featured in this photo above from my classroom is my best selling Lilly’s Bright and Sassy Editable Binder Covers. You can read more about my binder system and how I use them in my classroom here.

Right there you are at $3.00 per table group. This is the same price as one of those table caddies {I can never seem to find these at Michaels} minus the organized brightness! I created, cut and laminated the team labels and slapped them on the fronts with velcro. Now onto the organized part, each cup with hold their supplies. You can easily have a cup for each student but I like the simple look of everything being sorted. So one cup will be pencils, markers, glue sticks, colored pencils, scissors, etc. You can see that I sat them on top of my tables group bins. These housed all of our notebooks and materials we needed throughout the day. There you go: cheap, easy and organized as promised!

Tip #3: Add plants to your classroom

Our classrooms are our second home, right? They are also our student’s second home and sometimes they can be a place were they feel the safest. I try to always make my classrooms feel like a small community and homey feeling. My last tip is the simplest of all, add small touches to your classroom to make it feel like a home. Last year, I had each table group home a plant on their desk. I was a bit worried in the beginning of the year of them surviving, but guess what? They did! The students (and fellow teachers) loved the look, it felt homey and my students continued to take care of their plants throughout the school year! I got these plants at Ikea for $3 each and purchased the metal plant container for $1 there as well. Not too bad of a price to pay to create a comfortable environment for my students.

If you have never used Class Dojo, you have to check it out, what are you waiting for?! It’s free and easy! Teachers love the data it creates, students love the adorable dojo monsters and parents love the communication tools. This is a great resource to bring that home to school connection alive. I wrote more about how it ran in my previous classroom here including my use of Dojo Dollars and Dojo Store.

At the beginning of the year I send home a copy of this parent letter so I can get the parents involved as well. It makes everything easier when the parents are on board as well! All they have to do is fill it out and send it back. You are able to enter their emails (multiple emails too for each child!) from your account so there is nothing more the parents need to do.

So, what are your back to school tips and tricks? How do you get ready for the new school year? What do you use for classroom management with your students? I would love to know more about your classroom!  If you found this useful and want to share with your other teacher friends, pin the image above!