You can also provide the children with some individual trays to organise their personal resources needed for class work throughout the school year. You could also leave some trays of resources on the children’s tables that might be needed by the class in all lessons.

Individual Trays
At the start of the school year, you can assign each of the children their own personal tray in the classroom. Allocate some time at the start of the school year for the class to make a label for the front of their personal tray. The children can use the trays to store any personal belongings that they might need during the school day. The class can store their study books in the tray which can then be accessed at the start of each lesson before settling down to work. The trays can also be used to store the children’s pencil cases and other stationery items so that they won’t be left out on the classroom tables at the end of the school day. Allocate some time each term to get the children to clean and tidy their personal trays to remove any rubbish and organise the books and other written topic materials.

Table Trays
You can also leave some trays out on the tables in the classroom containing a set of common resources that the children might need to use in lessons across the curriculum. The trays of resources on the children’s tables will prevent the children from wandering around the classroom gathering other things that they might need for a particular activity. At the start of each lesson, you can also store in the table trays other resources that the children might need for a specific topic such as pots of coins for a Maths lesson about money or sets of dictionaries to support the children’s narrative writing. You can select some children on each table to be in charge of keeping the table trays tidy and well-stocked.

Curriculum Boxes
At the start of the school year you can also fill some boxes in the classroom with resources needed for different curriculum topics and subjects. You can add to the boxes throughout the autumn, spring and summer terms to make collections of resources that can then be used in subsequent school years. For example, if the class are studying the Romans then you can fill a curriculum box with some example artefacts from a history centre that the children will be able to use in history lessons. You can also collect some of the children’s work from the topic to store in the box as an aid to teaching the same lessons in future years.