Welcome to Teaching Tip Tuesday!
Each and every week, I share with you a tip that I hope you will find useful in your teaching practice.
This week’s tip comes courtesy of Lessons in Teaching: Thoughts From A First-Year Fourth Grade Teacher.
Messy student desks bug me for some reason. I don’t like how disorganized some of my students are. I don’t like how they can just reach into their desk and be distracted by all sorts of things. Here is a great solution to this problem.
Kitty litter boxes fit perfectly into student desks.
It’s a great organization tool. Students can pull out their boxes like they were drawers, or take them out and place them on their desktop.
The above photo shows one of the other advantages to using this system. The students can’t just leave stuff at the edge of their desks to play with. They can’t hide cell phones in there and they can’t fish through their desks during a lesson.
Also, if you have to teach another class at times and they need to sit at someone else’s desk, this will stop them from going through someone else’s stuff. You’ll be able to see if anyone slides out the boxes quite easily.
Here are the advantages to this system
- Organization! Kids can’t throw stuff into their desks.
- When desks need to be cleaned out, just pull out the bucket.
- They can’t reach in and play with things in their desks. If they try, I can easily tell.
- When I move a student’s desk, I can just move his or her bucket.
- Students like them because when someone else sits at teir desk, they can’t take anything.
What an awesome idea to solve the messy desk problem!
More Teaching Tips
- Teaching Tip Tuesday Archive (tons and tons of great tips, tricks, and lessons)
- Student Numbers (one of my favourite organizational tools)
- Be Enthusiastic (a key element to good teaching)
2 responses to “Solve the Messy Desk Problem”
Hi Chase – I always hated being messy … now not sure what's happened!! I need to do some tidying ..
Love the idea of the kitty trays – as you say an awesome to solve the distraction mess ..
Cheers Hilary
Hi Hilary,
There are so many great ideas on Pinterest. I've been so busy that I haven't be on there much, but I'm glad I found this tip.
Cheers!