When I fully embarked on the flexible seating journey last year, I wasn’t sure where my students would store all of their stuff.  Where will their books go, notebooks, and supplies?  Was I going to do community supplies, individual supplies, or a mix of both?  See what worked and didn’t in our class as we tried our different flexible seating storage.

Flexible Seating Storage for Books

I had 4 towers (each tower held 6 drawers) of sterilite storage drawers spread throughout out room for students to store text books, interactive notebooks, classroom dictionary, and other materials.  I bought the medium sized drawers but if I were to do it again, I’d get the large for a few extra bucks.  Each drawer was labeled with a student number inside the Target adhesive labels.

Flexible Seating Storage Tips:

• spread storage throughout the room so traffic doesn’t pile up
• go over your expectations
• make sure that students have enough room for all of their things
• Make it easily accessible.  We had some by the front door, in the middle of our room, next to a wall, and near our library with the Ikea benches

Student Supplies

At first, I thought we’d be using community supplies because it’s what I’d always done.  But some of our seating options were smaller and it made leaving a caddy nearly impossible. So after a week, we ditched the community supplies and went to individual.

I had students bring in a fabric pencil pouch to keep pencils, scissors, glue sticks, expo markers, erasers, a highlighter, and a sharpie.  The fabric pouches were easy to store and less bulky than the plastic ones.  I made sure to buy extra pouches for friends who were unable to bring one in or broke theirs at some point.

Image from Just a Primary Girl

https://www.facebook.com/EasyTeachingTools/videos/vl.913159088832437/1778786928842244/?type=1

Work Storage

Students always have some sort of unfinished work.  Since we didn’t have desks…and because I love this hack, students put their unfinished work on a clipboard.  They kept their clipboard with them as they moved throughout the room.  I’ve shared about this hack a few times here.