Organising my games

Today I finished something I began over the holidays. I organised my games.

I've been reading a wonderful blog called Clutter-free Classroom (thanks Jodi) which has kept me motivated in my quest to de-clutter my classroom. 

I launched the attack on my classroom over the Christmas period this year because I was determined not to go through another year without knowing what half the boxes in my office contained. That's a bi-product of taking over an existing classroom. The classroom wasn't really disorganized I just didn't know what was in all the boxes and stacks, something I'm sure most of you could related to at some point in your career. So I set out to find out, throw out and tidy up, in order to find a happy zen like state which worked for me. 

I found Jodi's blog around about the same time as I declared war and have enjoyed the little bits of advice and ideas she's shared. Plus, it's just been nice to know there are others out there fighting the same war on clutter. It's always nice to know you're not alone. I just wish I'd kept photos of the massive discard piles. I think she'd be proud of me. 

I'm not there yet, but I'm well on the way and today I finished tidying up my games. I thought some of these ideas might be helpful to others.

This year I am all about explicit WALTs (We Are Learning To). So I've gone through my games and put WALTs on them. I want the kids to take more responsibility for their learning and part of that is knowing WHY they are doing something. I think that knowing that there is a learning purpose will motivate them to play the games I put out rather than some easier ones they make up. 

In terms of reading, this is particularly important as my kids have an aversion to reading instructions. They would rather use dominoes for building purposes, than to read the simple instructions I give them for the real game (although that's a Maths game, but there are crossovers in all games.) 

Anyway, we are working on this, and I have a couple of sneaky ideas up my sleeve. I'll let you know how they go. One such ploy is to have the principal to wander through occasionally and ask them to show her what they are doing, how to do it and to tell her what they are learning through the activity they are doing. It makes them accountable and maintains my focus on making learning intentions explicit.

As well as the WALT (which I put on the bag and the game boards for maximum visability), I also include the contents of the bag and the number of players (if I want to restrict numbers). (See the last image for an example.)

Above is another WALT example and a cool way to prolong the life of your average plastic 'Guess Who?' game. The plastic holders were quite a mess (and bulky too) so I ditched them and got a friend to laminated the remaining small cards onto a coloured card background. (Thanks Mike.) When I've got some time, I plan to laminate the bigger yellow game cards too, to extend their life a bit more as well.  I then gave the kids tokens to cover the faces that didn't fit the information they had about their opponent's person (the yellow cards). 

Meanwhile, on the management side, in a recent Clutter-free Classroom blog post, Jodi shared Storage Tip #8 Ditch the Packaging. I've often used plastic bags when games have outlived their boxes, but it hadn't occurred to me to use them to save space as well. I like pretty boxes but I will definitely be ditching them when I need more space.

Here is my little tip of the week though. I learnt this from someone while I was training.

To extend the lifespan of zip-lock bags. Use thick tape to give extra strength at the seams then snip the corners off the bag. Once strengthened the bag is less like to rip (even at the corners) and the holes make it easy to get the air out of the bags once they are closed meaning less space wasted by balloon bags full of tiny resources and lots of air! I do this to all my bags. Another option is to hole punch the bag, just make sure you punch away from the edges of the bag and/or on a strengthened section.