I made a very ugly set of filing cabinets all bright and cute over the summer!
We got this 'beauty' for $70 when an office was closing down near where my husband works.
I found fluoro pink spray paint and black chalkboard paint!
The tricky part was masking up and covering the different parts while others were being painted. I had to spray about 6 coats.
We took the plastic handles off and sprayed them separately. I left the cabinet in the sun to dry for an hour or so between each coat. If I did this again I will look into some sort of primer to go under the first coat.
I am going to use this cabinet for all my numeracy activities and games. I store each in a clear plastic document wallet and am going to divide them up into ability stages.
In my state of Australia we can use a Numeracy Continuum to assist our planning and assessing.
It outlines a progression of learning so that students can work on problems within their skill level area. This helps them more easily move to the next level or step on the continuum.
This cabinet will house all my games and activities divided (roughly) into four different 'groups' (steps). Hundreds of hours could be spent analysing each resource that I have and continue to find. I have been teaching long enough and am confident enough to quickly review an activity and allocate it into a grouping.
For example, in a selection of 'addition' resources I would roughly divide the activities into:
Group 1 - Students having to physically model/move manipulatives to demonstrate addition (seeing, touching, counting)
Group 2 - Students may still have to count from 1 to find the total, but they can do in their head
Group 3 - Students can 'count on' from one group to add the next (they can hold a number in their mind and add the rest)
Group 4 - Students are beginning to use / are using mental strategies for addition.
I would use this rough allocation for every aspect of numeracy and divide my resources into the drawers. Nothing too time-consuming - just taking a skill, viewing it as a series of gradual steps and then allocating a drawer for each. If a skill has more than 4 steps, I might combine a few into the one group.
I also am equally as comfortable and confident in quickly allocating a child to a group to match their area of learning. I like to keep my groups fluid and can easily change students between groups as needed. I will blog in more detail about math groupings in an upcoming post.
I love the chalkboard drawers - I can quickly write on the front and change them if I need to in the future.
Thank you so much for stopping by - have a great day!