Organizational System for Small Group Reading Materials
The key to saving your sanity when planning for small groups is materials management! There is nothing worse than spending an afternoon making copies, folding books, and binding all the things, only to misplace the copies you need for your first group tomorrow morning!
How to Store Materials
You are likely working with multiple groups of kids who are all at different reading levels, which means you will need a wide array of materials to focus on the skills that each of your students need. Here are my favorite ways to organize materials in my classroom:
- 6 drawer Iris tower: I use this drawer tower to organize the materials for each group for the week. I can place everything I need (including small pieces) in one drawer with a group name label on the front. I created these labels for each drawer.
- Sterilite Clip Boxes: These are great for storing games with letter sized workmats and fit easily on a shelf behind my small group table. They also come in a variety of sizes and stack perfectly together.
- Storage Box with Hanging Folders: This bin makes it easy to keep track of student data. I create a colored file section for each group and a file folder for each student. Each time I give an assessment, I tuck it away in their file to make it easier to track what is working in small groups over time.
If you want to learn more about how to group your students for center and small group rotations, then check out this post: How to Use Data to Form Small Groups
Once you have your system in place, then it is time to start prepping all the copies! If you don’t have it yet, then make sure to grab my small group planning pages to make planning the materials and lessons for each group as easy as possible! Just sign up here and I will email them right over:
This post may contain Amazon affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase through one of my affiliate links, which helps to support The Primary Brain blog. As always, I only recommend products that I love and all ideas shared are my own.
Written on August 26th, 2023 by Laurin Brainard