Teacher Tuesday: teacher music stand organization

For this Teacher Tuesday I'm showing you my music stand that I keep at the front of the room when I'm teaching. It is my command center during the day- I really only touch my desk before and after school. Maybe during lunch if I'm lucky. I try to keep it uncluttered and sorted so I can grab what I need without missing a beat during class.

On the stand itself I have three things that are always there: a magnetic clock/stopwatch/timer, my class schedule, and a clipboard with all my seating charts on it. I got the clock in the kitchen section because my wall clock is not where I can see it when I am teaching most of the time. It has come in handy as a timer and stopwatch too though, and it's easier to see at a glance than a wall clock anyway! I made a condensed version of my class schedule with the start and end times, laminated it, and put little magnet dots on the back so I could reference that whenever I need to. I find that I sometimes get lost in the lesson and can't remember when I'm going to need to stop! The clock and the schedule help me stay on track throughout the day.

On my clipboard I have my seating charts for each class. At the beginning of each day I get out the ones I will be using that day and put them in order, so that as I teach a class I can put it at the back and have the next one ready to go. I write down EVERYTHING on the seating charts. Besides the obvious seating assignments, I also have space to jot down grades for informal assessments, part assignments (if I want them to continue working on the same part of a song next class), who has played those instruments everyone wants (like the bass xylophone), notes about the class as a whole, behavior notes tracking (more on that another day...), and anything else I want to remember about a student or class. By the end of each trimester those things are chock-full and pretty worn down, but it is the best system for me for sure! I don't like to have to stop class for even a second to pull out a grade-book, list, or other chart. And I don't want to have to go looking for something when I need information in the middle of class unexpectedly. It's also handy for parent conferences, because it's easy for me to find everything I need about a particular student to talk to parents. Plus I'm more likely to remember where Johnny in Ms. Smith's 2nd grade class sits than what Johnny's last name is- so it's better to have that information by seating rather than alphabetically. **You can download the seating chart I use for free here or get a set of seating charts in several class sizes and configurations here!**

Then we have the make-shift organizer that hangs down from the stand. It's actually one of those cheap aprons from Home Depot. I had seen people using them on the backs of student chairs to hold books and supplies, and bought one to see if they would work in my room. Although I decided against using them for the student chairs, it was a perfect solution for my music stand! Ever have your projector remote sitting on the stand, pick up the clipboard and set it back down on top of the remote, and then spend 10 minutes trying to find the remote? Maybe that's just me... In any case this really helped with that problem! Now all the other bits and pieces I used to keep on the music stand are in one of the two pockets of the apron.

On the left, we have my projector remote and infared pen (for my DIY interactive whiteboard). I use both of them frequently during class but they are constantly either getting lost behind my clipboard or falling off the stand. Now they have their own space where they don't bother anyone :)

I keep all of my behavior management-related things on the right side. I wrote about my letter system in this post on behavior management. The extra letters (for if they earn letters beyond the original word) are in this pocket. I also have my behavior slips and happy notes and a pencil for students to use to fill it out during class if needed.

It's very poorly-made, but I had some leftover fabric from another project that was just the right size, so I hot-glued it over the front to cover the Home Depot logo (and make it look a little less apron-y). Someday I may go back and spray paint it or something, but for now it's functional and cute enough to not bother me too much when I use it :)

Do you keep a music stand at the front of the room? What things do you have on it and how do you organize all of your stuff? Leave a comment below or come join the conversation on facebook by clicking on the link in the header!