We are heading into the end of the year which is a great time to evaluate and reset our classrooms. As a teacher, having clear systems for organization can save you lots of time in your day. I’m sharing a few of my favorite ideas.
Figure Out Your Paper Categories
Have you ever watched a show about organizing? I love watching episodes of Hoarders and most of these shows start by taking an inventory of the types of things people have (or are collecting). Then they begin the daunting task of sorting all of the person’s items into these categories.
We are also going to start with this step to tackle our paper chaos. First, we’ll identify the main categories of papers that we receive as teachers. Some examples might be office memos, assessments, classwork, and parent notes.
Once we know our categories we need to think through how we should handle these papers. The goal here is to “touch” the papers as few times as possible in order to deal with them quickly and efficiently.
If I receive a memo from the office I need to decide if I have to keep it or do something with it. Does it have a date it needs to be returned? Does it need to be passed out to students? Is it information that pertains to me?
Let’s say the memo is a reminder on completing report card comments. I can make note of the date in my planner or my digital calendar and then toss the memo. Or, maybe I want to keep it in the wall file near my desk so I can reference it and then throw it away once it’s done.
Decision Time
Once we know our categories we need to think through how we should handle these papers. The goal here is to “touch” the papers as few times as possible in order to deal with them quickly and efficiently.
If I receive a memo from the office I need to decide if I have to keep it or do something with it. Does it have a date it needs to be returned? Does it need to be passed out to students? Is it information that pertains to me?
Let’s say the memo is a reminder on completing report card comments. I can make note of the date in my planner or my digital calendar and then toss the memo. Or, maybe I want to keep it in the wall file near my desk so I can reference it and then throw it away once it’s done.
The main point is to understand how the papers will be dealt with when they enter our classroom.
If we don’t have a decision before they come in, it’s easy for the papers to pile up and become unmanageable or lost.
Paper Organization Ideas
After we’ve decided what types of papers come into our classrooms and what we want to do with them, we can now design our teacher organization system.
What worked for me in the past was having hanging files on my desk for incoming copies. I then sorted the copies by day of the week and subject when storing them. I also had a next week file that I placed my upcoming lesson sheets so I always had 2 weeks of materials at a time. Working ahead but not too far ahead helped me be very organized and it helped make sub plans a breeze.
When I taught 4th grade as an ELA teacher in a departmentalized grade level, I added different file boxes for each group I saw for student files. Each student was also assigned a number and placed their work to be graded in the file boxes. I then returned the work to a different set of files. I personally liked having it separated between incoming and outgoing but you could always just use one file set.
The disadvantage to one file set is if your work to be graded starts piling up and gets mixed up with the already graded work that a student hasn’t picked up from their file.
Three-drawer organizers, stacked letter trays, and file boxes are all great ways to organize your papers. Color-coded files are also a great way to quickly grab what you need.
Kelly-Anne of the Crafty Teacher Lady shares how she uses blue, red, green, and yellow files for her grading process. This helps her to know exactly which phase in her grading process a paper is at.
You can read more about it on her blog titled Classroom Organization: Proven Strategies for Workflow Management. I love how she uses a specific letter tray to collect late assignments. This would be a great idea if part of your grading policy takes late work into account.
Related Post: Setting Up Student Organization Systems
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