Interactive Notebooks – Organization

Papers, papers everywhere.

And no more flat surfaces to pile them on . . .

Classrooms can quickly turn into a paperwork nightmare if you don’t have a system. Everyone has to find what works for them. What works for me is keeping everything simple and in plain sight. I’m not a born organizer, but even I can keep up with this:

Assignment Board

I set up one of my bulletin boards as an assignment board at the beginning  of the year. It is a pretty good size board – I’d say 4 by 6 feet, but I’ve seen this modified on much smaller boards.

I put up a cloth background, border around the edges, then a strip of border down the middle. On the left side there is a blank monthly calendar.  On the right side I have 5 rows of 6 catalog envelopes. This is enough for an entire unit of handouts for me. (I use 6 x 9 because my handouts are half  sized, but they work pretty well for full sized handouts too if you fold  them.)

I use sticky notes to label the envelopes NB 1, NB 2, NB 3, NB 4 . . . etc.  (some people use file labels)

I have a row of folders stapled across the bottom of the board labeled –  Monday-Friday

At the end of each day I:

• I write down the assignments for each day as we do them, and the notebook pages used. I also write down the homework.
• Place any extra notebook handouts in the envelopes, and label the sticky note.
• Place any extra copies of homework/classwork assignments in the appropriate day’s folder.

The students are then responsible for checking the calendar and getting any  missing work. It works remarkably well for me, and it is a great visual for parents!

The assignment board for two notebooks:

I’m actually thinking the above would work well for incorporating menus. One side could be the notebook pages, the other the classroom calendar and the menu board options. For tic tac toes you could have 9 envelopes, for gameshow menus however many rows, for list menus – place the envelopes in order. It also gives some “change” to the board.