Dear
Friends,
Do
you love to organize your classroom? Or hate it? Or maybe it's a
love-hate relationship? Have you ever noticed that your students behavior
is better when your room is more organized and less cluttered? Is
organizing always on your to-do list? To get some great ideas, I am
reading all the great links and linking up with Kristen and Elizabeth for the Optimum
Organization Linky party.
My contribution is
probably well known and well used - color coding and student numbers. I
know other people have blogged about numbering students, I do it as well and it
works wonders for organizing student assessment and files.
This
is my anecdotal records system. The note cards are taped to a front cover
of a recycled three-ring binder, bound with book tape along the sides.
Each card is numbered for a student. I have one of these for each
subject I teach. I know everything should be trans-disciplinary, but our
report cards are still organized by subject, so my assessment is as
well.
Yellow
- Reading
Red
- Writing/Spelling
Pink
- Art
Blue
- Math
Green
- Units of Inquiry
Light
Green - Personal and Social Education
Each Area of my
classroom has the color coded sign.
Then
for a quick visual in my planbook, each block of time is color coded.
(Purple corresponds to all specialists classes)
The
supply, book and math bins in each section are also color coded.
These color-coded
sticky notes help me to organize and label all the paper work in my student
files.
Above
you can see some of the formative and summative assessment papers, including a
Daily Reflection Sheet. Notice all the work of a subject is clipped
together and labeled with a color coded sticky note. You can see the
files below are numbered. Using numbers means you don't have to be
changing the labels each year.
Do
you use color-coding or number systems? I would love to hear your
comments.
