Organizing Teacher's Edition and Classwork Materials

First and foremost, a disclaimer: Please forgive me for my well-worn materials....even though they aren't that old, they are dragged around everywhere with me between my classroom, the faculty room, the copy machine, to the airport, and they even come with me when I get an oil change...cause to be honest, there's never enough time to get everything done!

Here's what I do to organize my Journey's reading teacher's edition book. It's like most basal-based reading programs, so there is one book for each unit (5 stories each), and 6 units for the year.

The top of each lesson has a post it on it that shows where each lesson planner is. Journeys is really cool because it's a new program so it includes the Common Core Standards and makes lesson planning easier.

I used a black and white scroll sticky tab to show where our vocabulary word cards are in the book.

I used a pink and white polka dot sticky tab to show where the beginning of each story is.

I used a yellow and white polka dot sticky tab to show where the spelling words and sentences for the pretest and test are.



For each day of the week, I use a certain color folder to hold that day's materials.

I keep homework, tests, and other materials on the left and classwork (which tends to be the bulkiest) on the right side.

I can get a week or more ahead with copying because I have it down to a routine and I have several sets of folders that are the same color as the ones I use for the current week.

I keep a binder with all of my originals. Post-Its with the lesson number and story name help me figure out what is where.



For guided reading, I use these folder pocket charts from Really Good Stuff. Students keep their guided reading books and worksheets in a Ziploc bag inside the pocket. They can easily put the bag in their homework folder and bring it to and from school!

See my other post on guided reading organization here.


What do you do to keep reading materials organized?