As a Core French and Planning Time Teacher, I teach over 130 students on a daily basis across multiple grades. The amount of papers and work, from photocopies and handouts to assignments and tests, can become quite overwhelming if you do not have an effective organization system. After teaching for many years, I have developed a system that keeps all the papers organized, my desk clean, and my mind clear!
There are two things you need to create the same system, that will keep all the work for your multiple classes organized and separate:
1. HANGING FILE FOLDERS
In a filing cabinet beside my desk, I keep 3 hanging folders per class, labelled: “DISTRIBUTE”, “TO BE MARKED”, and “MARKED”. When I collect student work, I immediately place it in the “TO BE MARKED” folder for that specific class. As I mark the work, I will place it in the “MARKED” folder as I go, that way I do not feel obligated to mark all student work in one sitting. If I finish half the marking for one class, for example, I can keep track of which papers I still have left to mark via this system. I separate student work that I still have to mark, from work that I have already marked, in order to visually see how much marking I still have left to do!
Once every student has handed in their work and ALL of the work for that class has been marked, I will move the papers to the “DISTRIBUTE” folder, which is placed at the front of the cabinet for convenience. I also place photocopies for students who were absent in the “DISTRIBUTE” folder to give to them the next day.
The grade levels on each folder are colour-coded to match the colour of the student duo-tangs for each class because matching makes me happy (I know some of you can relate)!
2. LETTER TRAY
On top of the filing cabinet beside my desk, I keep a paper tray to store all the photocopies and handouts for each class. This KVISSLE letter tray from IKEA has been a life-saver for me to be able to separate my daily photocopies for each of my classes. It is very convenient to be able to grab the papers from here after a lesson, or to give an extra copy to a student who may have misplaced their copy from the previous day. I also like to batch my photocopies for the week, so this letter tray is perfect for storing the multiple photocopies per class!
I’m truly debating buying a second letter tray for next year, so that I will have more slots to separate not only by grade, but also by subject (i.e., Grade 4 Core French, Grade 4 Dance).
These two organization tools (the hanging file folders and the letter tray) allow my desk to remain clean at all times, without a ton of papers lying around. A cleared desk keeps me from feeling frantic and overwhelmed throughout the day, which is so important in a profession that is often very chaotic and stressful. Over the years, I have tried many different organization systems for keeping student work organized, but for me, this system is tried-and-true… give it a try for yourself and let me know what you think!