Organizing Your Papers!

Planning ahead and staying organized is what I consider a somewhat difficult task in the classroom. I found when I first started teaching that I would print my papers off for the next couple of weeks, but have no where to put them except in a large pile. Then, when it was time to teach the lesson I was frantically searching for my papers, which wasted precious teaching time. There needed to be a change and here was my solution.  I got a black milk crate from wal-mart and some hanging file folders. I labeled my file folders from 1-31and put them in my crate. Now the easy part. As I print off things that I need for my lessons they now go into my crate instead of a large paper file. I sort them by date and when it is that day all of my papers are in one place and all I need to do is pull them out. I also keep an extra file in the back for extra time activities. They don't get used very often, but you never know when you might need them. It makes life very simple, it keeps my room organized, and it keeps me from constantly trying to figure out where I put my papers. This is also great for if you wake up one morning to you being sick or your child. You have everything for that day in one folder already and you have extra activities on hand and you aren't trying to search for something.