Let me know if you do this.
I teach High School. I found that those that take the time to organize their work do well in my class, others, their work is jammed into their textbooks, notebook, bags or left on the floor.
One teacher I watched, he did not allow the students to take the book home, if they wanted to study they needed their notebooks. The teacher would place a great deal of the grade on notebook checks and had such control they would sit quietly while he checked student by student.
One suggestion I am going to try is make it part bell work..."you have 2 minutes to find assignment XYZ that you did last week and give it to me." Five bellwork assignments in my class means you are excused from one classroom or homework assignment.
It certainly can't hurt to give it a shot.
When I taught in middle school, all students had an advisory class each morning. The class lasted about twenty minutes. The whole purpose of the class was to teach organizational skills, check binders, and make sure students were prepared for the day. Locker checks and clean outs were scheduled as part of the class. This helped some students, but there were still those who showed up daily without assignments, paper, etc. It's a tough struggle.
I know our 5th grade teachers have spoken to the 6th grade campus about how they want things done. The 5th grade teacher then try to use similar methods in their classrooms.
Our 5th grade is departmentalized. So our 5th grade is like 1 team at the 6th grade campus. Neither school has lockers. Unlike the 6th grade campus we can't send a set of books home to stay all year with every student. So our guys do have to hall around their textbooks for homework, but the teachers try and make sure they don't have to haul to many books home any one day. They have one large notebook that contains each subject, an agenda, and a homework folder. All homework assignments are in that folder.
Now we have block scheduling to lessen time lost in transition - especially since our 5 graders are spread out around campus due to over crowding. THat is different. Also they have 4 teachers and in 6th grade will have 7.
For my son, he has a folder for each of his classes. That is where he puts his homework and papers that have already been graded.
In my classroom, I have mailboxes for each student where my t.a.'s file graded work. I also try to three hole punch a lot of the stuff I hand out so that students can put it into their binders.
I agree that the more organized the student, the better they seem to do in school.
I give my students guidelines for their notebooks, and model a way to organize them. Still, I tell them that the whole point fo a notebook is to have one place in which they can access any information they need swiftly. If they want to organize the notebook differently, that's fine with me. But it must be organized!
Periodically, and never the whole class all at once, I will print out a list of assignments from my gradebook. I also add to the list work that hasn't been graded: video guides, lecture notes, handouts.
I call a student up with the notebook and ask her to find five items. It had to be done in a timely fashion, or she doesn't earn the credit for the item.
I announce the possibility of notebook checks during weeks when I know I will have individual seat work days. some kids don't make the first round; they make the second. I always calll up one poor performer and one strong performer from the previous notebook check -- it strengthens the idea that organization is an ongoing task, and it offers the poor performer to earn a higher grade.
I only make it one column in the gradebook per quarter or semester, and it eventually fills up. Checks can take 5 minutes or thirty seconds, depending on the student.
It's worked well for me so far!
Sorry, "of".
And these are their own notebooks, not a class set. That way, the responsibility's theirs.
As a high school teacher most of their organizational skills are in place, bad or good. I have tried to help them, but I would need more time to get them organized and with CST's we don't have it.
I teach 9th graders and my school set up a Freshman House to help with the transition from 8th to 9th grade. Kids are divided into 4 teams that share the same common core teachers (History, English, Math, and Science). I'm on team 2 and we have 80 students on our team. My team colleagues and I have common planning every other day to talk about kids, meetings with parents, interdisciplinary stuff, etc. My colleagues and I always establish what rules and organization techniques we want to incorporate with our team so the kids have consistency.
The first few weeks, all four of us work hard on the organization stuff. We all require a separate binder for each of our our classes with dividers. The dividers are labled the same in each of their classes to maintain consistency. Each student is given a school agenda book to write in assignments which we all check in the beginning. Some parents like us to intial off when the kid writes in their homework assignment in the agenda book. At the end of every school year, I ask kids to give me their old binders to recycle for the next school year (we have a lot of kids that can't afford to buy binders and dividers).
Most kids follow the system for the year. Those that do not remain organized are doomed to fail in most cases.
I do random binder checks worth a quiz grade to motivate them. There is a rubric for it so they know what they are being assessed on and why. If you would like the rubric, email me and I can send it to you.
Some of my kids will stay after school with me and ask me to help "get them back on the track of organization" so we go through their binders together and reorganize it.
It's a lot of work the first few weeks but it seems to work for the most part. And, a lot of the kids will come back to visit me after they leave the freshman house and tell me that they still use our organizational system.
There are probably other methods out there and I'm always open to hear what others do.
Great post! 
It's funny that I stumbled upon this post tonight because binders for next year have been on my mind for days. I'll teach fifth grade next year and I want to get them ready for middle school. I plan to teach them how to use a binder. It's nice at my level because I'll have time to stop after each subject, model how to put things away in the right place and I'll be able to check and grade their binders regularly. Sorry I can't help you with any MS suggestions but I wanted to thank you for validating my idea that I've been tossing around!
Hi! As a sixth-grade teacher for too many years to mention, organization is something that is taught daily if not hourly in my class. I explained to my kids early in the year, if I repeated an instruction many times, it is not that I think they are dim, I just want to make sure that those that need to hear things a few times have time to process my instructions. (6th graders detest being talked down to!)
I also put kids that need an organization intervention on an "Organizational Plan". I write it up with the same intensity as an IEP or Behavioural Plan to show its importance.
Below are some more of the hints I recently posted to Vanessa van Petten's fantastic site for teens.
http://www.vanessavanpetten.com/...tage-of-summer/
1.I put a lot of my students on the 1/2″ binder system. They have a soft-sided 1/2″ binder for all 4 core subjects. Every night everything goes home. Every morning everything comes back. These binders are very lightweight. Parents and students now have no excuse for not reviewing their notes or completing assignments. Many of the parents send their child back to school to get their binders if they forget (the custodian is at school until 10:00 pm!)
2. NO ZIPPERED BINDERS ALLOWED!! They encourage kids to throw in their sheets and zip it up quick instead of putting things back in the right place.
3.Only the unit we are studying at the moment is allowed in the binder. Previous units are filed in the classroom filing cabinet.
4. Use a daily agenda as well as a “Long Term Projects” sheet. When projects/tests are assigned, it goes on the “LTP Sheet” which is stapled into their agenda at the beginning of the week. The night before the project/test
is required I move that assignment into the “Daily” agenda and erase it or cross it off the “LTP” sheet. They are encouraged to check their LTP sheet nightly and plan accordingly.
Hope these help!
The Head Monkey
www.mrsbowes.edublogs.org
Commenting by HaloScan
