Creative Classroom Ideas: Student Daily Organizational Binders

One thing that I definitely plan on changing next year is the organization of information between school and home. This year, each student had an agenda (to be used as my main method of communication and reading log, ideally it should have been checked by parents nightly) and a clear, see-through portfolio pocket (to transport all papers back and forth). This system did not work out as planned, and after doing some research I have decided that an organizational binder should do the trick!

I am still deciding between calling the binders

BEE (bring everything everyday) binders
STAR (students taking academic responsibility) binders -or-
MAGIC (managing assignments, goals, information, and communication) binders

(There is a list of 200+ names for these binders on THIS great site.)

In my organization binder I plan on including:

-Student Agendas: The school urges every 3rd grade student to purchase one, so I will probably still use it for home-school communication and as a nightly reading log. To ensure that parents are checking nightly I plan on having students show me their agendas as part of our morning routine. I will check for the parent's initials next to the nightly reading and stamp each agenda. This will keep the students, parents, and me accountable for making sure we aren't missing any important notes.

-Folder: The right side of the folder will be for things that need to be brought RIGHT back to school and the left side will be for things that can be LEFT at home.

-Weekly Homework Packet (pre-holepunched)

I plan to have plastic sheet protectors for all of the sheets below so they will last longer:

-Expectations of binder upkeep and usage

-Passwords for all of our school subscriptions: We have a lot of sites for the students to use, but many are password protected which can get confusing.

-Weekly spellings words and a list of activities for spelling homework

-Study guides for current material

I have found many great sites with examples of how teachers have adapted these books for their own classrooms.

Mrs. Meacham's BEE book