Organizing Files

At the beginning of last year, I moved into a classroom that had seen many teachers come and go.  It was apparent to me that no one had really called this classroom home, as there was a mish-mash of stuff everywhere.  Being a pretty neat and tidy person, I set to work on decluttering and getting rid of old materials before the school year began.  As I started to go, I realized what a huge project I was beginning.  I found health curriculum from the 1970's, writing resources from the 1980's, and worksheets that were blue and smeared from an old ditto machine.

During the first month of school, I stayed late a couple nights to organize the filing cabinet, just to do an initial purge.  I bought metal frames and hanging file folders to organize everything into.  I separated the materials into drawers of math, language arts, science/social studies/art/health, and the last drawer for behavior management and monthly files.

Then as I went through the year, I realized that I was not using the files that were already in the cabinet because I wasn't really sure what was in there.  And I was adding a lot of resources that I made and bought from TpT.  I decided to organize it all by standard.

Here is the math drawer:

Each standard gets a file folder.  I put the standard number on the tab and the standard itself on the front of the folder.  Inside each folder are my I Can statements (I use the ones from Surfin Through Second), worksheets, and centers that correlate with each standard.  I keep all my centers in plastic page protectors and label them like Katie from Teacher to the Core does.  When I saw her post, I thought it was genius!    

Now when I go to teach a specific standard, I just pull the folder and choose which materials I want to use.  I think it will really help me this year with planning.  It also helps me see which standards I don't have a lot of materials for and need to stock up on at TpT!

If you are interested in the 2nd grade common core labels, you can find them in my updated 2nd grade Learning Targets pack!

How do you organize your files?

I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin's We Are THANKful Week!