Organization Strategies for Students, Part 4: Maintaining Organization Systems.
This is the final post in a 4-part series on organization strategies that will cover organizing things, organizing scheduled time, organizing unscheduled time, and maintaining organization systems. In the last post, we discussed organizing unscheduled time. Here, we will discussed maintaining organization systems.
Ideally, students would be using organization systems perfectly, all the time, but that isn’t realistic. I don’t know any adults who can maintain an organization system 100% of the time (and I definitely can’t). Do you put everything away where it’s supposed to go, every time? Or do you sometimes put it down somewhere convenient and then put it away later? Or intend to put it away later, and then do it again, and then eventually have to clean up the whole room?
The goal of this series is not to take students instantly from no idea what to do, to having time managed perfectly (because let’s be honest: who really does have time managed perfectly). The goal is to provide students with tools that will help them move towards completing assignments, handing in assignments, and keeping it as low-stress as possible. It’s a lifelong process that has to start somewhere.
Remember, our basic rules are:
Keep it simple
Meet students where they are
Keep it novel (without breaking rule 1)
The list below has a series of small evidence-based goals that build upon one another to help students get (and stay) organized. The list picks up where the previous list ended and continues into the next articles in the series.
Most links below go to Amazon. Full disclosure: STEMsmart participates in the Amazon Associates program, and will earn a commission on qualifying purchases made through the links on this page (at no extra cost to you). These earnings will contribute to the creation free STEM resources.
Goal 6: Organize systems once a week.
Locker Organizer: Over the course of a week of school, students will accumulate a lot of papers. Some need immediate attention, like homework, but some aren’t important at all, like event fliers, and some are important much later, like long-term assignments. If all of these papers end up crammed into a student’s notebook or folder, they may get lost or distract from the organization systems already in place. One way to keep the systems in place is to revisit them once a week. If possible, encourage a student to take 15 minutes for organization on a Friday afternoon or a Monday morning. The student can look through their folder, which should only have papers that need to go home or get handed in immediately, and their notebook, which shouldn’t have any loose papers. Anything that will be needed later can be filed in a locker organizer for later. Anything that will be saved but won’t be needed again soon, like a project that has already been graded and returned, can be brought home and left there.
Trash Can: Everything that is no longer needed can be thrown away. Event fliers, field trip notifications, old graded assignments. Throw it away. Hanging onto it will make it harder to keep everything else organized. A student can keep a trash can in their locker or in their bedroom. Better yet, get a 4-pack and keep them anywhere papers are handled.
Goal 7: Add novelty once a month. This is the fun part. Every once in awhile, mix it up a bit. Use a different colored folder or buy a new color highlighter. Try to make it less boring without making it more complicated!
What has worked to keep you and your students organized?