The idea of having to teach students organization skills can seem daunting. Have you ever looked inside your students’ lockers or desks to see how they organize their materials?
The idea of “a place for everything and everything in its place” isn’t something that comes naturally; it needs to be taught. Even as adults, we need refreshers now and again to learn the tips and tricks necessary to organize our lives –- and our stuff.
Not only do students come with a lot of school supplies, but as the school year goes on, they accumulate quite a few papers, such as notes, worksheets, tests, etc., and we, as teachers, need a way to teach students organization skills.
In the past, I’ve shared plenty of blog posts regarding how I organize my classroom and how other teachers stay organized, as well as strategies to keep students organized. Just like with anything we learn, it is always helpful to get a refresher as we learn new tips and tricks or as we might get lax in our ways and need a little help getting started again.
So, if your students need a little help organizing their supplies, papers, workspaces, etc., keep reading. Hopefully, these tips on how to teach students organization skills will give you some ideas of where to start.
How To Teach Students Organization Skills
Tip #1: Start With Writing
Getting ideas down on paper is easy, but have you considered how natural it might seem to you when writing on a sheet of paper? There is space for a header, margins, and lines, but your students might not innately know what goes where when using a simple sheet of paper.
Look at a sheet of loose-leaf paper. When your students look at one, do they instinctively know where to write? Show your students where to write down their header or title, the date, name, and content so it’s neat on the page. Remind them to write in the lines of the paper, to have spaces between their words and paragraphs, and not to rush. Also show them where to write on the page, they need to understand the purposes behind page margins and the three holes on the page.
Also related to writing, sometimes students need help organizing their thoughts when learning new units and lessons. Graphic organizers are a great way to help with this. I’ve compiled graphic organizer resources for non-fiction, reading strategies, and informational text.
These not only encourage student engagement but also help students organize their thinking and encourage a deeper and more complex understanding of a given topic.
Tip #2: Table of Contents & Colour Coding
Once your students start collecting worksheets and loose-leaf paper in their notebooks or binders, it can be hard for them to find what they’re looking for.
Have an anchor chart paper table of contents somewhere in the classroom where all students can see it so that everyone is on the same page about where their documents are. You can also create a digital table of contents if student work is mostly completed online.
If one student keeps their geography assignment at the beginning of their notebook and another keeps theirs at the end, it’ll take much longer for everyone to find what they need when they need to.
Some schools specifically ask for different coloured duotangs for this reason – black is music, green is science, red is math, etc. Having this system, as well as a table of contents, would be beneficial to everyone, as well as to the efficiency of the lesson.
Tip #3: Number the Pages
Sometimes, when you want to teach students organization skills, it can be as simple as numbering the pages.
Quick! You want your students to pull out a handout, but no one can find it – now what?
This links to tip #2, with an anchor chart table of contents. Students should number their pages for ease of finding materials. That way, when you want them to look at a certain sheet, you can give them a page number, and they have it.
There’s nothing worse than when you want your students to find something and half the class is lost, trying to find material.
Tip #4: Routines
Have you looked in your students’ lockers recently? How about their desks? Do they toss their items inside, along with their outdoor gear, lost pencils, and stray bits of loose-leaf? (Not to mention old bits of lunches that have gotten lost in the mix!)
Remember that lockers and desks need weekly cleaning when you want to teach students organization skills. Rather than springing it on students at the last minute, establish a routine; for example, every Friday after lunch, we clean out our lockers and desks.
Also, for kids who might need a little help with this, consider having a checklist of what they need to do to complete this task. No one wants to be so occupied with searching for a lost pencil that they miss half the lesson.
If you want more tips and tricks regarding routines in the classroom, check out these posts:
- Teacher Life Hack Cleaning Routines
- ELA Classroom Routines In Middle School
- Renovating Your Daily English Class Routines
- Classroom Management Routines and Procedures For Middle and High School Classrooms
- Fantastic New Year Goal Setting and Re-establishing Classroom Routines Ideas
Tip #5: End Of Unit Clean-Up
A great time to teach students organization skills is when a unit ends, and you want your students to review what they’ve done throughout the unit. Maybe some kids missed a lesson or two and didn’t have certain handouts, or maybe another student lent their notes to someone else and forgot to get them back. This is a great time to get everyone’s papers together for an end-of-unit review.
Students can ensure that all of their papers are hole-punched and neatly put away in their binders (according to the aforementioned table of contents), that their notes are in the right section of their binder, and that they aren’t missing anything the class has gone over during the unit.
Don’t let your kids shove their papers in their binders without rhyme or reason. Help them control the paper clutter and have an organized system.
If you want to help students with studying for their end-of-unit tests, check out this post: 10 Essential Test Prep Strategies To Maximize Student Performance.
Tip #6: If You’re Not Organized, They’re Not Organized
As children grow up, they pay close attention to their parents and like to copy what they do. Maybe their mom is a big reader, so they might be into books; maybe their dad likes to build things, so they spend a lot of time tinkering in the garage.
The same goes for school. Let’s say you want to teach students organization skills. If you have a messy workspace but tell your kids they need to be organized, why should they listen to you? You’re not modelling what you teach!
Show your students the benefits of having a place for everything, having a system for putting things away, and how easy it is to find things when you’re organized. It does take time, but if you consciously try to keep an organized classroom, that will influence your students to do the same in their own workspaces.
I hope these tips helped you find a way to teach students organization skills and that you will be able to implement them. For organizational ideas check out this article How to teach your grade-schooler organization skills.
Are you looking for more ways to keep your classroom organized?
- Organization 101 – The Rotary Classroom
- Classroom Organization Tips For New Teachers
- Keeping the Classroom Organized
- Middle and High School Classroom Organization and Setup Ideas
- Classroom Organization Hacks
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