Today marks the 43rd day of school and by now you know how much paperwork we need to deal with as teachers - from handouts to newsletters to notices to everything in between. But rather than having to stuff paper into the children's folders every day, a lot of teachers use the mailbox system. You just place whatever that needs to go home in each child's "mailbox" (slot), and at the end of the day, you tell children to pick up their mail before going home. This system works well because you don't have to spend all of your prep time inserting paper into the kids' folders - this can be done even after the kids go home. Or you can have a helper do this for you.
Lakeshore sells these tabletop organizers for $25 each - not so cheap but, in my opinion, so worth the investment. I've had one of these (bottom right) for over 4 years and it's still pretty sturdy.
The second idea I wanted to share today is using the binder clips to label the slots. Since there is really no space to write the kids' names, I use numbers on binder clips to identify to whom the slots belong to. You would be surprised how quickly children pick up on this, even the first graders.
Hope these ideas help you stay organized as a teacher!
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