It’s another beautiful month of Bright Ideas!

And I’m sharing a little system that helps me get things in order every day. Namely paperwork. Because we all know how quickly paperwork can get out of order, don’t we? 

Especially those quick-to-accumulate student papers!

I know there are so many wonderful ways to organize student papers out there, but here are the steps that really help me keep track of everything from my students:

1. Number and Highlight

My students record their class number in the top, right-hand corner of each assignment. They also highlight this number (to make it more visible):

2. Order the Papers

A student collects all of the papers and organizes them in number order. This is done during a transition to a new subject and a friend at their table usually helps them get set up while they sort. They beg me to do this.  🙂

The student who has sorted the papers in order drops them into the color-coded bin, for the particular subject we have just covered:

(you can read more about our color system here: Color-Coding the Classroom)

When I’m ready to check and grade the papers, I pull them from the bin. I look for any missing papers (which is really easy to see, since they are in order!).

After correcting, I enter them into my gradebook app, which has my students listed in number order–it literally takes less than a minute to enter all grades!

And that’s it!

Simple, easy-to-manage, and quick!

I hope this was of help if you are looking to tweak your system, or perhaps if you are just starting out in your teaching career 🙂

Would you like to see some really bright ideas? Of course you would! Just click away on any of these lovely blogs below: