Unit Organization

A few people have asked me about how I store my unit (science and social studies) materials, so I thought I would share with everyone.  One of the girls that I collaborate with uses this same concept to store her phonics materials and that is where I got the idea for my unit materials.  I used to keep all of the worksheets in a binder (one for science and one for social studies).  As much as I love my binders, it just wasn't working for me.  I would always forget about the books I had for each standard and it was tough to keep everything organized.  So that is why I switched to a bin.  I keep this bin in the closet on my unit shelf (see the post about it here).

The bin is from Office Depot - I really like it because it is specifically for hanging folders.


I went through all of the standards and used 'key words' as my hanging folder labels.  I thought about using the actual standard, but then I figured that it would be easier to quickly find what I needed if I used the key words.  Then, I put the folders in alphabetical order.

 

In each folder I keep all of the activities that correspond with that standard.  I am also able to keep a few books in each folder. 

This folder is for habitats.

This folder is for living and non-living.

 All of the books for each standard don't fit in the folders, so I just put one or two in there.  I also went through all of my unit books and typed up a list of the books I have for each standard:

This is one of the pages from my science book list.

I keep this book list in the last folder in the bin so that I can quickly see what books I have for whatever standard I am teaching.

As I was putting the pictures in this post, I realized that they all happened to be of science materials.  I just want to clarify that my social studies materials are also in this bin.  I didn't separate the two subjects within the bin, just put all of the science and social studies folders together in alphabetical order. 

I hope this gives you some ideas!  Is there an organization method that you use that you really like?