In efforts to better organize my room and materials, I put a lot of time in preparing student reference materials to be used more easily year after year. Student reference materials are simply hard copies of examples and instructions. Some are, of necessity, printed in color…which means they are not cheap to produce and need to be used over and over. These are typically laminated or placed in clear sleeves. Sometimes the sets include stapled booklets. For me, the best solution is to provide a package for each table. I have 24 tables with double seating at some so a few students share. Each table gets a file jacket, which is a manilla or plastic envelope that holds letter-size sheets. Depending on the need, some are flat and others expand to 1″. Inside are placed all the materials and resources that we share for a given project. Of course, it takes a bit of effort to collect and assemble these and I add a bit each year, but the idea is that they will be ready to go when needed. I teach different grade levels, so my resources needed to be in a form that is easy to distribute and collect for individual classes. At the end of a project, the jackets are collected and stored in an expanding document wallet. I use a separate wallet for each project and label them for quick retrieval.
The biggest challenge is getting the students in good habits of returning materials to the file jackets and not misplacing them. I try to have two or three extra packets prepared in case one is temporarily lost. They typically turn up sooner or later.
