Student Pocket Mailboxes

My school (intermediate 4-6) is going with a full departmentalization format next year.  I will be teaching 5th grade science and ELA.  Actually, all of the teachers will be responsible for the ELA instruction for their homeroom students.

We have been brainstorming ways to be organized and keep all of the students accountable for the required assignments.

The idea behind the pocket mailboxes is that students "take" and "hand-in" work into their individual folders.  The folders are stapled (or mounted in some way) to the cabinet doors.  The classrooms all have cabinets with cork door overlays.  

Students hand in finished work to the pockets which makes it easily visible which students have not completed the assignment.  Also, teachers can put missed assignments (from absences,  band lessons, etc.) in the pockets.

We are going to try this out next year and tweak as needed.  I'm going to need a lot of suggestions from veteran "departmentalized" teachers.  I will be searching blogs, Pinterest, twitter, etc. to find awesome ideas.  There never seems to be lack of good tips of the trade out there!

A pencil above the pockets reminds students  about putting names on papers.

I put the pockets up in my classroom in May of this year to test it out.  So far so good.  I'm hopeful for next year. 

Quarterly Writing Tasks

There's one piece of writing per quarter that is completed independently by the student.  The teachers offer very little assistance except for the directions.  These writing pieces are very specific and each teacher uses the same materials & organizers to introduce the lesson.  

Keeping the materials organized and in a "user friendly" location is a must.  Also, a place to store the student samples needs to be easy to locate as well.  

In June, the teachers record the scoring data from the quarterly writing tasks in a computer program.  Then, the writing samples are inserted into each child's cumulative folder which will be forwarded to the next grade level.

I had to come up with a plan for storing these items.  My cupboards are packed!  And...I hate stacking papers vertically...never find anything that way!

So, filing crates seemed like a wise choice...for now!  I'm constantly trying to "improve" the organization.  It's a never ending process.

The crates are labeled with large stickers from Michael's Crafts so I know what I'm grabbing.  I load each tabbed hanging file folder with the lesson materials in the summer.  Then, I pull what I need upon teaching the lesson (I keep one master copy in the file to reproduce for next year).  

After the students have completed the writing task, their work goes back into the same hanging folder...in alphabetical order, of course!  The writing samples are easier to pull for the cumulative folders if they are in classroom student number order (by last name).

I like clear, plastic file boxes because they are easy to see through to view the contents.

The student writing samples fit nicely in the hanging file folders.