Organizing Unit and Lessons

Monthly unit, lesson and holiday plan drawer organization

Using basic three drawer organization systems (purchased at Walmart for around $13/each), I organized in these categories: Basics, Back to School and Resources, September and October, November, December and January, February and March, April and May and Life Cycles.

In each box there are file folders that are labeled for the unit, lesson or holiday plans they contain. I keep all my models and copies of the work in there as well as ideas that I have for future plans. On the front of each folder, I added a post-it note with the dates in which each holiday occurs so that I can keep on top of when I want to do the unit to make sure I get it done before the holiday occurs!

This is the ring of index cards I will keep either in my desk or on a ring by the monthly drawers so that I can see what is in each bin without having to dig through each one to find what I am looking for. As you can see, each drawer has a card that has a list of each folder that is in that drawer. Also, as you can see on the April and May card, they are color coded so that if something is in another drawer that I might do during that time period, I can remember that it exists as well as find it easily. The example here is that I do Life Cycles a lot (butterfly life cycle, pumpkin life cycle, etc) and those can also be done during certain times of the year (April and May or September and October, etc) so I want to make sure that I remember the best time of the year to do them and what drawer I can find them in!

This past year, I noticed how disorganized my units and lesson plans were. I used to have them in a file cabinet arranged by subject, but no other organization in particular. It was hard and time consuming to find what I was looking for and there were so many things that I didn't need to hold on to! After doing some blogging myself, I found a great idea for organizing my units and lessons and decided to do it...it was organizing by month. I absolutely LOVE this idea because months have themes and holidays that I found would creep up on me so quickly and I wasn't prepared.