File Folder Infatuation

After 3 months away from blogging... I think it's about time that I start back to sharing my oh so boring slightly entertaining life. The beginning of a new year seems to bring more stress than the beginning of a new school year. The third quarter is always a tedious time for 5th grade teachers with middle school visits, last attempts at benchmark testing, raging hormones and bounding loads of paper work.

To my surprise, I'm actually quite happy that the fourth quarter has finally rolled around. Even though we are in EOG cramp mode, I love the predictability and uniformity of my lesson plans. We have now entered into our 4th quarter boot camp for math, reading and science.

Math is now an hour and half of station rotations (oh the joys of working in small groups!) and reading is a continual cycle of skill practice and endurance passages (with a touch of a game here or there.) I actually feel like, for the first time, I can breathe!! Finally there is enough time in one day to actually teach... due to the fact that I'm basically reteaching everything from the past 7 months... but that's besides the point.
In these first few weeks of 4th quarter, I've gotten on this kick of organizing my classroom.

Starting point: the dreaded filing cabinets

I've run into the same problem over the past few years with the fact that our filing cabinets do not have the rods to hang "hanging" files on; therefore all of my "hanging" files are falling over and making one huge mess.

Solution: Expanding files

 Office Depot- $13.49

Not just any expanding folders but bright colorful folders. I've taken on the task of putting every document in my classroom into labeled manila folders and categorizing all of them into these vibrant gems. Once I compile all of the folders into my filing cabinet, I will be sure to post a before and after picture.

How do you organize in your filling cabinet?