Reading and Writing Handbook

Papers can quickly become overwhelming in the ELA classroom! I've learned that if I don't have a plan for where students will put their papers and when these papers will become obsolete, folders quickly fill up with extraneous pages. No one can find anything!

For easy classroom organization, I provide my students with a one-inch binder. This binder becomes a place to store ongoing ELA work as well as to keep texts and resources. However, this hasn't always worked perfectly. Despite my exhortations to "Clip papers at the back of your binders!", sometimes papers just don't end up where I had intended.

For the past two years, I've been planning to create a Reading and Writing Handbook--a one-stop shop of resource pages for students to keep at the front of their binders. After months of planning and thinking, I finally put together 30 pages of my favorite resources for students!

My goal is to be able to say, "Let's turn to page___" and discuss whatever is on that page. Sometimes the pages will be for instruction; sometimes I'll just put the page number on the board as a reference. If your students are like mine, they probably ask again and again for the definition of theme. Now I can just say, "Remember, if you'd like to review what theme means, turn to page 13 in your Reading and Writing Handbook."

I'm really excited to try out this handbook and see how it works in the classroom! If you have any questions or would like to see a resource added, please let me know. I'd love to hear what works and what is needed in other schools.