Essential Binders

Yesterday, I shared that I made my yearly binder and student info binder.  Today, I'm going to show you exactly how I set them up!
A week or so ago, I was working on my binders when I saw a post from Bridget at Little Lovely Leaders and I saw her Yearly Binder.  It was too cute to not buy, not to mention it saved me a TON of time!   Everyone has been posting about having 1 binder with all of their info in it.  That's not for me...how big would that binder be?!  Between lesson plans, curriculum maps, and IEPs, add in all the data that we need to keep track of and that binder would be too heavy to carry around.  

I split this up into 3 binders: Yearly Binder, Student Info Binder, Sub Binder (well, I actually used my free whale-themed sub binder). 

The Yearly Binder begins with my lesson plan section.  If this gets too full, I'll have to empty it out each quarter...we will see!  My lesson plan format was adapted from Kristen from Ladybug Teacher Files.  You can see hers here.  I have an outline of my day on the side (including when students are pulled out) and 4 lesson boxes for the big subjects.  I made a second page for small group lessons (4 boxes for math, 4 for reading) with a space for my center activities on the side.

Next is my curriculum calendar section.  I have monthly calendars and my curriculum maps and report cards there.  I'm also going to keep any planning tools (copies of the Literacy Continuum) in this section.

The final section in this binder is the meeting notes.  To me, it made the most sense to keep my plans and planning tools together.  We have a lot of meetings about common core so keeping meeting notes here made sense too.

Onto Binder # 2!

The Student Information Binder starts with the student information section.  That has basic info about each student (contact info, birthday, medical info).

After that I have a Student Data section.  Behind the cover, I have tabs with #'s for each student.  All major assessments will be kept there.

Next, I have IEPs - self explanatory.

Then I have a Parent Contact section with my contact forms.  I thought about keeping this separate but if I'm going to a meeting on a student, I'd want this documentation with me too.

Finally, my grade book. It's not printed yet so no pics!

 I'm also considering adding a meeting notes here too.  When I go to RtI meetings, parent conferences, or any student centered meeting, I will only have to take this binder.  

Finally, my sub binder was explained in this post so I won't go through it again.

I hope you found this helpful!