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Best Idea Ever: Organizational Notebooks

Education World's Best Idea Ever feature highlights a favorite teacher-tested idea designed to help you teach a lesson, manage a classroom, communicate with parents, impress colleagues and administrators—and amaze them all with your energy and creativity!

Hank Rowe, like many teachers, requires that students keep a notebook of their work. To help students get used to staying organized, Rowe posts a table of contents for the notebook on his classroom wall. Whenever something should be added to the notebooks, he adds it to the list and calls students' attention to it.

"The benefits," says Rowe, "go far beyond having neat, organized notebooks. When I'm handing out papers, students are busy adding to their lists. When a student is absent, he or she immediately knows what was missed. And, when checking the notebooks, I can easily see what the student has -- and doesn't have."

Submitted by: Hank Rowe, Amphitheater Middle School, Tucson, Arizona.

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