Writing Folders

I'm back!

Summer vacation started a little over a week ago and I immediately jetted off (in a car) to South Dakota and Missouri for a bit of a vacation (since when do vacations involve a 16 hour car ride... and that didn't even get me back home!)

It was nice to take a break from being the teacher and be the student for once...

Can you guess which city this was taken in?

ANYWHO, writing folders!

We didn't have any students the last 2 days of school and since I was moving into another teachers room (who may or may not be coming back in April) I felt like I didn't have too much to do in the ways of getting a bunch of stuff ready just yet (that's what my summer break is for!)  So I spent some time instead thinking about writing folders.

I made one prototype at school to see how it would go, printed off a bunch of the labels and spent an hour this evening gluing them onto folders (I'm a quarter of the way through).  I also taped all my folders together at school on those 2 days off.

So without further ado... here are some photos of my writing folders

I found the cover to my writing folders on Teacher Pay Teachers by Just a Primary Girl.  This girl had a few different options using these colours (I'm not giving my students an option... they are all getting this one - I choose the one with the least amount of purple in case I hear complaints from the boys). Anyways, it was a free download (my favourite kind) and when I checked back last night they were still free (maybe they always will be).

I taped 2 folders together and reused a bunch of blue ones from my 4th grade class this last year... but we didn't have a single blue folder left in the school (that I could find) so the other half of it is yellow.  That's okay... maybe they will think it's Blue Bomber inspired (our CFL team).

Sidenote:  My 6th graders are getting 2 yellow folders instead of 1 blue 1 yellow... I really didn't have enough blue but wanted to reuse what I could! (my 5th graders are getting the one above... I'm teaching a split class)

I printed off 2 pages of writing prompts and glued them onto the folder.. I plan on giving them writing prompts a lot of the time but if they have issue with the prompt I give them or want to write more but don't know about what... this is a good list.  The original list that I found online was at least 4 pages long... I pruned it down because I didn't want them wasting time reading things they could write about.

Well isn't this a super hard to read photo... 

On the back of my folder I put a checklist for editing.  I found it online somewhere and edited it so that 

1) it would be portrait instead of landscape and 2) used the language I wanted my students to know.

There is a self edit column and a peer edit column... they can use whiteboard markers to check things off and erase them when they are through.

Here is the inside folder part.

So in the first slot they will put any work in the pre writing stage, 2nd is rough draft, next is editing and revising, and then good copy.  I wrote down what each stage means and the things they will need to have in each stage.  

I came up with the 4 slot ideas by looking at this (this is also where I got my definitions for each stage)

When everything was glued down I laminated them and used a knife to slice open the folder section... this one is ready to be used for a long, long time.

For the prototype I wrote the name on the folder before I laminated it... I showed it to my cousin who is also a teacher (she loved the idea by the way) and she suggested I write their names on the outside with crayon, wash it off at the end of the year, and reuse them.  The reason I wrote their names before laminating was because I figured they would scratch off their names if it was on the outside.  In an ideal world they would always write their names on everything anyways... but let's face it... that won't happen and then folders will go missing!

What do you think?  Should I continue writing their names on the inside or switch to crayon after laminating?

My plan for these folders is to give my students some writing time every morning (or at least 3 times/week).  The following week they will have to pick one thing that they started writing about and work through the editing process... I'll let you know how it goes.

Want to know the best part about these folders?  

They double as a privacy screen type thing.

A lot of my students this year liked using noise canceling headphones while reading and I don't recall seeing any in my classroom for September... so I either have to use some of my budget to get some OR maybe just maybe this will be enough.  

My students will be working at tables with 3 other people.. so when they need their own space I hope this helps!

On the last day of school we had a loonie carnival. 

Basically all the students brought in a dollar and they played games and did crafts.  Apparently the bracelet making booth was popular amongst some of my students and 2 of them gave me one each... they survived my trip.  Not sure when I'll take them off... when they fall off or for a wedding I'm going to in August... whichever comes first.

Hope we are all having a fantastic summer!