There's a Plan for That

The dream for teachers is to have parents who are all ready and willing to go the extra mile to help their kids succeed. One of the reasons that we have grades is to help communicate to parents what skills their kids are excelling in or struggling with. However, if we aren’t also sending home student work and papers in a timely manner, then we, as teachers, are dropping the ball. We can’t expect parents to be able to support the skills we are teaching in the classroom at home if we aren’t also sending home examples of these skills for the parents to refer back to.

The solution to that is simple and honestly an issue that schools across the nation have solved a long time ago – parent communication folders! Personally, we always called them Thursday Folders, as that was the day of the week parents could expect the folders to come home. In these folders, there would be a mix of school communication to parents (newsletters, upcoming field trips, classroom party announcements, permission slips, progress reports, etc.) and student work being returned home.

What isn’t as simple, however, is figuring out how to manage all of these papers that are in your classroom that need to go home. It’s just one more thing to do, and honestly, it can be exhausting to try to get it all filed on a regular and timely basis. But this is one of the most consistent ways you are communicating with your parents, so it’s important that you consistently send things home so that parents know to look for them.

Remember when we are inconsistent with our communication, we can’t expect parents to follow up with their children about it. If parents can depend on things being sent home every Thursday, then if their child says they didn’t get one, the assumption will be to look a little deeper into things and figure out where it has gone. If you as the teacher promise a folder every Thursday but then don’t have it ready Thursday and end up sending it home on Monday three times a month, now the parents are going to stop being suspicious if the folder doesn’t come home. They won’t keep looking for it, and this is how important dates, messages, and deadlines get missed.

So, the moral of the story here: make sure you have a functioning system to consistently get those papers home!

Over the years, I’ve tried a variety of different systems, some I have loved, some not so much. Eventually, I narrowed it down to the two systems which I liked best for dealing with papers that needed to be sent home. These systems were especially effective when I was teaching in a departmentalized grade level and had to manage the papers for not only my homeroom class but also two other classes as well.

The first system I used was great for a classroom that has ample wall space available. It also was a little pricier than the second system that I will talk about later in this post. However, it was worth the initial investment to have a solid system that could run for years to come, then to have to reinvest each year in budget options instead that didn’t stand the test of time each year.

I purchased a 30-pocket wall hanging file organizer. I actually bought mine initially from Amazon; however, it does look like they sell them on Temu as well. This may be the way to go as this can be a fairly pricey part of the system to invest in.

Where it has the tag to label the folder, the white dry erase portion, I labeled each of the sections as Student # __, starting with number one and finishing with student 30. I intentionally didn’t label them with student names because the pockets actually housed information for more than one student as I was a departmentalized teacher.

The next part of this system that I invested money into was purchasing file folders in three different colors, 30 count each, resulting in a total of 90 folders. I chose the colors that correlated with each of my classes that I taught. If you missed that tip about color coding your classes as a departmentalized teacher, go ahead and check it out HERE.

I purchased something similar to this. I did find that I had to buy multiple packs to have enough to make 30 of each color. I used the remaining folder in my file cabinet to sort other documents that I had in my classroom.

It is more cost-effective to purchase manila folders, instead of the colored ones, but I found that it was easier for papers to be effectively sorted between the classes when the folders were visibly different from each other, rather than to write teacher names on them instead.

Each pocket of the hanging folder rack on the wall got three folders, one in each color. On each of the folders, I labeled the student number. For example, in pocket number one in the black hanging system, I would have a yellow, a green, and a blue folder, and each of the folders was labeled with a number one to represent the student number ones from each of my classes.

I used an extra bin to house any papers that needed to be filed to go home. Inside that bin, I also had a laminated copy of each class roster, marked in the correct colors of the correlating folders. (I used a combination of marker and colored duct tape to mark the class rosters for easy filing.)

To make sure that papers were ready to go home, I would have students help file the papers, either as an early finisher option or during downtime like dismissal. As long as I limited it to a three-helper maximum to sort the papers, it worked really well. On Thursdays (the day we sent home our folders, though this will vary depending on your school), I would send over the correct color folders to my teammates’ classrooms so that when they passed out student folders at the end of the day, they could add the papers from my class as well. At the end of the day, those folders would come back to me empty, and I would return them to their correct spots in my wall pocket organizer.

The colored file folders were never sent directly home with students; all papers would be transferred to students’ individual parent communication folders. That way, if folders were lost or delayed on being returned from home, I wasn’t spending my time and money continuously replacing them or being unable to file papers until the folder made its way back to me.

The second paper system which I used, which was actually my favorite, is set up similarly to the one I just described. The big difference is that it didn’t involve any wall space, as it was housed in a box. The box was also convenient because it meant that papers could be sorted and filed by any parent or older student volunteers that I had, without them having to walk all around part of the classroom to do it.

Instead of purchasing the black hanging folder organizer, instead, you need a bin like this one below. I actually picked up my bin from Dollar General.

This system also needed a set of 30 hanging folders. These folders are typically sold in packs of 25, so if you have class sizes of 25 or less, those are perfect. Otherwise, you can go for larger packs, and if you went in on this system as a departmentalized team, it may be more cost-efficient to share the folders between the different classes. There are lots of colorful options, but I found having more neutral hanging folders made the folders you’re going to put inside easier to notice.

As with the previous system, you still need the three sets of colored file folders. Each of your hanging folders represents a student number, so the one in the front of your bin is student number one, with three different colored number one file folders in it as well.

It’s important to note that in both systems, I didn’t use student names on anything besides the rosters for the people filing to refer to. This is intentional; it means that you don’t have to redo this setup every year that you use it. It also ensures if you have student changes, like losing or gaining a new student, you don’t have to cross out names, as the numbers are the only thing that needs to change.

It can be helpful for the filing of the papers to develop the expectations that students write their numbers on the same lines as their names when they are working on papers so that the people filing don’t have to refer to the rosters nearly as often!

It’s up to you to choose which setup would be a better fit for your classroom. But I will say that having a system that is color-coded and organized by numbers was by far the most efficient way I found to manage the papers of multiple classes that needed to go home. It also allowed me to be organized enough to accept help from other people. If you don’t have an easy-to-understand system, you will forever be responsible for managing that task on your own. This is 100% something that can be managed by other people, so let’s set it up in a way that lets them!

If you missed either of my other departmentalized classroom management posts, go ahead and check them out HERE and HERE!

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