Hi,
I have an 11 yr. old son in 6th grade, middle school. He has been in resource for the last 4 years for language arts, and after his IEP meeting we are going to intregrate him into regular language arts class at the new quarter starting next week.
A major problem he has across the board, is his organizational skills are bad! He loses stuff and doesn’t seem to be able to stay with it long enough to turn stuff in and while his teachers are understanding, right now he is failing social studies mainly because of not turning in assignments even when he does them.
If anyone has any suggestions that have worked for them, I would really appreciate hearing about them.
Re: Organizational Help requested!
Another idea, close to Sara’s, is those new expandables with the elastic cord. It has tabs for 5-7 subjects. That way ALL his assignments would go in one place and yet there are separate tabs for each subject. If he’s like my daughter (who “freaks out” at the end of the day, when she has to “get it all together” and catch the bus at the end of the day), he could always just put it all inside the front pocket and then let you help him organize it when he gets home for the next day. The tabs could be in alphabetical order. Right now (elementary) she is just using (sometimes - it’s not a habit yet) a folder with home on one side and schoolwork on the other. I want to gradually get her ready for the bigger binder, probably 5th grade, so she’ll be ready for middle school.
I have a friend who has a dyslexic HSer who is THE most organized student I’ve ever seen. However, she homeschooled him and she said they spent the better part of one whole year, saying red folder, math, green folder English.
NOT that I’m advocating homeschooling, but just showing you that it can be accomplished. (Unfortunately, I’m still in the trenches working on it…!)
Re: Organizational Help requested!
Recently my students and I completed a learning style checklist and found out most of us were truly disorganized. I already new I was. I had to work to aquire the few organization skills I have. Since color helps me remember things I tend to color code folders. At the middle school where I teacher students are given a planner where assignments are written in each day. Parents sign the assignment planner each night and it is returned the next day. This helps are students who have difficulty turning in homework without making them stand out too much because all students have planners. We also have the Content Mastery Teacher meet with students who need extra help pulling things together.
Please praise your son for even the smallest amount of organization because he will have to work at it.
J Ekern
GMS Dept Head
and Miss Messy Desk
I find at my school the many binders and folders students are given can work against being organized. For students with organizational issues such as you’re describing, I recommend they carry one small thin binder that is a different color from all their other many binders. Call it the Homework Binder and all homework goes in that binder on the front end and on the back end. That way a student does not have to think or look for their homework. It’s always in the homework binder.
I’d also suggest that every night someone go through his backpack and binders with him. Disorganized people often feel overwhelmed. They don’t know where to begin to get organized. They need someone to help them. They need someone to sit down with them and together unwrinkle the papers, ask ‘where would this go?” and together work through the daily pile that’s accumulated in the bottom of the backpack and shoved in the front of binders. If someone does that with him for a while, he can gradually begin to learn the skill of how to stay organized. He can see light at the end of the tunnel and keep working toward the light on his own.