4 Ways to Organize Your Digital Teacher Files

By Leslie Simpson · About 5 minutes to read this article.

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A major shift happened in my teaching organization life since I digitized my teacher files.

Here are 4 different ways to organize your digital teacher files to keep the sanity at find what you want without spending more than few clicks to get it.

Not only did I have a lot of printable resources from my filing cabinets that I digitized but I also like to download items from the internet.

My biggest tip is to organize them just as you would like to organize your classroom: with consistency.

Is there one way to organize them for everyone? Probably not.

That'd be like telling you - that you had to teach exactly like me. {{Some of you would revolt}} You may already be doing one, a few, a combination or all of these!

I've got sample downloads to help get you started for each way of organizing. After you download, unzip the folders and begin to drag and drop your own digital teacher files for instant organization!

Themes

This way is probably the most popular in the primary teaching world. If we think of pulling together lessons and materials to fit next week and we have polar bears on the brain, we'd want to go looking for polar bears in our files.

How to Organize by Theme

Create a main "themes" folder > a folder for each theme > a folder for each of your main subjects or parts of your day.

Download Sample Theme Folder Organization

Time

This method works when you know the order in which you like to cover things and falls more in line with the calendar than just with themes or topics. You know that you'd like to cover the concept of opinion writing after you master some non-fiction writing since you can build off of using the concept of facts.

How to Organize By Time

Decide how you want to break up your school year - quarters, months, trimesters, report cards, etc.

Create a main folder for each of those time periods. Within each time period, decide whether you want to break it down further by time or by theme. If you break it down by theme, then simply follow the folder setup above.

Download Sample Time Folder Organization

Standards

If you find yourself thinking, "That'd be a great activity to practice decomposing numbers during math time... or I can't wait to use this once we are really good at adding..."

Then you might find yourself using umbrella topics and then filing items by standard.

How to Organize By Standards

Create yourself master topic folders that hit all of the big parts of your school day. Create folders within each one that hit your main standards throughout the school year.

If one standard has tons of files/resources in it, consider breaking it down further.

Download Sample Standards Folder Organization

Usage

Yet, some people like to consider how they'd use an item in a classroom capacity before filing it away.

If you know that the activity you just found is great for a math concept, but would work best for you to send home as practice or better with an aide {lucky you!} ... or you're already thinking if it's a whole group or small group activity, then you might organize well by usage.

I like to organize items based on topic and usage most often - it's my default train of thought... "how will I use this?" This following image is how I consistently organize my math files. I use both time and usage to organize my files.

It works for me.

How to Organize By Usage

Create yourself master topic folders that hit all of the big parts of your school day. Create folders within each one that hit your main standards throughout the school year. If one standard has tons of digital teacher files/resources in it, consider breaking it down further.

Download Sample Usage Folder Organization

If you didn't start out with any organization, is it a lost cause? Of course not!

Pin this post and then come back with a big sweet tea when you're ready - put on a favorite movie in the background and simply plug-and-play your files into new folders. You'll be done way before the movie get to the credits!

Until then, here's my last thought on this topic for now.

Store it all digitally so you can access it from both home and school without having to email yourself, carry a usb stick, etc. Have everything at your fingertips at home and at school by getting dropbox or something similar.

You'll love having one magic folder that is the same on multiple computers - the second you change something at school, its already changed on your other computer(s) too. I use it to store ev.er.y.thing. that I make and use for school.

If you like what I do here on KindergartenWorks, then be sure to subscribe today. I look forward to sharing ideas with you weekly.

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