Organizing

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that I'm not the only one that loves color coding. I am currently working on organizing the materials that go with our new phonics program and I just about spent a fortune at Staples buying binders that match the ones containing my Journeys materials. 

Last summer I purchased Journeys Through The Year Kindergarten Edition from Teachers Pay Teachers. It includes binder covers with different colored backgrounds and I was really excited to find binders in those same colors at Staples. They weren't cheap, but I just like the way they look and I think that color coding by different units is helpful.

This year we are using a new phonics program called ECRI which stands for Enhanced Core Reading Instruction. ECRI is not a curriculum itself, it's a set of instructional routines, so our district paid a lot of money to have those instructional routines aligned specifically with Journeys so that we can more explicitly teach letters, sounds, phonics, and word blending using the scope and sequence from Journeys. The ECRI materials are broken down into units just like Journeys, so yesterday I went back to Staples to buy more coordinating binders. I used the same binder covers from the Journeys bundle and just wrote ERCI at the top of each. 

Now, for each Journeys unit, I have 1 binder with all the lesson cards, retelling cards, sight word cards etc., and 1 binder with all of my ECRI materials for that unit. 

I have the organizing itch, so I think I am going to bring both Little Sneaker and Baby Sneaker to my classroom tomorrow so I can start organizing my shelves and my cabinets. I don't know how long we'll last, but I figure it's worth a shot. I have stuffed animals and a little market stand among my classroom stuff, so I am hoping those will keep Little Sneaker occupied for at least an hour. 

How do you use color coding in your classroom?