Do you use letter-size (8.5 x 11 inch) posters in your classroom? Do you have any sets that you change on a rotating basis? Posters that you change out periodically can be tricky to organize, but I have a poster organization system to share with you. Every Monday, I switch my Quote of the Week Poster on display. Additionally, my High School Common Core Standards Posters may need to be changed daily.
Read on to find out how I prepare, organize, store, and display my small posters.
Print Your Posters in Advance
First, print your posters out before school begins. This is something you can do one summer afternoon while binge watching Netflix. If possible, I advise printing double-sided on cardstock to save paper and ensure durability. (Using this poster organization system, you will not need to laminate.)
Organize Your Posters
Once I have my posters printed out, I organize them in some sort of order. For my quote of the week posters, I prefer to put them in the order that I use them throughout the year. I try to do the same for my standards posters, but sometimes I stick to the order that the standards are already arranged in. This will save me time trying to find the correct standard later.
Store Your Posters
My favorite way to store my letter-size posters is using page protectors bound in a pronged folder. You can find pronged folders in Target and Walmart for about fifty cents during back to school. I find that these folders are the perfect size for storing my quote of the week and standards posters. A half-inch binder would work as well, but you do not need anything larger, unless you have multiple courses and want to store all the standards in one binder. Using page protectors makes it easy to retrieve and return the poster that you need.
Display Your Posters Using Page Protectors
To display the posters, I use page protectors. I tape a page protector to where I like to display my posters. My standards go on my announcement board per course, and my quote of the week posters go in my classroom window that faces the hallway. Using page protectors help to protect the posters from destructive students, and make it easy to slip the posters in and out as needed.
To prep ahead, I like to gather all of the standards posters I need for the week, and keep them all in the page protector on my announcement board. I put each poster away as I use it throughout the week. This saves time because then I am only taking posters out once per week. I collect the used posters in the front pocket of the folder, and return them back to their page protects on Fridays, saving additional time by putting posters away only once per week.
What makes all of this work is that it is a dedicated system. Systems are the ultimate productivity tool. To learn more about how to implement systems in your classroom, download the free Secondary Classroom Systems Checklist.
Looking for more teacher time management tricks? Check out these other teacher time savers!
