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Fellowship Paper
Organizational Tools for Academic Success
By Catherine Murray South Boston Harbor Academy Charter School
Massachusetts Charter School Association 2003
Introduction: Supporting Students To assimilate new information, students of all ages and abilities need conceptual systems of organization. Moreover, as students mature and the content material grows more sophisticated, students need training in the use of organizational tools. Every classroom experience, from kindergarten to high school, should include explicit instruction and support in creating and maintaining classroom calendars, personal agendas, binders for each subject, and consistent systems of organization. Every classroom environment should be constructed in such a way that habits and values of organization are reinforced. Organizing knowledge can help learners remain flexible, more adept at problem solving, and able to retrieve relevant content (National Research Council 2000, 32). In his book, Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner argues that all students pass through stages of cognitive development and that these stages should inform our practice as educators. Specifically, he suggests that adolescents need instruction in “notation systems” that are “essential to our society.” These notation systems give learners and thinkers the ability to make sense of the information to which they are exposed. Students are then able to sort out and contextualize the vast amounts of information implicit in an enriched classroom environment. Gardner argues that the role of instruction, in relation to the “manifestation of intelligence,” changes as students grow up. Younger students, he feels, should be exposed to great amounts of stimulus and encouraged to focus on things that interest them. As students mature, educators should explicitly support and instruct them to develop methods and systems for deciphering and documenting information (Gardner 1993, 30). In the book, How People Learn, the authors, from the Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning, suggest that effective teachers are constantly attempting to learn about their students’ thinking and understanding. Teachers then use that information to give students guidance on how to move forward in their efforts (National Research Council 2000, 140). As we as teachers observe our students organizational habits, as we listen to what students say about them, it becomes clear that we must make instruction in the development of organizational tools a significant part of their larger practice; we must weave lessons on organization into the fabric of every academic class. The importance of being organized may seem obvious to adults, but these skills must be learned; they are not inherent. It is not enough for classroom teachers to casually remark about the chaotic state of a child's book bag, or the remarkable absence of another's binder. When we write a homework assignment on the board each day, do students have a system for recording it? Do they see the homework as one part of a bigger intellectual experience? Can they think about the week the way organized adults do, as a complex web of tasks and activities that should fit together in an efficient and rewarding way? The Project for School Improvement in Maryland, through its Project BETTER, Building Effective Teaching Through Educational Research, has found that in classrooms where content is complex and dependence on the text is high, graphic representation strategies and organizational tools have a very positive impact. Teachers who teach students to structure and process information through the use of graphic representation strategies promote learning because graphic representation of material facilitates comprehension and recall. Studies consistently show that the more organized the material, and the more clearly its organization is perceived by the learner, the greater the learning. (Van Patten 1986, 2) South Boston Harbor Academy: A College Preparatory Environment Notational systems, organizational strategies, and tools for structuring, organizing and ultimately mastering large amounts of complex and challenging information are especially important in a college preparatory environment. South Boston Harbor Academy is a small (350 students) 5th to 12th grade public charter school “committed to the mission of preparing every child to succeed in college” (SBHA 2001-2002, 4). In addition, we strive to “instill in students a desire to pursue independent academic inquiry as well as a lifelong understanding of the importance of education” (SBHA 2001-2002, 12). If there is one current that runs through our curriculum, it is that students must master a core set of basic academic skills, before they can move on to master higher-level, abstract material (SBHA, 2001-2002, 4,12). At SBHA we require our students to take five 55-minute, rigorous, college-preparatory classes each day of an extended school year. In schools such as ours, and especially at the high school level, students are expected to process high degrees of complicated information each night, and they are expected to use this knowledge to engage in challenging activities and conversations each day. To succeed on exams, long-term projects, and analytical papers, students need to master skills and content as well as demonstrate higher order comprehension. With such high expectations, teachers must include explicit classroom instruction that enables students to develop concrete systems for navigating academic material. Over the past two years, to help our students succeed in our academically rigorous school, our 9th grade math and science departments have established a comprehensive system for teaching sequential organization skills. The strategies are supported by research; they drive my practice as a 9th and 10th grade math and science teacher. These strategies are highly transferable insofar as they do not require expensive science lab equipment or grant money. In fact, there are few tangible obstacles to the implementation of these practices. Implementation simply demands time, consistency, and deliberate attention to skill development and habits, work that must be made a part of the classroom and the lesson every day. At the end of the spring 2003 term, I gave all my 9th grade students (21 of them, the class of 2006) a survey (see Appendix A) on their organizational habits. My intention was to gather anecdotal and numerical data to support my thesis, that organizational tools are important to academic success. I will refer to this survey throughout this paper. It revealed startling information regarding students’ organizational habits at home and in the classroom. For example, only 22% of students reported that they keep their book bags organized, and only 5% reported keeping their rooms and schoolwork areas neat and tidy. One student wrote, “I do my homework on top of my mini-fridge in my room... I have some shelves and a computer. The shelves are messy with movies, out of school books, and other random things. My computer desk has my computer on top of it along with disks and the disk shelves and my school books are on the bottom. My papers stay on top of the computer. It usually works but I am always forgetting things. ” This student’s description is not unusual. What’s more, students seem relatively unaware of their own weaknesses. They arrive at high school needing support in their efforts to organize their materials. Managing Time: Agendas and Calendars At the beginning of each school year, every student in our school is provided with an agenda, a personal time-management tool. These books are published professionally, decorated with the school name and logo, and in addition to an academic year calendar, where students record homework assignments and key events, agendas contain literary references, scientific conversion charts, and commonly misspelled words. Agendas are referenced every day in every class. Each student in our school, at every grade level, is required to have an agenda with them, and they are expected to use it. Through using them, students learn to appreciate the benefits of planning ahead and time management. The agenda has become an integral part of our school culture. There is time set aside at the beginning of each class for recording homework. Some teachers, at the end of class, use the agenda to conclude the lesson and plan for the next day. While the tone surrounding the agenda is generally a positive one, there are disciplinary consequences for being without one’s agenda. In addition to classroom reinforcement, the habit of using an agenda is also integrated into advisory (a small group that meets at the beginning and end of each day, with an advisor who provides academic, emotional, and psychological support to the students in their charge). In most advisories, one student has the job of writing the day’s homework on the board. This provides students with another opportunity to record important information in the agenda (see Appendix B for a full list of jobs in advisory). The process of educating students to consistently use an agenda begins when students arrive at our door in the fifth grade and continues until graduation. Fifth and sixth graders are walked through the process of maintaining an agenda, and in the younger grades, a completed date-book is a requirement for leaving at the end of the day. High school students volunteer in the 5th grade classrooms as "signers" and check off the agendas of their younger colleagues. By the time students arrive at ninth grade, there is no real explanation provided; students at this level understand that agendas are part of every lesson. Because we feel all students benefit from using agendas, a comprehensive approach to agenda use has been in place at SBHA since the school was founded in 1998. In addition, calendars are well utilized at SBHA. A school-wide calendar is posted in the teachers’ room and in the hall. It includes test dates, major projects and papers. These larger calendars are used in conversations regarding project planning, deadlines, trips, unit overviews, and exam review. In my classroom, I post weekly and monthly calendars. These calendars include weekly activities, topics, and assignments, and are posted where students cannot help but observe them. I refer to the calendars every day to orient students sequentially in terms of what they have done, what they are doing, and what they are going to do in the future. Moreover, in the survey I gave my 9th grade students (2003), over 68% of the students in my class reported that they independently use the weekly and monthly calendars. Sequential organization tools and systems support all students, but especially those who would otherwise be unable to manage their time and the information for which they are ultimately responsible. In the survey I gave my ninth graders (2003), one student wrote, Without the help from the calendars and agendas, I would have forgotten lots of events that occur throughout the school year. Looking at the agendas and calendars was a constant reminder of what I was expected to pass in. This made me manage my time and make sure I had time to play my sports but also pass in an essay for tomorrow. While a student’s need for concrete time management tools like agendas and calendars may seem obvious, there are real obstacles to implementing their use. In high schools, teachers are challenged by a lack of time, their feeling that they must stick to the subject and cover the material, and divided opinions (among teachers) about just how much instructional support older high school students should have with organization. It’s important to remember that the skills involved in maintaining a personal agenda and a classroom calendar are developed much like other skills, slowly and through repetition and reinforcement. Research conducted by the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario stresses the importance of making time in every lesson to support students in this way. The classroom should include items such as a daily schedule and calendars. Most classrooms have these but teachers should be supported for taking the time to teach routines, organization and teaching children to read a sequence of the day and of a month. (Early Intervention n.d., 1) Organizing Materials: Binders Just as high school students need support in their efforts at time management, they also require guidance in spatial and sequential organization and the management of curricular material. One of the biggest obstacles for young high school students at schools like SBHA is the pure volume of facts and ideas to which students are exposed and with which they are expected to become familiar. Students often complain that despite their attention in class and effort with homework, the material remains a mountain of content-based details, forgotten as quickly as it is learned. The challenge of managing material is common in college-preparatory environments. Without centralized and highly structured organizational tools, this challenge will only grow throughout our students' educational careers. At SBHA, students at all grade levels utilize binders to organize their materials. Binders, organized in a specific and consistent manner, help students sort their material and arrange it so it is accessible to them. The Talking Page Literacy Organization, a non profit group working for the Sonoma County Department of Education, argues that sorting of information is one of the twelve principles for "Brain Based Learning" and that only through putting information into a bigger context, will students achieve real growth as learners. The search for meaning occurs through "patterning." Patterning refers to the organization and categorization of information. When the brain's natural capacity to integrate information is evoked in teaching, vast amounts of seemingly unrelated or random information and activities can be presented and assimilated. The brain tries to make sense of the information by reducing it to familiar patterns. (Twelve Principles n.d., 2) At the beginning of the year in each academic class, students at SBHA are explicitly guided through creating a binder. Our binders are three-ring notebooks, approximately 1 1/2 inches wide. They have four sections: Do Nows, Classwork and Homework, Notes, and Tests and Quizzes. Each section is divided with a tab. When work on a given chapter is completed, students empty their binders, but for notes, tests, and quizzes. Students keep notes for the entire school year, and quizzes and tests are removed at mid term. In my 9th grade classes, I review student binders once a week (and in 10th grade, every other week), using a rubric and a numerical assessment (see Appendix C). I do the check while students are taking a weekly quiz, and if there are major problems we make arrangements to meet after school, when we work together to “fix” the binder. To maintain organized binders, my 9th and 10th grade students are given after-school support, multiple daily reminders, color-coded dividers, labels, hole-punched assignments, and readings as well as quarterly opportunities to empty all but the most essential pieces of information. In the classes I teach, when a binder breaks, it is replaced with a new one from the donated supply in the back of the room; when tabs break, they are replaced as well. The binder is the hub on which my 9th and 10th grade classes rotate. The binder is a constant physical reminder as well as a scaffold on which to hang new information as it is presented or encountered. The binder is a powerful tool in which every student can organize the information to which they are exposed and with which they can see patterns in the curriculum as a whole. Data from my survey (2003) of the class of 2006 supports the fact that binders provide structure on which to build ideas and that tools for organization make class more interesting and the ideas explored more meaningful. There was a 0.86 correlation between a student’s binder quiz average and their final grade in the course. Not even homework averages correlated so closely. In a survey response, one student wrote, “I think it [my binder] helps me remember more things because I have it written down. I can always look at it when I need it so it helps.” Another noted, “It keeps you paying attention when you’re organized.” And finally one student commented, “ The binders allowed me to find a way to study.” These students are articulating exactly what the research suggests; a centralized and structured system for organizing one’s materials actually makes learning easier and more rewarding. Binders, like agendas, however, are a time-consuming enterprise. Binders take constant monitoring in an environment where teachers of content classes experience more and more pressure to cover material. In addition, binder support is often perceived as a methodology more appropriate to younger grades. It is ironic that in the upper grades, just as the sheer volume of information and number of commitments and responsibilities begin to burgeon, many secondary education teachers spend less time supporting habits of spatial and sequential organization. Teachers may remark that a child's papers are disorganized, but it is unusual that a classroom is ultimately rooted in the idea that the binder is as important as the pencil. At SBHA we cannot have class without the binder. Sending Clear and Consistent Messages: The Classroom Environment Organization is an important ingredient in academic success, and a classroom designed to support the assimilation and acquisition of information and skills will reflect that intrinsically. Children are always processing. From the tidy presentation of lab materials to the careful accounting for their storage, to decisions about how to post work and announcements--all affect how students learn. Research by the Talking Page Literacy Organization encourages us, while in our classrooms, to: Think about this room. What are the peripheral messages inherent in a room such as this one? What are the messages about how you behave? The peripherals play an important role. Children learn from everything. Everything goes into the brain. (Twelve Principles n.d., 3) Montana Public Schools distribute a Web-based guidebook to new teachers; it’s called New Teacher ASSIST (Advice and Support for Successful Induction and Survival in Teaching). In it the physical environment of the classroom is identified as one of the most important things to consider when planning effective lessons (Classroom Organization n.d., 1). In addition, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, offers an article, “Classroom Management: A Primary Perspective,” in which the author, Marlene Henriques, suggests that a carefully planned environment can have an effect on behavior as well (n.d.). What these authors and I are putting forward is the idea that an unorganized room with chaotic displays, unclear presentation materials, or outdated student work on the walls will actually impede a student's progress. To help students assimilate new and challenging information and to facilitate higher order thinking, all teachers at SBHA utilize the Blackboard Configuration Model (developed by Lorraine Monroe, see www.lorrainemonroe.com). Essentially, when a teacher utilizes the model, he or she writes a set of things on the board before students enter the room; this material is organized into “Do Now,” which is a questions that should either follow up on the prior day’s lesson or introduce new material. There is a “Focus” section in which the teacher describes the main ideas or goals of the lesson, a “Homework” section, and an “Agenda” section, where the activities in which the student will engage in (during that day’s class) are described. Students are expected to copy the Focus, review the Agenda, and respond to the Do Now as soon as they sit down; all work is recorded in the student’s binder. A student who is using the binder will thus have access to information that keeps him or her informed of what was studied the day before and how it links to what is being done on that day. Teachers at SBHA receive training in the use of the Blackboard Configuration Model and implement it consistently. In my 9th and 10th grade classes a number of elements, aimed at helping students organize and determine patterns, are incorporated into the classroom environment. Lab materials are color-coded, and daily group work folders include a rubric, and a daily comment, and a score. Students are required to provide their papers with consistent headings, which give the learner information about the assignment and the date it was completed. These tools are not intended to stifle students’ creativity but rather afford the structure on which they can build an exciting learning experience. Conclusion: Concrete Strategies Bring Results In my survey of 9th graders (2003) one student in my class reported, “In Math and Science we are pushed more to get done what we have to get done... We work harder and the expectations are clear. I know what we have to do and I usually get it done.” Another wrote, “The expectations are clear... everything has become like a routine... its like you can guess what you will do in class before it starts!” Finally, “It was easier to know what was expected because Ms. Murray was always reminding us constantly what we had to be thinking about or about what would be happening over the next few days.” These students are responding to things I said as well as to the messages I communicated through classroom organization, such as: requiring consistent page-heading formats, binder checks, calendar check-ins, displaying an SBHA news board, and other activities that foster the development of organization skills. Virtually all teachers believe in using calendars, agendas, binders, and offering an organized classroom environment. These practices and strategies spring from the idea that each conversation and each activity is a part of a larger context, one that requires careful time management and sequential perception. But students must be monitored closely and supported explicitly in their efforts to understand calendars, keep a binder and agenda, and use them meaningfully. The classroom itself must be designed to further assist young people in thinking about their academic experience as something for which materials are important. Each element matters. In the survey I gave to all 9th grade students (2003), over 80% reported using the official page heading format “often” or “very often.” This habit may seem trivial or unrelated to higher order thinking. It may seem like a tedious and time-consuming exercise. The truth is that each small detail compounds to contribute to an effective practice. The page heading format, consistent blackboard configurations, binder and agenda checks, and calendar use weave together to make a classroom where the students know what is expected and when. They help students have greater access to their own notes and materials, making lectures and conversations ultimately more efficient and interesting, and they help students plan and manage their time independently. Organizational tools help students approach tasks with confidence, and they help students develop the skills necessary for taking on new intellectual challenges. These skills and habits follow our students as they take on new intellectual challenges and grow into competent adults.
About the Author Catherine Murray is Co-chair of the Math Department at South Boston Harbor Academy Charter School. Prior to working at SBHA, Ms. Murray taught math and science at Landmark High School in New York City. She is a graduate of Columbia Teachers College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Contact Information South Boston Harbor Academy Charter School 7 Elkins Street South Boston, MA 02127 617-269-7557 (ext 255) kmurray@sbha.org
Appendix A: Organization Survey Name________________________________ Date_____________________________ The survey below is designed to help with a paper about organization tools in high school. Please answer the questions as honestly and carefully as you can. 1. Rank yourself on a scale of 1-5 in terms of how often you do the indicated task.
2. Rank the statements on a scale of 1-5 based on how true they are.
3. Answer the questions as completely and honestly as you possibly can. Do you have a space at home where you do your homework? Do you share that space with others? Do you have cabinets or a desk? Where do you keep your papers? What is it like?
Do you think the academic expectations in the math and science classes have been clear? How about the other classes? How do they compare? Do you feel like you know what is expected of you from week to week? What are some specific things that made it easier for you to know what you would need to do to succeed?
Do you think that organizing your materials regularly and using your agenda and the calendars in the room actually helped you remember more things longer? Why or why not?
Make a list of all of the things that you studied in math this year and then all of the things you studied in science. Take your time and be as complete as possible.
Thank you for your time and effort on this questionnaire.
Appendix B: Advisory Clean-up Job Descriptions Each advisory member is responsible for helping to keep the advisory room respectably clean and organized. The schedule will rotate every marking period. All students will have the chance to take on all the different tasks except for the “5th grade helper” position, which is a permanent assignment. If any member of the class is absent, their responsibilities fall to the “Facilitator” and if that student is absent, it falls to the “Gardener" person. The entire class will be dismissed only when all of the jobs are completed.
Appendix C: Notebook Check-off
Name____________________________ Date_______________________
References Classroom Organization. N.d. New Teacher ASSIST. Retrieved 26 August 2003, from the Montana Public Schools Web site: www.mea-mft.org/assist/classroom_org.html. Early Intervention Screen Tool for K-1 Educators. Retrieved 31 July 2003, from Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario Web site: https://www.earlyintervention.ca/english/success.html Gardner, Howard. 1993. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. New York: Harper Collins. Henriques, Marlene. n.d. Classroom Management: A Primary Perspective. Retrieved 26 August 2003, from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Web site: www.ascd.org/cms/index.cfm?TheViewID=1368. National Research Council. 2000. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. South Boston Harbor Academy Annual Report (SBHA). 2001-2002. South Boston Harbor Academy, Boston, MA. Duplicated. The Twelve Principles for Brain-Based Learning. Retrieved 31 July 2003, from The Talking Page Literacy Organization Web site: http://www.talkingpage.org/artic011.html. Van Patten, and C. Chao. 1986. What Have We Learned About Good Instruction? School Improvement in Maryland. Retrieved 31 July 2003, from the Maryland Department of Education Web site: http://www.mdk12.org/instruction/success_
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