Hi!

After going to middleschool for three years and losing all my notes and worksheets, I decided it was time for a change. Because my "system" (if that even existed) clearly didn't work. When revising I could never find my notes and I would need to bring a worksheet to go over the answers I would most of the time have to come up with some kind of weird excuse as to why I didn't have it (my mum even wrote a note once to a teacher saying that my cat had peed on my worksheet - yep, it was that bad). So during the summer holiday between grade 9 & grade 10, I watched every YouTube video that I could possibly find on the Internet about how to organise my schoolwork but none of them seemed to fit me. So I used a little bit of the things I had learned from those YouTube videos and I used a little bit of my own imagination to come up with a system that actually worked really well for me. Curious as to what this system is? Continue reading...


One of the things that I find very helpful to do is making my notes clearer. So I adopted a new note-taking layout. I decided that it was about time for me to start writing the data on top of my paper and that it would look nice and be more organised if all my notes looked the same. So I looked on Pinterest for note-taking ideas and I changed that structure a little bit so that I now use the following lay-out for all my in-class notes:

*Ignore the ink-leaks; it was pouring outside ;)*

The next thing I found important was saving my notes properly. But because I didn't want to bring my ordner to school everyday I decided that I would rather buy spiral notebooks (one graph-paper, one lined-paper) so that I could bring that to school and then at the end of the week or at the end of the unit I could rip the pages out of my notebook and put them in my ordner. I found the latter (ripping them out at the end of the unit) worked best for me because that allowed me to look back at my notes during the rest of the unit and then the next unit when I didn't need them, I didn't have to go through all those pages to find my notes on the new unit.


However, I found that I also needed to organise my ordner. Therefore, I decided to use dividers in my ordner and on top of that I use "Unit pages", which is basically just a white A4-sheet with the name of the unit on it. All my notes for that unit go behind that sheet.
Last year I used normal dividers that I bought at the store but because I'm taking 7 subjects and overhere they don't sell packages with just 7 dividers tabs, I decided to make them myself. :)
Also, the little rectangle-piece of patterned paper is an expandable folder that I made that is fitted for a4-sheets of paper in which I can put papers that aren't related to specific subjects; such as notes & letters that I need to take home.



So then, there was only one question left: What would I do with all my worksheets and tests that I got back? And what would I do with my summaries?
Last year I used punched pockets that I put in my ordner right behind every divider for every subject in which I would put my worksheets and my explanation sheets. And for my tests and my summaries I had a different ordner in which I used the same system as I used in my ordner for my notes. However, this year I didn't want to bring my ordner every time just to have a few worksheets so I decided to get a handy-dandy divided folder in which I could put my worksheets. And I also decided that a whole new ordner just for tests would be a bit of a waste of ordners and I like having my tests with me to school so that when I need to revise I have them with me. Therefore, I bought a folder that was divided into 12. Unfortunately I couldn't find one with 7 or with 14, so I put the tests for Business & Management and those for Economics together and the same goes for the worksheets.
This folder is much easier to bring to school because it isn't as big and it is perfectly organised: