Task Card Tutorial Series

I think I have an unhealthy addiction to task cards.  Sound familiar?  Before I even began selling on TPT, I loved everything about them.  I loved that they got my kids out of their seats, I loved that I could reuse them year after year, I loved that I could make them into a game with a little tweak here and there, and I loved that I had an excuse to buy a personal laminator.  (As a side note, blogger doesn't recognize the word "laminator")  This addiction has left me with task cards galore and over the few years that they've  been super popular, I've learned a lot of fun tips for using, organizing, storing and keeping track of them.  Some have come from my brain, others I probably gleaned from Pinterest here and there, and others came from fellow teachers.  I thought I'd share some of what works for me in a little mini-series to kick off the return of the blog!  Huzzah!

Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing a different tip for a total of 7!  Summer is always my "organize" time of year since I don't have to sacrifice sleep to write a lesson plan at 1 am after working on an organization project.  Buuuut, let's be real, I'm up that late anyway.  

#1 This is my favorite way: a loose binder ring!  I can easily remove it when I'm using them in class with my students, but it's a very easy way to keep those pesky cards from running amok when it's attached!  I often will send a set of task cards to the resource teacher with my students so they can work on them, and I have always received my set in the same condition I sent it.  It's pretty self-explanatory; just punch a hole in each corner (you can use a single punch, but those things hurt my hand so I just use the middle punch on a 3-hole punch!) and slip the ring through.  Go!  Find the loose ones lurking in your desk and give it a try!  

#2 Ye old rubber band.  This is definitely not the snazziest way, but it sure gets the job done at the cheapest price.  I do like that I don't have to punch holes in each card, so I'll often turn to my rubber band collection when I'm in a time crunch.  I always have a few girls throughout the week who come to school early and ask for a job to do, and they'll punch the holes for me.  Man, I love upper grades!  A Rubber band really is a great way to store your cards if you don't like the idea of a hole being in each card.

#3 Binder Clips are another way to organize the cards without punching a hole.  I use these for my mini task card sets a lot because they're already so tiny that punching a hole takes up too much surface area for my liking.  Every teacher I know has about 5 million of these things laying around their junk drawer, so it's likely that you have all of the materials you need! :)

#4 A handy-dandy Ziploc Bag is the final way of storing them!  I only have a few sets of task cards in bags because I favor my binder rings.  I like to use Ziploc bags for task cards if they have other little pieces that go with them - perhaps I used some little game pieces for it, etc.  If you do choose to go this route, I highly recommend getting the freezer bags because they will hold up much longer than the regular sandwich bags.

How do you store your sets of task cards?