Creating a Reference Book

At the beginning of each school year, have your child create a "Reference Book" to be used for all important information, memos, announcements, special assignments, Field Trip forms, the yearly calendar, holiday schedules, or other valuable paperwork. Taking the time to construct this book will save time and energy as the year progresses. Be sure to reserve a section for the returned, graded papers. These papers will be a good source of sample problems or other skills to practice. Keep this reference book in a safe place and update it weekly.

Have your child fill out homework sheets completely noting the due dates, resource books, and directions in the upper left-hand corner of the page. This way, the child and the teacher can see if there is agreement about the assignment and the due date and it provides yet another opportunity for teacher and student to clarify expectations and praise a good performance.


Since many ADD children are visual, colored folder for each subject can be useful. Red for math, yellow for Social Studies, and green for Language Arts.

For other children, folders do not work well but paper towel tubing does! On the outside of a paper towel tube write the name of the subject and any other important information. When the bell rings, the child can quickly roll up any papers for that class and slide them into the tube. Oftentimes, the papers stay much neater and the child enjoys the novelty of rolling up schoolwork and stashing it quickly! One towel roll per subject is all you need for the book bag. This system also secures the papers since the unroll to fit the inner dimensions of the tube, thus reducing "lost" papers.