If you are planning to assign your students a science fair project, consider going about it the same way you normally would but add the condition of keeping a journal or chart along with their project so students can make daily entries about their progress and changes occurring during their projects. Require students to turn in their science journals along with their projects. This addition to a science fair project teaches students about record keeping, observation and organizational skills because it requires daily reflections and entries in order to complete the project successfully.
Adding dialectical journals to your daily in-class and at-home readings also teaches students organization skills because it requires students to use a composition notebook to keep track of their readings and encourages students to interact with the text. Each page in the composition book should have a line drawn down the center. One side should be labeled text and the other side reaction/comments. Have students copy down an important quote from the reading verbatim. Instruct students to use quotation marks and notate the page number next to the quote. Have students react to the important quote by notating their reactions on the chart. This lesson teaches students how to be more organized during reading and also serves as a visual chart that students can refer back to.
To help students with organization, break down the narrative writing process into small, manageable steps. This requires students to be more organized because you are walking them through the writing process, and it slows down learning so that it is more readily absorbed and understood. Have your students create a checklist that is to be turned in with the completed project. The list should contain steps such as brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing and final draft. Each completed step should also be turned in with the final draft.
Have students create an end-of-the-year portfolio that displays their best work. The work should be organized in a 3-ring binder, have a cover page with their basic information and contain binder tabs that separate and classify the type of work contained in the binder. This is a culmination project that brings all things that students have learned together. Instruct students to write a one-page response discussing why they chose to include certain projects and assignments in this binder while leaving others out.