Free printable · Template 20

Stays home. Comes back. Not left and right.

A take-home folder cover written so a seven-year-old can follow it on her own, in the dark, in the car, without asking anybody.

20Family 4 · Parents

Take-Home Folder

Check it every night · send it back every morning

Your Teacher Our Class
Room ____________

This folder belongs to
Left side
Stays
home
  • Finished work to keep
  • Newsletters and notices
  • Graded papers
  • Anything for the fridge
Empty this side each night.
Right side
Comes
back
  • Homework and reading log
  • Signed forms and slips
  • Library books
  • Notes for me
This side comes back every day.
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Why this one looks like this

Left and right are the wrong words

Most folder covers label the two sides Left and Right, sometimes with a picture of a house and a picture of a school. It reads fine to an adult holding it the right way up.

A seven-year-old is holding it upside down in the back of a car. Left has swapped sides. The house picture means nothing without the caption, and the caption is the part she cannot read yet.

Stays home and Comes back describe what the paper does rather than where it sits. They work in any orientation, they are the words you already say out loud, and a child who can read four words can follow them.

Write the instruction the child gives herself, not the one you would give her.

Two short lists, not one long one

Four things per side is what a child can check against. Ten things is a wall of text she stops reading in October.

The line at the bottom of each side is the actual instruction: empty this side each night, and this side comes back every day. That is the routine, in two sentences.

  • Two panelsStays home, and comes back
  • Four itemsPer side, so a child can actually check
  • Name lineAt the top, big enough to write in
  • ContactOne line at the bottom for how to reach you
  • PrintOne page, black and white, glue or staple to the folder

One practical note

Glue it inside, not outside

A cover glued to the front of a folder is decoration and gets scuffed off by November. Glued inside the front cover, it is where a child looks at the exact moment she is deciding what goes where.

It also survives, because the inside of a folder never meets a backpack zip.

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