Organising eight years of teaching materials
Every experienced tutor has already made the resource they are about to make again. A naming and folder scheme that takes an afternoon and pays back every term.
27 August 2026 2 min read
The problem is not that you lack materials. It is that finding last year's sheet takes longer than making a new one, so you make a new one, and next year there will be three versions of it and you will make a fourth.
Name files so the name is the index
Almost all of the benefit comes from one habit: putting the searchable facts in the filename, in a fixed order. Something like g10-algebra-quadratics-worksheet-v2.pdf. Grade, topic, subtopic, type, version. It looks bureaucratic and it means a single search finds every quadratics resource you have ever made, regardless of which folder it ended up in.
Dates in filenames are the common mistake. You do not remember when you made something; you remember what it was about.
Folder by grade and topic, never by year
Year folders feel natural and are the reason nothing is findable: material for the same topic ends up scattered across five of them, and you have to remember when you taught something in order to find it. Grade then topic means each topic accumulates in one place, and next year's version sits next to last year's where you can see both.
Keep the answer key with the sheet
Separated keys are the single most common cause of a resource being remade. If the key is a separate file with a different name in a different folder, the sheet is effectively lost. Same filename, -key suffix, same folder.
Do not reorganise everything
The afternoon spent restructuring eight years of files is an afternoon you will not repeat and a system you will abandon. Apply the scheme to everything you make from today, and to old material only at the moment you next use it. Within two terms the material you actually use is organised, and the rest was never going to be opened anyway.
One copy, reachable from anywhere
Materials on a laptop at home are unavailable in the room where you teach, which is where the decision to remake something gets taken. Whatever storage you use, the requirement is the same: one copy, one place, reachable from a phone.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
What is the most important part of organising materials?
The filename. Putting grade, topic, subtopic, type and version in a fixed order means one search finds every resource on a topic regardless of which folder it ended up in.
Should I organise folders by year?
No. Year folders scatter each topic across several places and force you to remember when you taught something in order to find it. Organise by grade, then topic, so each topic accumulates in one place.
Should I reorganise all my old files?
No. That afternoon does not repeat and the system gets abandoned. Apply the scheme to new material and to old material only when you next open it. Within two terms everything you actually use is organised.
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