The Color of Neuroticism

If you were to walk into my classroom, the organizational rule of color may or may not be apparent to you. I doubt my students have any clue. I think God gave us color not only for enjoyment, but as an organizational tool. Every color has it's order, just like the letter M is found between L and N in the alphabet. Anywhere else and it's wrong. Color order is just like the number 4 sandwiched in between 3 and 5. It's either right or it's wrong.

Everything in my classroom has to be ROYGBIV, or I get upset. The seating arrangements are grouped by color, and when I am in the front of the classroom, they go around in a circle, just like the color wheel. When I give team points, I always start with the red team and move to orange, then yellow, then green. Next I go to the blue group and the purple group. This is how my brain works. If I start anywhere else I forget who I already gave points to. One time a kid wanted to be in the green group, and he wanted the green group to be on the other side of the room. I told him this was not possible. I didn't explain the whole color wheel thing to him, but I could not have green over there in between blue and purple.

We have a writing process rainbow board, where kids move their name tags along the planning, drafting, revising, editing, conferencing, and publishing stages. When I gave this project to my IA at the beginning of the year, I tried to be very clear about which colors each stage needed to be. Obviously, planning should be red, drafting orange, revising yellow, editing green, conferencing blue, and publishing purple. I didn't explain the color order thing to her either, because I was afraid she'd think I'm neurotic. Instead I just put a sticky note of each stage on the colored poster board I gave her so she'd get it right.

We also have spelling groups and the colored construction paper listing the group name, member names, and spelling pattern for the week go in color wheel order. I always meet with the Discoverers first on Mondays, and their group poster is red. Inspectors' spelling jobs are displayed on yellow paper, Explorers' on orange, etc.

Using color to organize things makes it incredibly clear. I don't know what I'd do if I could only see in black and white.