Keeping it Organized

Um, 21 days until the first day of school...!!

As I mentioned here, I was in a dilemma as to how I'd be doing my planning this year. My job is a littttttle hectic (more on that later) and I'm planning in various and sundry ways for kiddos all the way from PK-5th.

After some thought on what I actually needed to do (plan for two self-contained classrooms with 5 kids, each in a different grade with vastly different IEP goals, and read lesson plans to help accommodate for 12 other students to so they can be successful in their gen ed settings), I decided that I couldn't justify buying any planner that I couldn't customize on the spot.

I went with a Modern Teacher's Chalk It Up lesson planner- I loved how many options it gave me for different styles of planning, so if I decided in the fall that I didn't like the way things were going I could change it up! My main hang up was the overall cost, but it ended up being fairly budget friendly [see break down below].

There are no office supply stores in my little nugget town, so I was going to take all the printed pages up to school and bind the pages with the binding machine, but then it wouldn't be easy to customize. Duh, Bean. I didn't really want it in a binder because they can get kinda hefty to lug around and don't always lay flat very well. But, when I was perusing our local Dirt Cheap, I saw this guy and knew it would be perfect! I could have probably found one of these Five Star Flex notebooks at out local WalMart, but this one was marked 70% of $8.99 and I am always enticed by a good sale.

A couple mornings ago, I spent about an hour printing all of the pages. It could be a much faster process, but I wanted them printed just so, back to front, blah blah blah #teacherprobs. It ended up looking like this:

each month starts with an "at a glance section"...

...then the full month calendar...

...followed by weekly planning pages (there are about a zillion)

Budget Breakdown:

Five Star Flex: $2.70

A Modern Teacher's Chalk-It Up Lesson Planner (Texasstyle!) from TPT: $8.50

Printing: FREEish (because I already had paper and and my printer full of ink was a graduation gift)

Total Money I Saw Disappear From My Pocket: $11.20

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, and am excited to put it to use in just a few days! This coming week holds a day of new teacher orientation AND my first parent/teacher conference. Woah buddy.

Filing Cabinets: Not Just For...

Hopefully all of my 1.5 readers got something (even if just like one of my rambling sentences stuck with you) out of the NAILED IT series... Still insanely proud of my main girl Al's ability to follow the steps to find some job success!

Back on real life Resource Thursday. My classroom has improved a great amount, thanks to a sweet teacher friend's advice. We hauled like 3 large tables, 2 student desks, 5-10 large chairs, a rolly cart (like the kind one might find in the library...?), and a bunch of other assorted junk tools and furniture into the hallway to join my 4 trash bags of shredded files. (File shredding was my project last week. It was nuts- like purchase-orders-from-before-I-was-even-in-kindergarten nuts... What a joy to sort through.)

Oops. Ok, really back to Resource Thursday. I'm planning on doing this to my two totally not matching file cabinets:

I'd really like to set this up to be an instructional tool. Probably gonna set up a magnet center of some kind with some sorting games, free time building with those excellent magnet things, spelling words with magnetic letters. The possibilities are basically endless.

Also, did I mention that I'm painting...? Hooray! Stay tuned for that progress!

Resource Thursday: Manageable Worksheets

This cool idea was one of my favorite Pinterest finds of the summer. It linked me back to this blog.

Though I have some, my experience with students older than 2nd grade is minimal. This seems like a great idea to provide a visually sectioned off work for any grade. My sweet friend from college commented on the pin, saying, "We did this in my class to help kids with note taking!" Ding ding ding, genius!

I love that this tool can be used throughout a students entire education at any grade level or subject area. You can use it to help students who are distracted and/or overwhelmed by seeing large amounts of work. It can be a tool so students can have a sheet broken into guided practice and independent sections or having a teacher check a section before they move on to working independently.

It is also on that could be visually and easily changed to be easier or harder. Start with skinny strips (less work) and then either make thicker strips (more work) or tape them together. Students can work up to doing more at a time if the work is a consistent number of problems/questions or they folders could be adjusted to each specific assignment.

But y'all, the best part is...

THEY ARE CHEAP TO MAKE. 

Can I get a hallelujah? 

Dry Erase Circles

I have been on vacation for the last couple of weeks, so I haven't purchased any circles yet but I did find a bunch of options for them on Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=sr_rd_mob?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Adry+erase+circles&keywords=dry+erase+circles&ie=UTF8

Resource Thursday: Dry Erase Circles

Happy 4th, y'all! I'm spending some quality time with my family, but I set this little guy up to post while we're floating in the pool and eating BBQ! Hope you're enjoying good food with even better company!

I found this idea on Pinterest, and it linked me back to Kinder Keri's blog.

This idea is straight genius. I try to avoid having lots of extra distractions, and moving white boards can be pretty distracting. Also, if they're mushed on the table, I can see EXACTLY what my nugs are writing (tell me I'm not the only one whose students practice their character drawing and fancy signatures when they're supposed to be involved in guided reading)!

I plan to use them in my small group lessons (which is all of my teaching), but I'm also thinking I could come up with some fun review games where students rotate to solve problems on each circle or something. Or, they could be good defined workspaces for some of my students that need a little extra visual support.

Any ideas about where I can get these circles? I've seen them at Target, but would it be cheaper to find them in bulk online?

Update on my Data Tracking:

I haven't tried this on actual parents/teachers/students, but I did send it to my girl Al to test, and I tested it myself. Loving the way it keeps all my data lined up and organized. I'm definitely gonna be making more Google Forms!