Back to School Night Organiztion

Hello,

For the last few years I have been blessed with an amazing teaching partner. One of the things that we both have in common is a nervousness when speaking to parents. This makes back to school night very stressful so we have always gone a little overboard in organizing our thoughts for the parents. We started with a PowerPoint presentation that has morphed its way into a very detailed packet that we send home with parents. This allows us to talk as little or as much as we feel comfortable with and still give the parents the information that they need.

We go first grade all the way and align our thoughts with the ABC’s. Using the ABC’s allows us to cover a wide range of material: attendance, curriculum, field trips, volunteers, etc. and have it look really organized at the same time. We do add 2 S's to the alphabet because we really wanted to break Social Studies, Science, and Spelling information apart. We love this format and our parents seem to appreciate all the information that they get to take home and keep on hand. After the ABC’s section we have a page for special notes, a page for our classroom schedules, and a page for the grading scale. The letter for the grading scale was one of several additions to the packet this year. We were able to change our first graders to an OSN grading scale versus an ABC grading scale. I have included images below of our packet below so you can get an idea of what I am talking about.

An advantage to having a packet to hand to parents is they have all the important information in writing. They aren’t just relying on our nervous words during a presentation. This is helpful especially when you add things like not responding to emails on weekends or after a certain in the evening so that you can be with family. Major things like that are in writing so that they aren’t questioning whether they heard you right or because they forget half of what you tell them by the time they drive home because their life can be just as crazy as ours.

Thanks for reading about how my partner and I organize our thoughts for back to school night!

Library Book Bins

The books that were so well loved in my classroom needed to find a home in my new library.  I didn't want the books to get lost on the shelves, and I didn't have money for a book browser.  As my husband and I were talking about building a book browser that fit on the library shelf, I made the decision to bring my classroom book organization into the library.

Two years ago, I bought ice bins from Wal-Mart so I could store my books in my classroom.  I didn't have $4 per bin to spend, so the allure of the under $2 price point was overwhelming.  I seriously drove to three local stores in order to outfit my classroom.  The cashiers would look at me like I was crazy when I walked up with ten ice bins in my arms.

I decided to label the bins and the books in order to keep it organized.  I labeled the fiction bins by the first letter in the author's last name, and the non-fiction bins to the 100 in the Dewey Decimal System.

I then put a label on the front of the book so the students could put the book back in the correct bin.

We went over procedures on how to go "book shopping", and they were ready to go.  While the section was meant for kindergartners, I see all of the kids "shopping" in the bins.  They are easy to look through and the books catch your eye.  Those white ice bins were the best purchase I ever made to organize the classroom.  Four years later, and they are still holding strong.

Happy back to school season!

Organized Materials

My first day of school was YESTERDAY!!  I was so excited that we started on a Wednesday this year!!  My goal this year is to stay super organized, and stay on top of things so they don't pile up!!

I blogged all about my new way I am planning this year here and I have to say it is working super well so far!!

Today I am excited to share with you all about how I am staying organized in my classroom!!  I am soooo excited because I have a teaching partner this year!  She is AMAZING and a total blessing!!

We have worked together a TON this summer to get ready for our school year, so some of the pictures you see are from both of our rooms!

To help keep my personal weekly copies organized I used this rolling cart from Michaels!  I LOVE it!!  I used it last year to hold my math manipulatives, hence the tags on the right side of the drawers. These awesome tags are from the Target Dollar Spot, and they are white board stickers!  I can erase them and reuse this for something else if this doesn't work!!

I am using the bottom drawer to hold all of my copies I need for the next week as we collect them.  We are SUPER blessed because on Wednesdays MY MOM will be coming into my classroom to help us!!  I am using these awesome copy notes from Just A Primary Girl too!  They are amazing, and will save your life!!

To help students stay organized this year we bought bins to match our classroom colors.  All students in my homeroom will also be in the green bins.  Students in my teaching partner's class will also be in the blue bins.  Then we have their workbooks numbered, and their numbers are also in our coordinating colors.  For their workbooks I made name tags that they are decorating before we use packing tape to attach them to the notebooks.

We're doing the same thing with their notebooks for science, social studies and math.  These bins are in my classroom, so they know exactly where they will put their notebooks.  Plus we have the subjects different colors to help them also know which notebooks should go in which bins.

To help with passing out papers we decided to have one central location for us to return papers to both classes.  We numbered each section with our class colors, and just used numbers.  This way we don't have to do it again next year with names.  The top half is for my partner's class, and the bottom half is my class.  The blue bucket on the top is where we will put their work that needs to be filed.

I hope that you have some awesome organization in your room too!  How do you return student work, or keep it organized until it's time to return it?!  I would love to hear what you do!

Make sure to come back all month where you can find out some more awesome organization tricks from the amazing Hello Sunshine bloggers!

The Great File Cabinet Debate

I’m glad that this month on Hello Sunshine is all about organization, because quite frankly…I could use some help.  Organization is not my strong suit, which is kind of funny because in all of my letters that I received for my teaching award this year people commented on how organized I was.  Man do I have them all fooled! 


This year, however, will be different.  My motto this year is simplify and organize.  So on to the great debate….





Over the years I have given both a try.  I was a binder girl for a while, then curriculum changed and I gave the filing cabinet a try again.  This year I am back to the binders.  I started by creating a binder for each curriculum framework in each subject. 
 



I created these binder covers in Power Point using my favorite Melonheadz clip art and some cute backgrounds from I Teach, What’s Your Super Power?  I decided against printing them in color because of the cost and decided to just print each subject on a different color of paper.





I like that everything I need is in the binder or file and both are easy to take home if I need to do some planning from home. 





Now, when it’s time to make copies for the week I can just grab the papers out of the pocket and send them to the copy room.  My hope is that by putting in a little time organizing now and throughout the year it will make the years ahead that much smoother!  That’s my plan anyway! 


 I’d love to hear how you plan on organizing this year.  Are you a binder or file cabinet teacher?  Why?  I’d love to hear your thoughts. Like I said, I’m a little organizationally challenged and I can use all the help I can get!


Blessings,
Jennifer

All About Planning

I report back to work on MONDAY, so I have spent the last few weeks trying to come up with my outline for the year, and some awesome planning sheets.

#teacherconfession I am AWFUL about using a planner!  I LOVE planners, love the way they work, love to decorate them, but I am not good about sitting down and using them.  I have never been good at it, but I am pretty good about sitting in front of my computer.

I started in Vegas talking with my bestie about some awesome apps that she used for math on her iPads.  Her school is 1:1 starting in 3rd grade!!  Then I started outlining a brief sketch of what I wanted my planner to look like as well as some ideas that I knew I needed to start working on.  I love using my flair pens to help me with my planning!

From there I actually started to create what I wanted my weekly planning pages to look like and started working on some plans for the first few days of school!  We start school on a Wednesday this year!!  

I have this big chunk of time on Tuesday when my kids have specials, so I have a big chunk of blank space.  What do you think I should put on my planner in this blank chunk?!

I love typing my lesson plans too because it allows me to share them with you all on Sundays and then I will be able to add products so you can click right to them!!  I can't wait to share my first week of school plans soon!

We are switching back to quarters this school year, which put me in a bit of a pickle when I was trying to plan.  In the past we've had trimester so I spent each trimester focusing on each type of science.  My partner teacher and I were able to come up with what we wanted to do, and where we wanted to plug them in based on the number of weeks in each quarter.

From there we went in and started adding ideas to our plans, once again, just a rough sketch!

Finally, we started working on our long term plans for the school year.  This way we can get a rough idea of when we have breaks, early dismissal days, tests in other subjects, or how quickly or slowly we can move through a subject.  We were able to plan some subjects through the year (handwriting), and some through November.

I know that these are ROUGH ideas, and will depend on our class.  We have built in days for preassessments, so that way we can give the assessment before we begin the lessons.  Then we will have the opportunity to look through our plans and see where we can compact some lesson, or where we need to spend more time.

I hope that you have found some great ideas on how you want to start planning for the future.  I am excited about doing this, because then I won't be freaking out in April trying to figure out how I am going to squeeze in three more units for math, science, religion or any other subject that I "have" to teach!

If you having any questions about planning, please let me know!  I know I am no expert on keeping a plan book, but I am open to sharing what I use and talking about new ways to plan!