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Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Resource Roundup: Planning and Organizing for the Academic Year

To help you all prepare for your return to school, I've gone through all my posts and selected the ones related planning and organization. All these items are free! Here it goes:




1. 9 Parent Tips to Facilitate Their Middle Schooler's Language in the Home {Handout} 
This would be great to include in your welcome letter to parents, as a handout during open school night, or parent teacher conferences. You can read more about the handout here



2. Testing Sign
This door sign was created to deter staff and students from banging on the door while an evaluation is taking place. You can check out the original post here.



3. Lesson Plan Cover
A cute cover to place in the front of your lesson plan binders. Read the original post here.



4. Pass From Class
I make copies of these editable passes and use them whenever one of my students needs to leave my room (and have forgotten their own agendas that serve as a pass). Many schools have their own template, mine does not and I found that these work well. To read more click here


5. Performance Cards 
These editable performance cards are like mini report cards that I provide to each student after their session. After a “grade” is provided on the speech card, the student presents it to their teacher. The teacher then incorporate it into their grade for the day (usually towards participation). Read about more about how I use performance cards here.




I hope you can find some or all of these items useful to you as embark on the new year. Which items do you think will be useful to you?

Happy New School Year!

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Lesson Plan Cover {Freebie}

In an effort to get myself more organized this year I've decided to use 3 ringed binders to keep track of all the worksheets and activities that I've discovered online. To give the binder some pizzazz, I've created a binder cover sheet. See below for a preview or click the link to download a pdf version.

My latest creation



Sunday, September 30, 2012

Back to School Update

Lovely readers, I apologize for my delays in posting. As with most of you, I'm caught up with adjusting to the beginning of the school year. In upcoming weeks I plan on reviewing a few apps and adding my two cents as it pertains to middle school.  For now I want to share a few updates with you!

As most of you know, I've been placed in a larger room this year. I'm slowly beautifying it and organizing myself. This post will mostly cover my upgrades to the room, but will also cover a recent purchase (read on!) that I am very proud of.

One corner of my spacious room
This year I decided to purchase pocket charts to organize my students folders. I bought two pocket charts, using one for my 7th graders and the other for my 8th (located at the base of the chalkboard in the picture).  Each pocket was labeled by student class. This pocket chart organizational structure makes it much easier for students to find their work compared to the one large bin I has used last year. Feel free to ask about anything going on this corner.

Now on to the other corner!

The other corner of my room. I have a sink!
Notice the pink and blue student behavior charts. I've entered all my female students names on the pink chart and male students on the blue chart. After each session, if a student conducted themselves accordingly (followed directions, participated, demonstrated effort etc.), they receive a sticker for the day. Those who accrue five stickers will have earned a prize. This year, the prize options are Hershey's Chocolate Bars or Twizzlers (for those with chocolate and peanut allergies). I did this last year and it proved to be quite motivating. For those who required a great deal of motivation, I used student performance cards in conjunction with this behavior chart.

My bulletin board before its finishing touches.
After the final touches. Ta-da!

This year I put up a bulletin board in my room and created a post about it a few weeks ago. Since then I've added a few finishing touches on it. As you may (or may not) notice, I've outlined my popcorn with a black marker, as to make it "pop" more, also I stapled all the letters as opposed to securing them with thumbtacks. Lastly, I've added a hyphen in between "Speech" and "Language." What do you think?

Colorful circles cut out of construction paper.
 These Pinterest inspired circles are my recent obsession! After tracing circles of varying colors and sizes I pasted them on top of each other other and stuck them to the front of my desk. I've added them to my widows and doors as well. They add a bit of cheeriness to the room without being too cheesy for my middle school students. 

Love this hot and cold laminator, purchased for just under $20!

The purchase of my hot and cold laminator has really excited me. I'm now able to preserve all the wonderful checklists, activities, cartoons and seasonal images that I find on Pinterest!

Purchased this joke book today for $2.50 at Five Below.

I love finding joke and riddle books, as it is a great way to target higher level thinking with my students. It is a great way to end if your session runs a bit short. I'm very excited about using the one I purchased today.

What and how have you been adjusting to the school year? Stay tuned for my future app reviews.



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