Getting Organized

I don't know about everyone else, but I usually find myself spending the month of May limping to the finish line. It's so stressful, and I feel like I always just spend the entire month in survival mode, counting down the days until my kiddos are gone for the summer (and then I may just shed a tear when I realize that I will never see some of them again). For some reason, this year was sort of the exception.

Don't get me wrong. There was still some limping involved! This year, though, I spent a lot of time during the last month of school trying to get my students' input on what would help make next year better. I spent a lot of time rethinking some of my procedures and planning how I would make next year better. I don't know where the extra spurt of energy came from, but my creative drive kind of kicked it up a notch, and I can't seem to turn off the flow of ideas for what I want to do differently next year.

One of the biggest areas that I wanted to get organized was my filing cabinets. I will have to share that system another day because I left my camera in my classroom over the summer. It took me an entire day to do, but I went through every paper in both file cabinets and reorganized the whole shebang, What a chore, but it will be so worth it next year! I also made new binder covers for the materials that I am not storing in the file cabinets. You can check them out by clicking the picture below.

I have been rethinking my classroom rewards. Most of them worked really well and were things that my kids were motivated to earn, but I didn't have a good system for how I used these rewards. I wanted to work on that. I made a set of reward coupons for all of these free or really cheap rewards so that I can print them on card stock, laminate them, and hopefully use them all year long instead of reprinting them like I did this year. 

I have a love/hate relationship with Schoolwide Behavior Systems. When we got out for the summer, I think that our schoolwide behavior system was being revamped, so I'm not sure what that will look like next year. That's a little bit frustrating to me since I seem to be in creative overdrive right now and would love to start really planning ahead. In the past, we used "Pioneer Pay" to reward students, and then they could use their Pioneer Pay to purchase other rewards. My new coupon cards will work really well with that system, but I will have to set prices. I've also used ClassDojo points as a means of purchasing rewards. I'll probably have a post with more specifics of our new behavior system when school starts back. You can click on the picture above to snag my reward coupons from my TPT store.

I also wanted to revisit my Class Job board. I can't wait to print and use this cute set of jobs that I made to match the other two resources.

Last year was my school's first year of dabbling in the Leader in Me. We are officially getting training this coming schoolyear, and I'm really excited about learning more. Does your school do the Leader in Me? Has it helped your students? I think I'm most excited to learn more about the Leadership Notebooks because I think that will really help my students to take ownership for their learning. 

**Bundle information: I am offering the materials above as a part of a bundle in my TPT store. The individual products cost $8 altogether, but I am offering the bundle for $6. Here's the best part of this bundle, though: I'm just getting started with the new chevron theme, and I will be adding to this bundle as I continue to plan how my classroom will be organized for the coming year. If you snag the bundle now, you will get these 3 products PLUS any other products that are added later for just the $6 price. As new products are added, the purchase price for the bundle will increase, so the sooner you buy, the more you will save. Click on the picture below to see the bundle in my TPT store.

Solving Problem Solving Problems

Or here's hoping, at least.

Are your kids like mine? I feel like my kids see a word problem, pick out the two numbers, and add them just because reading the problem is soooo muuuuuch liiiiike wooooork. I was trying to come up with a way to help my students tackle word problems that they would be able to carry over to use with any kind of word problem they encounter.

I already have a problem solving strategy pack in my TpT store, but I wanted something that was more versatile and, honestly, I wanted to be able to use it with my students who needed some intervention on bringing those critical reading skills into the math block. I feel like so many of my kids genuinely came into this year believing that you read in reading class, and you do math in math class, and the two never overlap. I've made it my mission to disprove their little theory this year. Bwahahaha! (Just picture me reading that in my best mad scientist cackle.)

Anyway, that's where this problem solving pack comes in. It's worked out so well that you can expect me to make them for every topic.

This set includes two versions of a graphic organizer that my students are using to help them break down word problems.

 

One version of the graphic organizer includes a blank space at the top for the word problem strip to be glued to the sheet. The other doesn't. I am currently using the second version with my students. We started out with the first one last week, and they glued their problems onto the sheet, and then we walked through the steps together in a whole group minilesson. At this point, I have given each student a copy of the second version, which they are keeping in a sheet protector with a vis-a-vis marker in their math binders. The problem of the day is going on the board so that we can go over it together after they have worked the problem. This has become my new way of doing our Problem of the Day/Math Review, and so far, it's working really well.

I've actually gone a step beyond this set with my class. For each problem, I am giving my students time to solve the problem for the day, and then I am posting 4 possible answers and having them use their activotes to choose the correct answer. Before doing this, I had several students who were not solving the problems before choosing an answer, so this has actually helped with that problem as well.

Once I feel confident that all of my students understand the process well enough to use it with any word problem, this activity may go into one of our math centers or I may continue using it the same way. I'll decide that when we get there.

The word problems are on "copy friendly" sheets, allowing you to pick a page and run just a few copies for your whole class. I'm always looking for a way to save on copies!

There are 25 pages of word problems for this topic. The problems are a randomly mixed review, so the multiplication and division problems are mixed throughout the packet. 

A few possible uses for this set might be:

• Intervention groups
• Whole group problem solving lesson
• Homework assignments 
• Math center
• Problem of the Day
• Substitute plans

I'm getting ready to start working on my next set of word problems, and since we're going into review mode (read: testing panic mode) I feel like I need it all and need it now. If you could request one topic for a review set like this, what topic would you pick? Let me know in the comments!

I think mine would be adding and subtracting fractions.

Snow Day!

After being out all last week for weather, it's another snow day in Tennessee!

Admittedly, this one wasn't necessary, IMO. Or maybe it's just that I'm like a lot of other teachers and beginning to panic about all that I have to teach my kids in this short time that we have left together. There's so much content that we have left to cover, of course, but there's a lot more than that this year. This group of students has challenged me in a way I've never faced before. I love them, of course, but have you ever just had one of those years where you just knew your kids needed so much more than academics, and there just isn't enough time to meet all of the needs that you see. That's been the story of this year.

I started the year with my colleagues' sympathy and disbelief that all of these personalities had been put into the same room. I cringed when I heard some of the comments because I knew these kids better than that: I knew their hearts, and I saw so much promise. As the year has gone on, I've seen some of them make tremendous progress in ways that no state test will measure, whether that progress is academic, behavioral, or emotional. I'm proud of my kiddos, and I wish that everyone could see what I see in them.

Moving on, I'm trying to find ways to help my students practice their math skills in a way that is both efficient and interesting. In my school, we have a 45 minute intervention block 4 days a week. I am a math, science, and social studies teacher, but for that 45 minutes, I am also a reading teacher. We weren't given any real guidance on what the students who are not in intervention groups should be doing, other than being told that they could not be covering new material. I decided that the best use of this time is review centers. I'll explain my center organization system and how I keep track for grading purposes another time, but for now, I'd like to share a task card set that I just made for my task card center. These have been a great way for my students to review or practice skills that they need a little bit more work on. This new task card set that are available in my TpT store.

We just started working on this topic and our district pacing guide has us only spending a week on it! What?! I know my students are going to need more practice, so I created this task card set with that in mind. I can't wait to start using it later this week when we FINALLY get to go back!

The set includes 20 question cards, a recording sheet, and an answer key to make it self checking and perfect for center use or other games and activities.

   

Just an FYI about this set: I have chosen to focus on just the order of operations and using parentheses and brackets in this task card set. I am working on another activity for working with variables and am hoping to have that completed over the coming weekend. 

I hope you find this set helpful! I know that my class struggled last year with the short amount of time that we had in our pacing guide for this skill, so I'm hoping that it helps my class this year. How do your students do with the order of operations and learning to use parentheses and why? Are you feeling an unusual amount of pressure to get everything in due to snow days this year?

Google Drive, part 2

Remember when I mentioned using google drive this year to share some of my forms and updates with parents? Well, guess what! I've found another awesome use for it, and I'm super excited about this one!

I set up separate folders on my website for our charts that we make and use in class, so those are now shared to my website. I've also added a "student work" section to the site. I'll use that folder to share examples that we have discussed in class so that my students have those to look back at while they are doing their homework. Below is a screenshot from my iPad where I have a few examples from our recent multiplication lessons. 

I love how easy this was to do! I used the google drive app on my iPad, so it was literally just a few clicks to set everything up. From there, I just had to tell it to go into my photos and then choose the pictures I wanted to upload. It could not have been easier, and now my kids have a reference from home AND they all want their work to be good enough to make it to the website! I can definitely see how this could motivate them to realize that neatness matters. It's a win-win for everybody!

Do you share student work online? How?

Happy Birthday to me!

Maybe I'm a little bit early on that one! Regardless, I'm just popping in from an extremely busy and stressful week to leave a quick note about some things that are going on this month.

1. My birthday is the 22nd of this month, so in celebration, I'm going to have a one-day-only 10% off sale on everything in my TpT store! My task card sets are my best-selling items, and I've got a couple of new sets that MIGHT be going up before then, so be sure to check those out.

2. I'm positively smitten with Jamberry nails. Have you tried them? They're not one of those things that I would have ever seen myself liking, but I'm on day 5 with this set still going strong. Where have these been all my life?! I'm loving all of the cute designs, and can't wait to put on my next set whenever these decide to finally give out. 

Here's the story of nail polish with me:

1. Apply first coat. Let dry.
2. Decide first coat is dry enough for a much-needed second coat. 
3. Apply second coat, but get it all over my skin.
4. Dab skin with polish remover. Mess up 3 still-wet nails in the process.
5. Remove polish from botched nails and repaint those.
6. Notice bubbles in other nails. Remove polish. (Note: at this point, I've generally ended up redoing at least 5 nails.)
7. Decide I'm over it and just repaint, whether they look good or not.
8. Repaint second coat.
9. Declare myself finished and watch TV while they finish drying.
10. Go to bed, thinking my nails are dry.
11. Wake up to nails with imprints from sheet, clothes, and my hair.
12. Chip nail polish on the one remaining perfect nail while hitting snooze button.

These, obviously, were much easier. And I got great results, despite how terrible I am at DIY manicures :-)

This was taken on day 2. I would post a new picture from day 5 (today) but they seriously look EXACTLY the same unless you look at the very tip of my right index finger. It's got just the tiniest bit of a rough edge, but it's not noticeable to anyone else.

So have you tried Jamberry? What do you think?

I'm considering selling them, just to get the discount because I think this may be my new addiction!

Back to school!

Whew! Today was our first day back and I had forgotten how early 6:00 was. Farewell lazy summer mornings. Til we meet again!

I'd like to take just a second and share some ways that I'm using Google Drive this year to help my students and their families. I love google drive, but in the past, my school system has filtered out most of google's handy apps, so this is the first time I've been able to really use it.

One of the things that I'm using google drives for is to share forms on my class website. I share our weekly newsletter, weekly homework calendars, classroom forms, and sometimes extra copies of our homework pages.

One of the things that I'd like to explore this year is how to use google drive to share my students' work. Do you use Google Drive? What are some things that you've used it for?

Conference form

As I'm starting to think about the start of school, I'm revisiting some of my classroom forms that I use with students and their parents. I have forms my students use to request test retakes, "think sheets" for behavior, and of course, several beginning of the year forms to send and receive information from parents. I also LOVE my parent conference planning form that I started using a few years ago.

I remember my parent conferences during my first few years of teaching, and I'd like to think I've come a long way from those days. I remember sitting blankly across from parents, not always completely sure what I wanted to say to them about their child. There were the standard reminders about my homework policies and reporting to them what their child's current grades were in my class, but I never really felt like I had it "together," if you know what I mean.

When I started using this form to plan what I wanted to communicate to each parent, I immediately felt like my conferences became much more intentional and meaningful. It's such a simple thing, but it's one that nobody told me about in college, and as I sat unprepared in that first round or two of conferences, I really wished they had.

I've made a few changes to last year's version of the form, along with adding a couple of other planning/organizing pages that I'll be using this year. Last year I had other teachers walk into 3 of my conferences, so this year I will be using a "conference in progress" sign on the door to keep that from being an issue again. It's nothing fancy, but hopefully it'll be enough to give us some privacy. :-)

I'm also trying something new this year. I always find that some of my conferences run over because of parent concerns that I didn't anticipate. Every year, the other parents who are waiting are so patient, but I always feel bad that their appointments get pushed back. To prevent this (hopefully) this year, I'm going to ask parents to fill out and return a form before the conference so that I can plan accordingly. I'm hoping this cuts down on their wait time.

This packet is available in my TpT store, and it includes the pages shown above, parent letters and reminders, and my sign for the door. You can click on the cover page picture above to go directly to this packet, if you would like. While you're there, don't forget to check out my 1st nine weeks's spiral math review set. These will be a part of my homework for the first 9 weeks, and it feels GREAT to already have that planned!