Organize Your Teaching Resources!

I'm all about making things better for me and more efficient! And let me tell you, I've tried almost everything you can think of when it comes to organizing my curriculum. I just haven't been too good at this...ever!

I've tried file folders... only to have the paper falling out all over the place!

I've tried putting all my resources in binders... only to have so many that I didn't know which one to look through!

I've tried storing everything digitally... but the folders became too overwhelming!

I've tried folders... again! This time in a file cabinet, but I quickly figured out that by standard was not the way to go!

Finally... I came up with a solution that I think is going to work for me! After I created my year-long curriculum/pacing guide, it became clear that I needed something! It's still the binder method, but it's more organized! My first step was to pace out my school year based on my county's curriculum map. When I finished, it looked like this!

I LOVE IT! It's so easy to glance over and see what's coming up. It's also super easy to see exactly what I'm teaching each quarter. If you would like me to upload the template on TpT, please let me know. This idea lead me to my new binder system. So, Quarterly Binders were born!! If you want the cover template, please let me know! You can now download the template in my shop by clicking here.

The first thing I did was go down my pacing guide and create a tab for each skill in reading, LA, and writing. Then, I divided the tabs into 4 different binders.

Then, I went through my go-to resources and pulled out things I *KNOW* I will use and placed them in the correct binder and then tab.

When it's time for planning, I just grab my quarterly binder and find what I want to use. It's sitting right on my table right beside my desk.

It's so easy! Why didn't I think of this like 3 years ago???? What's your favorite way to organize your resources?

Here's an image for pinning!

Planning Tips & Tricks

This week, I will not be sharing my visual plans. Instead, I will be sharing how I organize my planning each week.

I remember back when I first started teaching. I would stay late until 6pm almost every day. Then I would trudge out of the school with a bag too heavy for me to carry. How was I so behind and what happened to all my time at school? When two small children came into the picture, the work at home ceased. However, I was still staying at school later than I wanted to.

Here are a few Tips and Tricks that I have found in the past year that has really helped me out in a big way. It's totally been a life saver for me!

First, this photo happened upon my news feed a year or so ago. It's from Miss DeCarbo who has such great organizational ideas. She wrote and entire post about how she organizes her planning life each week. This is where my inspiration came from!

As soon as the week starts on Monday, I start preparing for the next week. That's the ticket to not staying late day after day or taking things home. 

DO A LITTLE EACH DAY!

I use this time to get together things I use each week. I find the copies I will need for the following week and create my reading log and any other word lists (spelling or vocab). I place all the to to-be copied papers in my To Copy drawer.

• Morning Work
• Reading Logs
• Spelling List
• Vocabulary List

To help my sanity, I have a label I have created to place in my lesson planner each week. The to-do list is for the following week so I can get busy on Monday afternoons!

I use this day to get my resources together based on the skill we will be working on. I may not use ALL of the resources, but I get them together for my planning meeting. I have a planning folder I use put all the resources in.

I use Wednesdays for planning. This is the day I plan with my team. I take my resources out of my folder and write my pre-planning plans in my Day Designer planner {thanks, Ms. Leslie Ann for this idea!}. I then place the copies I'm going to use in my To-Copy drawer.

Thursday is the day where I get it all together. It is also the one day during the week that I plan to work an additional 2 hours past the time I am allowed to leave. I try to only stay late one day a week so I can go home on time every other day! I get all my copies ready for coping (we have someone who does this for us), create all my anchor charts, and plan my focus board wording. 

On Fridays I finalize my plans and write my final plans in my Anchor Teacher Planner that I absolutely LOVE! I also type my newsletter and work on my website for the following week. Once all the copies are done, I place them in my Days of the Week drawers that I pull from during the week.Now I can enjoy my weekend with no planning worries!

Don't forget your favorite pens and markers when planning!

This routine works so well for me and has totally changed the way I plan! Do you have anything that works well for you?

Planning Now for Later

I can't believe that school starts back for me {pre-planning} in just a short amount of time. After next week, this gal will be going at it full-force! One of the mistakes I have made in the past was not planning my quarters out. What in the world was I thinking?!? Last year, I did this well before it was time to go back, and it was such a life saver! Right now I have my year divided by quarter and the standards I am going to teach in each quarter laid out.

This part was actually easy because of our county curriculum map. We have a curriculum map for each grade and subject area. We met our first week out of school and the hard work was pretty much already done for me! Now all I had to do was plan it out by weeks.

So, the first novels I work with are The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg with my two lower classes and Elijah of Buxton for my two upper classes. 

Last year was my first time reading both. If you have never read these books, they are a must! Homer P. Figg is hilarious with great character development. It's about a young boy who is in search of his older brother who was taken unlawfully and forced to enter the Civil War. Elijah is one of my favorite books! It's slow to start but SO worth it in the end. I actually had my students finish a chapter because it was so emotional. There is a real deep meaning to the story so you have to be careful of the students you read it to. It's about a young boy who is in search for something important but learns life lessons along the way. My students LOVED this book, and it's one they wouldn't read on their own.

The last book we will read in 1st quarter is the classic Hatchet. It's obvious that ALL students love this book! Hatchet is a great book to teach all of the story elements as well as figurative language.

Okay... enough book talk! Here's how my quarter is going to look and what skills I'm going to be teaching!

What do you normally teach the first few weeks of school?

A Teacher's Planner: 2014-2015

Oh My!  I have been working on this beauty for a few days now.  It's so much detail that I thought I was NEVER going to finish!  Well, it is here and it is ready for you!  I can't wait to get mine printed and bound together.  I am still debating on whether or not to go with a spiral bound or binder system. I used a binder last year, but this year I am thinking about using both!  I am thinking of binding my lesson plans, standards, and maps in spiral and doing my curriculum type things in a binder.  Although I love my binder, that thing sure does get heavy!

Here's a video preview just for you!

 

 This is a 240+ page file that contains:

Printable File

Editable File for Personalization

6 Cover Designs to Choose From

Birthday Tracker

Daily Schedule

Student Info. Tracker

Technology Information Tracker/Record

Parent Contacts Form

Absent Student Form

Record Keeping Spreadsheet

Grade Book Spreadsheet

Year-At-A-Glance Yearly Planner

Weekly Planning w/ Notes

1st-4th Quarter Planning {all subjects}

2-Page Monthly Calendar with Dates {Aug. - July}

2-Page Weekly Calendar with Dates {Aug. - July}

Weekly To-Do Form {Copy, Plan, Email, Meet, Create} w/ Notes

2-3-4-5-6 Subject Monthly Curriculum Maps

Guided Reading Lesson Plan Template

Guided Math Lesson Plan Template

Various Formats of Lesson Plan Templates

**I will be adding Common Core Standards and Common Core Standard Checklists for grade K-5 in both reading and math in my store in the upcoming weeks.  These will be a design that can be used in your planner, but they will not be part of it.  These will need to be purchased separately. 

So... here she is!

Make sure you go and check it out in my store!

Peek at my Week Linky... for the first time!

Okay, so I've been DYING to link up with Dee Dee for her Peek at my Week Linky.  It was kind of difficult since I use an EC teacher planner (which just isn't me.)  I refused to give up the planner since I spent so much money on it.  Well, I did it!  I put it in my crate this week and decided to do things my way!

First of all, I teach 5th grade which is a lot different from most of the teachers who link up.  But, I just love looking at all the lesson plans and cute things they are doing in their classrooms.  Most of my plans are in words... sorry!  I did try to throw in a couple of pictures to make it interesting.

When looking at my plans you will see that we are doing a lot of things with close reading.  This is something I have just started to focus on, so it's kind of in the developmental stages.  Also, on Monday, my students will be presenting their story board research projects they have been working on the past two weeks.  This is something I have been totally impressed with and will include a post devoted to it as soon as the students finish them completely and present them to the class.  So far,  I am very impressed with how they have turned out.

So... here we go!  You can download the pdf file by clicking any of the files below.  The links to the products are below the files.

This week I used:

Morphology Dictionary by Kristen

These plans were very time consuming, but I feel that I am ready for Monday!  I know exactly what I'm doing, what standards I'm covering, and what materials I will need.

Go ahead and link up with Dee Dee!

Anticipation Guides

Have you ever used anticipation guides in your classroom?  While I was reading Guided Math by Laney Sammons this summer, she discussed a variety of activating/teaching strategies to use with your students.  This was an area that I really wanted to work on this school year.  Looking back over the past few weeks, I believe I have really stepped up my game with activating/teaching/summarizing strategies.  This is partly due to the format I am using for my lesson plans this year.  Each day, I have an area designated for activating/summarizing strategies.

Today, I used an anticipation guide as my activating and summarizing strategy.  If you teach CC, this is something you can use with the 4th grade standard of comparing multi-digit whole numbers.  This is what the guide looked like.

There is an area on the left that we answered with T/F {true/false}.  Basically, I took the majority vote, having the students give thumbs up for true or thumbs down for false.  Then, we came back to this at the end of the lesson.  I actually answered the last two {which I love.. makes you go hmmmm...} during small group today.

This is what the guided looked like at the end of the lesson.  We went back and evaluated our choices from the beginning of the class based on our discussions during small group.  This is also a great way to determine if students got it or didn't during the lesson.

Anticipation guides are also a great way to introduce/use vocabulary.  For example, here I used the word least in the third statement because this is another word to use when discussing smallest numbers.

I also wanted to share these cute dry erase pockets that I just couldn't wait to get my hands on.

Here we were comparing small four-digit numbers using base-ten blocks {our version}.  The top row is for our first number and the second row is for our second number that we are comparing.  Here's how the numbers looked once we illustrated them with base-ten.

We talked about why our thousands cubes were illustrated with a square and a 10.  I was surprised that students realized that thousands and hundreds had the same object, but the thousands had a 10 because it takes 10 hundreds to create a thousand. These two numbers we were comparing also opened a great opportunity to discuss the importance of looking at the greatest place first.  We discussed how the bottom number seemed to be larger than the top because it had 'a lot going on.'  Students were able to explain that the top number was in fact the larger of the two because it has more thousands than the bottom.  I was impressed!

The bottom two numbers here were a great example of why statement #3 is not always true.  Statement #3 of the guided stated that the least/smallest number will be the number with the least amount of digits.  Although this is possible, it is also possible to have the same amount of digits and have one be smaller.  It isn't always the number with the least amount of digits.

Our lesson today was really great, and I loved using the anticipation guided to activate my students, get them thinking and talking, guide my small group, and summarize/reflect on our lesson.  I don't know of many things that can do all that!

Have you ever had success with an anticipation guide?