Being Organized: Binders

The Primary Peach is hosting quick tips of being organized, so I wanted
 to share a couple of pictures with you.

I love using binders in the classroom BUT only when everything stays inside them.  A lot of sheet protectors later, and things are in my happy place.  I really only use them as a flip book, I don't open up the tabs, just flip to whatever idea or answer key I need (mainly because I absolutely hate filing).  

  The other day I updated the covers of these 3 - Novel Book Activities, Math Morning Ideas, and my Spelling Notebook.  The colored polkadot is actually a pack of card stock that I picked up on sale at Michaels, and I cut/glued one of the cover frames from Lovin Lit on top.  Cardstock helps me save my ink.  

See - tons of sheet protectors. This is my next year's Spelling binder.  I am using LadyBug's Teacher Files program, and have tucked the mini word wall cards inside the specific sheet protector to keep everything together.

I'm sure you have used sheet protectors and binders before, but maybe you haven't thought to store your word cards inside them as well.  Hope this helps!  

Monday Made It: Week 6

Week 6 already?! Once again I'm linking up with Tara to share what I've been up to.  

This past week we went to sell our old car (since we don't need 3 cars at the moment), and couldn't easily find the title.  It was time to go through 12 years of files and get rid of tons of paperwork.  10 file drawers later, they are all now color coded and organized by topic (health, employment, bills, banks, auto, education/college, home, insurance, etc).  My husband just laughed when I broke out the neon labels, new file folders, freezer ziploc bags (for all those old statements to save), and banker boxes.  We filled up 3 large laundry baskets of stuff to toss, another 2 big boxes of stuff to shred, and have gone down to the basics.  Big project DONE!

BINDER UPDATES

I have a lot of reading graphic organizers that I have purchased and created.  I took one of my old 3 inch binders and put a copy of each of them inside, organized by skill.  If possible I printed them 2 per page (to save copies) before putting them in sheet protectors, and then added the sticky tabs to the edges so it's easy to flip and copy. 

This next one is an old made it from last year - I have another huge binder that I have dividers labeled with student numbers.  I kept student info, conference sheets, goal sheets, student notes, etc. in each area.  I went through it, pulled out the old stuff, and got it ready to fill with the new batch of kids.  I have 32 kids, so the extra back dividers are extra conferring, fluency, etc. pages.  

  

I'm really into word walls.  I love the visual reminders, and want my boys to start memorizing scripture too.  I have tons of these frames, but I'm not in a hurry to fill them all up.  I took out the inside paper, added a beige card stock fit to the frame, and wrote out difference scriptures.  Then I hot glued black ribbon on the back and they are ready to hang upstairs.

  

This summer it's been hard to be motivated to work on school stuff.  My husband says it's good that I'm relaxing, have been reading tons of books, but I'm starting to have panic attacks about not getting everything done in time.  This week I did make up my new HW folders.  Before school got out, I had my helper girls add 4 sheet protectors to each plastic folder.  The first protector is still empty (I'm going to have them do a goal thing in it that first week of school), but I filled up the other pages.

Page 2 has a front/back CA Common Core Standards Sheets.  I want the kids to cross off when they have mastered the different standards.  These are from edventuring.weebly.com - I found them on TPT, but can't find them since I downloaded off my wish list.  

Page 3 has a cursive alphabet on the front, and Teaching in Room 6's HW sheet on the back.  

Page 4 has our Rowley Multiplication Sheet (mixed facts) on the front, and division is on the back for home fact practice.  

Okay - I'm off to play more of the game - Let's Rearrange the Furniture!  New couches are coming tonight, so we had to move our old couches around, which meant moving a desk upstairs, which meant moving the storage thing out of my son's room to the hallway closet, which means moving the bookshelf out of the closet, and setting up a new desk area downstairs for 2 boys to use.... It never stops!

Have a great day!

Revisiting my Teacher Binder

Hi all,

Was going through all the old posts to see what has gathered a lot of looks, and this one kept popping up - My Teacher Binder from last summer.  

So how did it all work out over this past school year?  Well, honestly I really missed my spiral bound lesson plan book.  My gigantic binder was really too big to bring back and forth from school to home every day.  I really do bring my lesson plan book home every single night in the off chance that one of my boys get ill and I have to write up sub plans in the middle of the night.  It always happens at the worst possible moment, and then I'm trying to remember page numbers by memory - and we all know that doesn't work!    

So what happened was that I had my huge binder that I kept on my desk and I referred to for all the other areas, but the month that I was in went into a 1 inch binder that I brought to and from school.  I also pulled out the trimester's worth of my grade book and put it inside the little binder.  I'm sure it wasn't a big deal, but it kind of bugged me not having my entire year's lessons all together all the time, so for this next year I bought this with Scholastic's Bonus Points.  Here it is over at Amazon if you want to see inside.

It comes with a CD of different templates to use.  This next year I will still have those different sections in my big binder, but I'm not going to even worry about my lesson plans or grade book being in it.  :)  Happy Teacher!  

Hope you have a great day!