AuburnChick's Adventures

Oh the joys of pre-planning.

Actually, truth be told, I kind of like getting things organized.

I can be nerdy that way.

On Thursday, I put on my builder’s hat, borrowed some tools from the front office, and got to work…

Please do your best Tim the Toolman impression as you take a look at the hardware I got to play with…

I did a very good job…didn’t have to take anything apart and put it back together.

The end result?

A new bookcase!  I had run out of space, and my books were packed together.  This doesn’t lead to much student interest if a child cannot pull a book off of a bookshelf.  I found it at Target for $25…on sale this week,  Yay!

Yesterday (Friday), I got a lot accomplished.  I wanted to set up a couple of different files for my students.  My experience has been that they take forever to staple things together, and I’m usually ready to pull my hair out by the end.  Plus, I lose valuable teaching time when they take so long to follow instructions.

I find it’s easy to ask students to “Get out your such-and-such color folder,” which is why you’ll notice that my fluency folder (below) is yellow.

Take a look at that progress graph.  Students self-monitor and look for patterns in their fluency rates.  This is what our administrators like to call “Highly Effective” because students are driving their own learning.  It’s good preparation for life after high school.

As tasks like the above get finished, I’m getting closer to the real work…lesson planning.

Inspiration struck yesterday while I was getting ready to go to school, so I grabbed whatever paper I could find and wrote as quickly as I could before the ideas disappeared from my head…

There are only a few short days until my students walk through my door.

Until then, I’ll be working feverishly to get things as close to perfect as I can…one folder at a time.

Filed under: Teaching | Tagged: back to school, education, teaching |