Well, I was only able to get one wall painted yesterday at school. As all my wonderful readers suggested, blue was the winning color. The head custodian even found me two different blues to choose from. I'm heading back today to finish up the other wall and start putting furniture into place. I will post pictures soon!
In other news...
I finished another project this week... my teacher binder! Hooray!
I am using the same 1" binder from last year. I just upgraded the cover. Do you recognize the paper? Yup, it is the same paper I used for my back to school bookmarks. I used free frames from 3AM Teacher and just cut and glued to make my cover and page dividers.
I really like using scrapbooking paper because I save SO MUCH on printer ink. Plus, it is thick so it really holds up. I'm a pretty big fan. I have 8 sections for my teacher notebook.
1) Meeting Notes - Used mostly for meeting doodles and jotting down important dates. I just put regular old notebook paper behind this tab.
2) Lesson Plans - We have a template in Word that our whole team uses and print out week by week.
3) Parent Contact - This is where I document any communication with a parent through notes, emails, phone, or conference. I use the Parent/Teacher Communication Log below. There is a lot of space for notes and a quick reference name and phone number at the bottom.
4) Student Data - All my pretty excel graphs and charts go here.
5) Instructional Planning Guide - We are given an IPG by our district, so I print and use as reference.
6) Instructional Tools - I keep a wide variety of things here. Basically, anything that I think would be helpful to reference during planning. For example, I have a sheet on Blooms questioning stems, a reading level correlation chart, learning modality information, and other information sheets.
7) Student Info - This is where I keep my Parent/Guardian Confidential Questionnaire. I send this home with students on the first day of school and ask parents to take a few days to fill it out. It has all the basic contact questions, but it also helps you get to know that student outside of the classroom.
Questions include what the child loves to do, special abilities, feelings about school, areas of confidence, areas of struggles, etc. There is also a place for parents to write about any special concerns they have for their child in the upcoming year. I often receive very valuable feedback on these forms including medical and family information which helps me get to know more about the child, the family, and life at home.
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| Front |
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To download your own copy for FREE, click here to visit my TN store. This questionnaire has been invaluable to me over the years. If there was only one thing I could send home all year, this would be it. I hope you find it just as helpful.
8) Year at a Glance - Another reference for year long planning from my district.
This is the first year I have been so specific with my different binder sections. I'm hoping that it helps me stay organized. Did I miss anything? What else do you all put in your teacher binders? Any other forms you simply can not live without?
