These are the binders I've reorganized so I can find math and reading ideas and assignments by topic. When I taught third grade, I just had them grouped by how we taught them. After moving grades again (now I've done 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th) I decided to group them by topic so regardless of what grade I'm teaching (or how many times they adopt new textbooks) I have what I need in a simple to find format. It seems straightforward, but I also had to go through page by page and determine whether the idea/assignment was useful or crappy. I recycled an entire box of papers and this is what I was left with. Of course, every page in these binders is in a protective plastic sleeve with topics divided by cardstock.
Then I created a master list to go inside the front cover of each binder that shows how they are grouped for easy retrieval (not to mention when I need to add to them.) Not bad for two days' work. I completed my spelling, writing, and poetry binders at school before packing up. They will get master lists once I finish unpacking my room next week. My science and Florida units are the BIG job waiting to be dealt with. I am dreading the weeks those will take. Thankfully one of my teammates is joining me in this challenge.
Next up was typing up, printing, cutting, gluing, and laminating all the words for my Word Wall. I love the Nifty Thrifty Fifty words from the 4-Blocks Literacy Model, which I used extensively when I taught primary grades. They focus on root words and affixes, which my kids need a lot of practice with for automaticity. Normally these words come printed in poster form for me to laminate and cut out easily, but I couldn't find them anywhere online. Last year I used markers to write the words on sentence strips, but the markers quickly faded thanks to the bright Florida sunshine. So this is my solution. Fifty words are not enough to get us through the year, so I also added frequently misspelled/misused homophones to the mix for a total of about 80 words. On the back of each I hand wrote the root word, any affix and its meaning, each word's part of speech and the tense or category it falls under (hello, grammar practice!)
I finished hand writing all of my Daily Geography questions onto index cards (96!) for Morning Work and am halfway through Daily Science's 90 cards. These cards get laminated and then placed on different tables once a week for students to answer on small slips of paper. We go over them as a class when we have 5 minutes or so. I teach science for several weeks and then switch back to social studies, so whichever subject I'm currently teaching we use the other subject's daily questions. It's a nice way to keep both social studies and science part of the daily routine. I used to just photocopy the questions, but I am trying to focus on less paper use -- laminated cards last for years and can be reused! My 2nd and 3rd grade sets kept up well, so I figured I ought to bite the bullet and get them done.
But, as you can tell, I'm not done yet! I still have an idioms game to make and vocabulary and language games to glue onto cardstock, laminate, and cut out for reading centers. In an upcoming post I'll share some of the great online resources I've been scouring this summer as well. I do love June, July, and August. Hopefully, if I organize and prepare decently this summer, I'll be able to spread some of that relaxation through the rest of the year.
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