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It was a Productive Day!!
I took a day off yesterday, both from blogging and the back-to-school madness. I worked in my classroom on Monday and Tuesday and had planned to work up there yesterday as well, but when push came to shove, it just wasn't happening. I woke up at 5:30 and dragged myself out of bed and outside for an early morning walk, but when I only made it through half of my walk and I was yawning every few steps, I had an inkling that Wednesday would not work out as planned. So instead, I grabbed my notepad and sat on the patio enjoying nature and making a list of things as they crossed my mind. Around 10, I met up with a friend for a pedi and lunch and that was just what the doctor ordered!
Before meeting up with my friend, I had some time to kill, so I spent the time browsing my Pinterest boards for motivation. I have a large set of doors in my classroom that lead into the science lab next door. Right now, those doors house a "Parking Lot" poster and a formative assessment "Traffic Light" poster. However, I have never used those posters as intended because I don't usually have post-it notes out and about. (Side note.. if you have an idea of what to put there, let me know!) While browsing Pinterest, I found my theme/mantra for the year, which turned out to be neither of the two that I had already blogged about on Tuesday...
On one of my boards, I had pinned a post from Sarah (@mathequalslove) from back in 2013, where she referenced some posters called Truth Signs from the book Inspiring Active Learning. The quote I pinned really resonated with me, so here is my yearly theme/mantra:
What a great reminder for me when lesson planning, especially with my goal this year of "Never Skip the Close!" It's also a good reminder when I'm sitting at my desk staring into space that it's okay to allow myself time to process and think! Thank you Sarah! :)
Now let's fast forward to this morning. It starts out the same way, but my walk today was much better (and less yawning!). After coming home, I still had about an hour to kill before heading to school, so I started knocking out things on my to-do list. One of the things I had listed was to do a planning calendar because right now I have it scribbled in a notebook where I met with one of the other teachers. I don't want to put it into my lesson plan book yet because it's not very set in stone. I decided to make it double sided and here's the end result:
Can I just say that I love the KG Payphone font? It looks so clean! I decided that I needed a to-do list because sometimes when planning, I need to create a foldable or an assignment, etc. :) I've already used this in conjunction with Sarah's INB planning page
My friend went to school with me today to tackle some of the other to-do's like cutting things out, etc. One of the things on her to-do list was to make a little gift for the math teachers. I had found these notepads at the Target Dollar Spot that I thought would be awesome for under the ELMO. A gift tag and some curly ribbon to finish it off and we have cute gifts...
As I was working away this afternoon, I realized that I couldn't remember what I had already sent to the copy shop and what I hadn't. I know most schools don't have a copy shop, but in our district, they encourage us to send everything we can to the copy shop. They will bind, staple, duplex, booklet, etc, but you need to give them 3-4 working days to get it done because it has to be picked up from each site, taken to the copy shop, ran, packaged, and sent back to the site. They only make deliveries to each building once a day or you can take it over to the copy shop yourself if you miss the delivery driver. Anyway, our copy shop orders are duplicates, so I have a stack of yellow carbon copies of what I've sent, but I had to dig through that stack each time. I decided that for Back to School, a master list might be a good idea...
We got several other things done as well, but I forgot to take pictures of those. :) All in all, it was a great day and I feel so much more prepared for Monday than if I hadn't gone in today. I still have lesson planning to do, but thankfully most of the other things can be done at home! Tomorrow is my last official day of summer because I don't count the weekends... where did summer go????
:)
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