This month, I'm participating in a blog challenge called Blaugust. To see the list of participating blogs, click on the logo above. I would encourage to you please cheer on our participants with either a tweet or a comment on their blog during this month. It can be hard to blog on a daily (or even regular) schedule! :) If you would like to join the blogging challenge, you can still sign-up anytime!
While browsing Twitter this morning, I ran across this tweet:
Dear Erikka,
I don't know you, but instead of replying to you in 20 tweets or more, I figured it would be easier to write a blog post! :)
Procedures:
If you have read any of the first year teacher books such as Wong, Fred Jones, etc, you know that procedures top the list of things to do. I am definitely one that likes order vs chaos, so I try to train my students early in how I like my classroom. :) I am not one that likes surprises in general, so there is an element of predictability in how I organize my classroom. One of my favorites is my warm-up procedure. I really like there to be a consistency in warmups, so we have things like Multiple Choice Monday, Throwback Thursday, FRAPPY Friday, etc. This year, I'll be adding on some procedures to warm-up time that relate to homework, but those plans aren't finalized yet :) Pretty much everything in my classroom has a procedure related to it in some way.
Grades:
Our school expects that teachers of the same course will use the same grading breakdown, so each course I teach is slightly different, but in general, it comes out to assessments (quizzes / tests) are 75%, assignments (classwork, etc) is 10%, and semester exam is 15%. In general, I don't have a lot of grades in the assignments category, typically just review assignments like Throwback Thursday or notebook checks. I don't grade everything, but I am expected to have at least one grade per week, so I kind of balance my paperwork. With that said, I do believe a lot more in feedback than I do in grading, so it's pretty common for me to write feedback on warm-ups or exit tickets as time allows.
Rules:
I don't really have a ton of rules in my classroom, other than Respect - for yourself, for your classmates, for the teacher, for our school. Whenever we introduce a new routine, we do talk about how to behave, etc, but most everything comes down to respect.
Paperwork:
So.Many.Papers! :) I use INBs, so I use a LOT of paper with foldables, etc. Years ago, I would pass out papers a table at a time during the class period and it took so much time! Then, I read an idea from Sam Shah about Table Folders...
Other than the first week of school, my students stay in table groups for at least 2-3 weeks before switching. The table folders allow me to organize handouts for the day, collect papers, and pass back papers easily. In the example above, this was during the first few weeks of school when they were still using their name tents to help me learn names. On the left are the notes for the day as well as an exit ticket / quick check from the day before. On the right is a problem set. This does take a bit of time to get used to, but there are now 4 different teachers in my hallway using this method and they all love it. My students love it too because everything is in their folder. When a student is absent, I just paperclip their papers together and leave it in the folder, so I rarely have to answer "What did we do yesterday??" :)
One added benefit to the folders is the grading. There is just something daunting about a stack of 30+ papers but a few papers at a time in a folder seems to go so much quicker! There are some things I grade or comment on immediately and put back into the folders, such as Multiple Choice Mondays or Quick Checks and a stack of 8 folders is a lot less intimidating to me and it helps me see the progress a lot more than with a stack of papers. Of course, quizzes and tests aren't in the folders, but most daily work is handled that way. :) If it's something I can't get to right away, I just pull the papers and paperclip them in folder order so that I can put them back quickly. :)
One other note with the folders - I color code my classes, so 1st hour is Red all the way down to 6th hour is Purple (following ROY G BiV of course!). I buy the paper pocket folders each year when they are on the 10 cent sale and at the end of the year, I recycle them because they are pretty beat up from daily use. I've thought about going to the poly folders so I can reuse them, but I haven't tried it yet because the poly folders seem more flimsy overall and I have a tendency to toss the folders on the tables as I quickly go across the room to the doorway for passing periods. :)
Whew - that got a bit longer than I expected! :) Sorry about that! :)
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