Tuesday, July 22, 2008

I think I'm getting old because if I don't write it down....

This week, I've been reading various teacher forums and message boards (teachers.net and atozteacherstuff.com). One of the posts that commonly appears is about organization, lesson plan books, etc, so I decided to share my lesson plan book.

I have tried all sorts of commerical lesson plan books but they never worked for me. I needed an "agenda" of sorts to keep me organized - complete with lots of to-do list space, however I could never find one that fit my needs. (See Dan Meyer's blog dy/dan for more on to-do lists)

Thankfully, with the power of the internet, I was able to do some searching for agenda formats and piece together one of my own. I print out a year's worth (52 weeks) of these sheets, hole punch them and put them into a presentation folder - one of those that looks like a regular 3 prong folder w/ an acetate cover. Each week, the current sheet is on top, with older ones cycling to the back. I love this format because I have room for all of my to-do lists, appointment reminders, things that have to be done on a specific day, etc.

Two other must-haves for me organization-wise:
Printfree's yearly calendar - This is vital for me when dealing with pacing of my courses.
Monthly calendars for my students - I love these Word calendars because I can type my plans into them, print them out and hand them to my students for reference.

What do you use for organization?

P.S. - I had some more rambling thoughts last night but didn't want to make a new post :) So here they are...
I'm always on the lookout for new posters :) Here are some free printable ones if you have a color printer or you can save them off and take them to Kinko's to be enlarged...

Also, I really want to foster positive thinking in my classroom, so yesterday I found a you-tube video that I think I may show at the beginning of the year as kids are filling in their info sheets. I also thought about showing similar videos right before tests (during the passing period) to help the kids think positively. Any ideas??

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