Morning Procedures

It is really important to have daily routines.  For many of my students, I am the only bit of stability in their day. From the moment the kids walk in, they don't have to guess what needs do be done.  The daily routine is well set out on this anchor chart.

You can find it at Teachers Pay Teachers. Morning Procedures

Even though it is April, my students still like to come in and look at the chart.  One of my fellow teachers had it on her bulletin board.  I heard the substitute referring to it just the other day. Since I have started this procedure, the kids don't argue about who does what.  Plus I have all the pencils I need ready to go. 

In case you haven't learned the joys of pre-sharpened pencils in your classroom, Let me share. Kids waste so much time sharpening pencils. The noise causes those who are deep in thought writing to loose focus.  I have a large box of sharpened pencils.  If a student has a dull pencil, he just makes an exchange and puts in the box for pencils that need to be sharpened. 

Accountable Talk- Anchor Charts

I am an anchor chart junkie.  I use them so much that I had to develop a little system. I make one chart in color as a jpeg.  I use this with my Promethean board or my document camera.  I then stretch it out a bit and put it on a legal size page and post it on the wall.  The kids also have a black and white version that they place in their notebooks.  I have a writer's bag of tricks and a social studies journal that I use in my room. If an anchor chart is really important I will print it out as an engineer's print at Staples.

One of the things that I like best about my classroom is the amount of time we spend discussing writing, Texas history or current events.  In order for that to happen, students must be respectful. This anchor chart is fabulous.  The students place it in their Social Studies journals.  For the first few weeks the students keep these open to use to help them find phrases that help them participate in discussions.

You can get this at Teachers Pay Teachers. Accountable Talk

Teacher Data Planner

It is hard to believe that I am so late to this party.  But, after twenty-six years of teaching. I thought I would finally start a blog about how I run my classroom. If you don't know me, I have taught from first to fourth grade.  Currently I am teaching writing, grammar, and Texas history to fourth graders.

Writing and Texas are two of my passions.So I hope that I will have some insight to share if you need some inspiration on those subjects!

I thought today I would share my data organizational system or teacher binder.  It keeps all my student documents in one place.  This is a 28 page jpeg file that has the different pages that I used this year,  I pasted them into a publisher file so I could customize the number and the placement of each of the files.  I had them printed from and back by the printer.  There were well over 100 pages when I was finished.  He only charged me $20. It was a great bargain.  I then punched holes and placed them in a binder.

If you want to use this system of front and back pages, in your layout place a blank page behind each of the page dividers. That way you can put the page dividers in a plastic page protector.

This is the cover for my binder.  I made several for my friends.  I think we are enjoying them.  I know may teachers would like one. So I opened a shop on Teachers Pay Teachers.  You can download the whole file for eight dollars here. Teacher Data Binder  

I also have a freebie here that is for a thank you post card that I had printed on Vista Print that matches my Americana design.

You can download it for free here. Thank You Card

I hope that you will follow my store.  If you have anything that you would like to see made, let me know.  I would be glad to try my hand at making it.