Blog Hoppin's Teacher Week: Why?- Organization TIps (and a freebie)

Happy Wednesday! Welcome to day 3 of Blog Hoppin's annual teacher week.  I like to tell myself that I am a neat and organized person.  But in reality, I am definitely a stacker in my classroom!  Since I work in an international school, most of the classrooms are filled with files and STUFF from previous teachers.  I think my classroom has stuff from at least 5 teachers! 

Organizational Tip #1:
One organizational tip I learned from my cooperating teacher while I was a student teacher was keeping my printables organized by days of the week.  I bought these magazine holders at IKEA since I wasn't sure where else to find these in China. 

 Click on the picture above to get the Days of the Week labels for FREE!! 

I would put a clipboard in every magazine file holder so the papers on top of the clipboard represent the present week and the papers behind it represent the following week.  I like this system because I can tell my TA to print multiple files for me and I use a post-it note to let her know which day of the week she can put the printables in.  I also like the easy access to all of my printables for my lessons. 

Organizational Tip #2:
Do you keep student work throughout the year and create an end of the year portfolio or binder?  In the ECC, we are required to so I use the same IKEA magazine file holders to store and sort student work in.  I also keep my students' handwriting and writing journals in it.  I like this organizational system because it keeps all of the student's work together in one place and I don't have to put the paper inside the the binder right away. 

Be sure to check back in tomorrow to see my WHEN post and a sneak peek of my day! :)  Also, don't forget to LINK UP with Blog Hoppin'!

First Grade Teachers, I have a Common Core freebie for YOU!

Calling all FIRST GRADE TEACHERS! I wanted to tell you about my weekend freebie that is exclusively for YOU!

I've been receiving a lot of great feedback about my Kindergarten CCSS file folder labels that other grade teachers asked and begged for me to revise the product to their grade level.  I researched on TpT to see what grade file folder labels were already out there and decided to only do First Grade (for now).  Also, I had the most requests to do First Grade labels.

These two products (ELA and Math) will only be free this weekend only!  At 10pm (CST) on Sunday night (7/21), the freebie will be closed and will be $1 afterwards.  Please share with all of your first grade teacher friends!

                                 

The instructions on how to print and organize the labels are in each product! :)
Have a fantastic weekend and stay COOL!

Kindergarten Common Core File Folder Organization Freebie

Do you teach Kindergarten? Looking for new ways to organize your Common Core materials?  Ashley from Thats So Second Grade wrote a great post on organizing the Common Core standards for her second grade class.  Click here to read her post.

So over spring break I created my own version but for Kindergarten.  Since I know I am still trying to memorize all of the "codes" for the Common Core standards, I thought this was a great idea to organize all of my CCSS material.  You can put in your specific activities and worksheets for each standard so you know EXACTLY what you are teaching when accessing student understanding.  On each folder I have the whole standard printed out as a guide.  Also I color coordinated each subsection for Math and English Language Arts.

These labels are only for Kindergarten.  In the file are labels for file folders, labels for folders, and tabs for each Common Core sub section. Directions on how to do this is attached in the file.  Click the pictures or the respective teacher stores below to get the freebies:

   

Math: TpT   TN

ELA: TpT   TN

This is a great weekend project or after school project! It just takes about 1.5 hours to print, stick, and stack the labels!  Grab this freebie and impress your colleagues on your new super fabulous organized Common Core materials!

Teacher Toolbox

AHH! I wish I wasn't so busy with work around the holidays because I've been wanting to post more on this blog!  I just started writing my first grant and didn't realized how much time and effort it takes to finish!! (I'm about half way done with it :(  )  Anyone have any good tips/advice about grant writing?  I wish my education courses talked more about them.

Anyways, I made this awesome teacher toolbox about a month ago and forgot to blog about it and thank the creator!! I found this great storage idea on Pinterest.  (Best site ever!)  The creator of this awesome toolbox is Mrs. Rojas and you definitely need to check out her blog! She has a lot of neat classroom ideas and freebies on there!  Here is a Link on how to buy the toolbox and create the labels!

By the way, I am obsessed with mine and basically use it almost every day!! Hopefully I can bring this into my future classroom and tell more people about this awesome storage unit!