Team J's Second Grade Fun: July 2014

Lesson Plan Binder

Each year I always get excited to make my new lesson plan binder. It's kinda like being a kid and getting a new backpack for the school year. Although, who am I kidding - I love getting a new teacher bag for the school year. These issues all stem from my obsession with anything school supply related.

Anyways, I like to use a 1.5 inch binder so that I have room to fit all of the necessary things in it. This year I'm going with a fun, hot pink color. I love the cover - I got it from one of Teaching and Tidbits with Jamie on TPT. It was her spring collection of digital paper. Love it!

Then, I always update the dividers. I'm not 100% sure what the school's focusing on since I'm new, but I'm pretty sure these will work. My 5 dividers are - Student Info (roster, personal info), Class Info (schedule, etc), School Info (this is the big folder - anything school related - maps, meeting info, behavior policies, etc), Essential Questions (big focus at my new school so I want to have the info handy), and of course a lesson plans section. My lesson plans are typically done on Excel in a template that I can just type and print each week.

Thanks for coming by! How do you organize your important school info?

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Wordless Wednesday - July 30

I'm linking up with Miss DeCarbo at Sugar and Spice for Wordless Wednesday. Be sure to link up!

Our back to school crowns - 1st Grade

What is your favorite first day of school activity (any grade level)?

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Nate the Great Goes Undercover Book Study

I've finally finished up my next book study that I've had my kids work on. See how I use book studies/book clubs in this blog post here.

My 2nd graders and even past 1st graders have always enjoyed reading Nate the Great. I've added the finishing touches and Nate the Great Goes Undercover is now ready. I've broken the book into five parts with 10 pages or less in each part. Each part has 6 questions that go along with it. These questions mainly focus on the who, what, when, where, and why, but there are a few with inferring so Common Core Standards RL1.1 and RL2.1. An answer key is also included.

Check it out....

Book Study for Nate the Great Goes Undercover

Head over to TPT to check out my Nate the Great Goes Undercover packet.

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Monday Made-It- July 28

I'm linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made-It!

My new school uses essential questions. I decided to come up with a cute way to display these questions. I had seen frames used to show I can statements and objectives, and there also has been an example or two for essential questions. Here are mine below...

The nice thing is you can use Expo marker on the glass and change them out when needed. I plan to hang these with the Essential Question frame at the top, then two below, and two below.

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Turning File Folders Into Binders

So who loves big projects that turn your house into a mess, but will hopefully make you more organized in the long run? This girl. And, I'm sure many other teachers out there. I've seen a few teachers blog this summer about turning their files into binders and I've been wanting to do the same thing for years. Since I'm moving into a new school I decided this summer was the time to begin this huge and I mean huge project.

First, I took all of my files from 1st and 3rd grade and went through them. I like to keep everything. Like many teachers, I am a bit of a hoarder. But, no more of that - I threw out a few boxes of stuff! I was very proud of myself.

Here's the mess.... (and this is just a bit of it)

Then, after purging it was time to organize. I decided to organize things in a few different ways, but all that made sense to me. For each person, I'm sure organization of this part might look different. I decided to have a variety of binders, different sizes depending on what was going in the binder.

Here are some examples - Reading Literature, Reading Informational, Writing, Story Prompts, Fluency, Phonics, Language, Conventions, Science, Social Studies, Holidays, Number Sense, Operations, Geometry, Multiplication, Division, Measurement, Story Problems, Graphing, Money, Time, etc. As you can see I have a lot of binders. I like having things divided up by topic and my hope is that it'll make me more organized throughout the year.

Within each binder there are dividing pages. For example, Fluency has Reader's Theater and Poems. Parts of Speech includes nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns. Each page, project worksheet, etc is in a page protector. Some are grouped together if that made sense and some are in their own. Like I said, this project is up to what works for each person.

I made covers for each, binder spines, and dividing pages that I also laminated. See examples below....

So, I'm about halfway done with this project. Once you start you kinda have to finish so even though right now I'm cursing myself for starting, I'm sure once I'm done I'll be glad.

How are your teaching materials organized? Do you use files, binders, on the computer? Leave a comment below and let me know. I always love getting new organizational ideas.

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Reading Plans Binder

Yesterday I blogged about how I use my Math Plans Binder and today I'm talking about my Reading Plans Binder. Yes, they are very similar, however the reading one I use for Reading and Writing.

Here's how I set it up...

Cute, fun cover

5 Tabs - Standards, Calendar, Plans, Book Lists, Assessments - Pretty much anything you would need to plan out reading lessons.

I've updated these with my new school's standards. They use ERB and also CPAA.

Next up is the calendar. This is an example from last year. I wanted to show one filled out. I use this monthly calendar as a way to map out reading for a quarter or a few months at a time. I like being able to see it all on one page. Here's where I put down what phonics skill we were working on, reading standard, and also writing standard. From this, I would come up with daily plans and weekly lesson plans, but I had this with me to show the big picture.

Here's my new calendar for 2014-15. This awesome calendar can be found in A Modern Teacher's TPT Store. It's a refill calendar that you can find....here.

After the calendar, I put in my planning pages. I like to take each standard and map out what the daily lessons will look like. This also is a great tool to share during team planning meetings so that everyone is on the same page or has ideas for how to teach the different standards. Below is an example for inferring. I have the standard at the top, the dates I'm teaching it, a book list that focuses on that standard, and then ideas for each day. I then take this to fill in my weekly plans. My weekly plans are typically less detailed, but I have these standard focused plans that are the detailed versions.

The last two tabs I didn't get pictures of, but one is a book list. Over the years I have found a few different book lists that give a billion book ideas and next to each book have the reading skill that they work best with. I love these!

The last tab is an assessment tab. Here's where I put different assessments that I'll use to measure progress on the various reading standards.

Thanks for checking out my reading plans binder. I know it might seem like extra work, but it helps me to have a long range plan, a weekly plan, and then a more focused detailed standard plan. The nice thing is that the standard plan can really be used from year to year. I always tweak or add to the standard plans, but at least the general lesson ideas are there. Then, each year, I look at it and fill in the weekly plans from it. So, while it take more time upfront it saves me time in the end.

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Math Planning Binder

I blogged about this last year, but wanted to update it for the new year and also explain a little more about how I used this. Last year, I started using a math plan and reading plan binder. I'll blog about the reading one tomorrow. I found this binder so helpful when doing long range planning and then to use for the weekly lesson plans as well.

Here's what's inside...

Cover

Tabs - Standards, Calendar, Plans, Book Ideas, School Mapping

First up, the standards. The basis for planning. I've updated this with my new school's standards since they don't use Common Core. All the standards are in here and easy to read in a cute font (all of us teachers love our fonts...don't we?)

Next up, the calendar. Here's a picture from last year. I mainly used this calendar to map out each quarter. I liked having the monthly calendar in here because it made it easier to see the bigger picture. After mapping a quarter out, then I could use this calendar to then focus in on the weekly plans which we had to do online at my old school.

Here's my new calendar for this school year. Blank, but it'll be full before I know it. I purchased this calendar in A Modern Teacher's Refill Calendar Pack. Check out her TPT Store, here.

After the calendar, I have the plans tab. In this tab, I have standards broken down into days. This is where I map out the actually lessons, ideas, books, videos, etc to use to teach a standard. I also pull from this to write my actual weekly lesson plans.

My book ideas tab is empty for now. Need to find some great math book lists!

Last tab is my school's math mapping. They set down last year and figured out what the different standards would look like in the different grade levels. Since they don't use Common Core they had to narrow down the specifics for each grade.

Thanks for checking out how I use my math planning binder. Tomorrow I'll explain how I use my reading one!

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Monday Made-It - July 21

I'm linking up with Tara at Fourth Grade Frolics for another Monday Made-It!

This week I made a new classroom job chart. Since I'm going with the bright colors theme I needed a new one to match. Here are the jobs I included: Star Student, Door Holder, Pencil Pick Up, Clean Up Helper, Lights Helper, Lunch Helper, iPad Helper, Library Helper, Paper Passers, and Next Up (people without a job this week, but will have one the next week). To make this project I picked up a foam board from JoAnn Fabrics, the blue border from Michael's, and I already had the pockets from Lakeshore a few years ago (these ones even had sticky stuff on the back which made it super easy to put together). I then made my labels and my sign and voila - new classroom job chart!

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to link up with Tara!

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