Skip to main content

The Battle for Organization

Hello, my name is Kim, and I'm a clutterholic.

Seriously, I try to fight against the clutter, and it wins every time.

I got this tip from Sarah Carter to have spots for "Today, Tomorrow, & Soon" for my copies that I have printed. In Computer Science Discoveries, I haven't been having them use computer at all for "unplugged" lessons so I have something printed for each day. For Math 6, I'm on a more day to day basis, seeing what the kids need. I never did use those exit tickets on the top tray.

On a similar note, I've also been trying out my own take on Sarah's Unit Dividers (the yellow sheet) but I'm not sure if I'm a fan of them yet. We just put them in yesterday, as well as one for their iReady diagnostic results, but my 6th graders struggle so much with following my directions to put them in that I might just switch over to a unit page and be done with the whole mess. We'll see, I might just keep using them the rest of the year and decide at the end if they were worth it.

Oooh so nice and organized. What you don't see, though, is that the bookshelves underneath are a jumble of papers and materials.
 I also used my coworker's idea to put student supplies behind the whiteboard, so they can just grab them instead of asking me for them. They still do, but at least now I can wave my hand at the supplies instead of fetching them.

Student supplies
I meant to take pictures of my desk & the containers for turn in work, but I forgot. I'll try to take some pictures and edit this on Monday.  I have two of these banker's boxes that I but binder clips with period #s on, one for work that's on time and one for late work.


I do love to be organized, but get too drained to think of the most effective ways to conquer my clutter. Or I get overwhelmed by all of the possibilities and end up just doing the same old, same old piles of paper and stuff.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How I Plan & Reflect

I've tried a lot of different methods for planning & reflecting on my plans over the years, and I'm still trying to figure it out. Last year I used the Happy Planner for Teachers , and I loved it because there are a lot of stickers and I could add my own pages, basically customize it however I wanted. But, it was very large and I ended up not using it a few months into the school year. So Pretty So Unused I'm still very tempted by the new packages they have for teacher planners but am holding firm in not buying it because it will cause guilt and shame when it falls out of use. I did get a Passion Planner to keep track of time sensitive things, and am going to give myself a bit more grace about not filling it out. It'll be more personal/to do listy than lesson planning. So shiny! Mostly blank the week before school starts. There's things I need to add but shh let's ignore that right now I'm ALSO going to be using  Common Curricul

Planning for Back to School August 2020

Me in my laundry room/office This year has been so different from any other years. SO much uncertainty.  I wanted to be super prepared so I read many, many books and articles and Twitter lists over the summer. I participated in webinars and Zoom meetings and tried to put what I found in one place but my brain doesn't really work that way, so I have some stuff in Google Keep, some stuff in Wakelet, some stuff written down. In the end I still felt unprepared for the first day of school. I have had so much anxiety in the last few days. I did set up assignments for my students before the first day of school. I used Howie Hua's  Math Autobiography  slides, and some of my students started working on them immediately. It's already creating amazing discussions and bonding between my students. The first day of school went well for me. I didn't plan much, I just shared a couple of slides about myself and then had my students do a community circle . It worked out well because it l

Math Professional Workshops

 I am very fortunate that my school district invests in training teachers. For the past two school years, we have had optional  professional workshops in the winter and summer. There are multiple days with choices available for different grade levels. Last year, they were all separated by grade band. This year, there's more overlap between the grade levels on different days. So yesterday was 3-6, today was 4-6, and tomorrow is 6-8. I didn't realize that I could have also gone yesterday, but it worked out anyway because yesterday was my own kids' first day of the second semester.  I am so glad they made the switch, because previously there was minimal involvement from people at my middle school, and we are the only middle school in the district. So today I got to work with not just teachers from my school, but from all of the elementary schools. It always helps to have additional perspectives from both sides. It also helps that everyone who was there signed up to be there. E