Teacher Week: Creative Ideas!

Hey y'all! Welcome back to Day #3 of Teacher Week: Creative Ideas! The idea of this post is to inform others of some of your tried and true techniques related to teaching. This is a pretty open-ended day and can really be anything - a lesson plan, a classroom management strategy, an organizational idea, or anything else that just works for you in your classroom.

Below is a picture of what my students visit as soon as they enter my room in the morning. The students drop off their take-home folders and planners in their respective containers (one for boys and one for girls) immediately. I have color coded folders (green for boys, purple for girls) that way it is easier to locate a particular student's things when I need them for something.

The squares you see below the "Our Class" label are actually these 2"x2" refrigerator magnets I picked up at Christmas Tree Shops* for 30 cents a piece. In place of the picture is a slip of paper labeled with the child's name. It stays on the board with a Velcro dot that I added above the magnet.

I expect each of my students to take their own attendance by moving their square to the "Question of the Day" board immediately to the right of this bulletin board. They use their square to respond to the question of the day by placing it above a given response; thus, when everyone is present, they will have created a graph that we can later discuss as part of Calendar Math. In addition, I can take attendance at a glance by seeing whose square still remains on the board. I hope that makes sense! Let me know if you have any questions.

Next up is a Making Words folder that each of my students will have for their personal use. This idea was adapted from J. Meacham. I purchased a class set of orange plastic folders that can hopefully be reused for a couple more years (crossing fingers!). I will just add a new label over top of the current one.

The inside of the folder contains a Making Words notebook where they will complete their lesson {which we will do as a whole group at the beginning of the year}, along with 3 baseball card sleeves. Each labeled pocket will contain 2 uppercase letters and 3 lowercase letters to use during our activities. The letters haven't been added yet because my kiddos will do this as a review activity during the first week of school (letter identification).

I made the letter template in word and laminated 2 pages worth of letters for each student. I spent a few nights cutting out sets for each student and putting them in plastic baggies. I would be happy to forward the template to you if you want.

This is the book that I use for easy-to-implement lessons. I highly recommend it!

If you have some creative ideas to share, please link up below! Thanks again for participating! This has been too fun :)