Bell Ringers

In the past I haven't used bell ringers, but after watching my colleagues I decided they would make a great addition to my classes.

Today, I've hunted for a few PowerPoint templates. Then I spent a couple of hours taking standardized test prep questions and made a couple of units worth of bell ringers for my 7th grade geography class. I still need to do the same for my 8th U.S. History and 9th World History.

One of my fellow teachers shared that she covered every standard with bell ringers for her students. I've decided to mix standardized test prep questions with content driven questions. I'm still trying to decide if I want to incorporate them into our interactive notebooks.

Speaking of notebooks, what do you do when you find a box of envelopes that have sealed themselves because of the humidity? You cut in them in half and make pockets for your students' notebooks! I found a box today and most were completely sealed. Normally I would have thought "what a waste" but not today. :)

I also walked into my computer lab today and found a wonderful surprise. They had moved in all my new computers, unpacked and installed them! They even fixed mine! I know they have more programs to load, but I'm just excited to see it finished.

Planning for the New School Year

The school year is just a few short weeks away. I began planning before the year was finished last year. I keep reading blogs about organization, INB planning, and general teacher interactions. I have a long list on TPT that I want to purchase and my new pencil sharpener arrived this week!

I plan on going to my room tomorrow to start getting some things ready. I am teaching world history this year and the curriculum is new for me. I have a huge textbook to look through and the standards are changing next year. This isn't a tested class and I'm finding the current standards vague and loose. Which is ok, I will have a lot of leniency to pull in art and music appreciation as I teach different time periods.

I'm happy to be teaching the "new" for me class because in 2014-2015 Tennessee social studies standards change, this course will move to seventh grade. I will then be teaching it on that grade level. So I feel like I'm getting a head start on the new standards. The draft standards are out and I will be able to use those as a guide for this class.

My INB planning is going well. I'm hoping to get the first four weeks set in my 7th and 8th grade class. I won't be using them in world history. But I will be incorporating foldables and a lot of the same type materials. My goal is to have things planned four weeks out and I have been pulling scope and sequences from several other school systems. I don't think we've used a standard S&S for social studies on our system. I know we use pacing guides/ S&S in math and language arts.

I really work more at home during the summer and I had planned to spend more time in my classroom this year. But I classroom computer quit working the first week after school ended. IT hasn't fixed it yet and it's just been easier to do things on my personal laptop. I've gotten into the habit of saving everything in Dropbox so that I can access all of my new material. I find that I have too many flash drives and never have the one I need on hand. Dropbox is a life saver!

I welcome suggestions or tips on organization. Please feel free to follow me on Pinterest.