A Teacher Binder Makeover!

I have always felt that a key tool to being an organized teacher was to have a Teacher Binder! You know, that one binder that has all of the important information you need to have right at your fingertips on a day-to-day basis. I consider my teacher binder like my 3^rd arm. And I pride myself on carrying it with me back and forth to meetings, and back and forth to school. It’s perfect for my over prepared, over structured self who needs to constantly plan for and review what I need to do and will be doing in the coming days and weeks of my classroom.

Yet, when I entered the Blogging community, my Teacher Binder Pride starting crumbling! Not only am I not alone in my Teacher Binder creation/obsession, but I realized my teacher binder was the outdated, over simplified version compared to all of my blogging friends!

(Purposefully not inserted photo of my old binder here!)

Yikes! Time for a makeover!

I like to save time creating resources myself when necessary, and luckily for me, I realized there were already dozens of Teacher Binder Resources on TeachersPayTeachers made by other Teacher Binder Lovers!

So here is a glimpse into my new and improved Teacher Binder for the 2012-2013 school year! A combination of my own, and other teacher’s creations for the MOST efficient Binder for me!

The Binder:

1.     First I picked up a traditional 1 1/2 inch binder like this one at Walmart (in pink!)

2.     I purchased a pretty pack of 8 binder tabs like these (again from Walmart!) The tabs came with an easy to follow instruction guide for how to use an online template to type and print your own labels. No chicken scratch in my binder this year!

3.     I used this pink border that perfectly matched my new binder to create my binder cover. I simply inserted the border in a word document and added my name in the center with some cute fonts, courtesy of KevinandAmanda.com!

The Tabs:

1.     Calendar

I stumbled across a LOT of printable calendars online in my searches, until I finally found the perfect one! Check out this FREE monthly calendar from Terri Thornton! I love that it is a generic template that you can customize, and that there is room to write in each day, as well as along the side for To Do's and Notes. And let's not forget to mention the cute rainbow theme. LOVE! 

2.     To Do's
I found this To Do List Template from Farley at  Oh Boy Fourth Grade. (This blog is a must see!) The template is for a week's time and includes room for a To Do List, Meetings List, Notes, and Next Week's Notes. Aaa-mazing!

3.     Lesson Plans
This is where my week's lesson plans live. Of course the template I have included in my last post has already been modified. Ahh, the joys of summer planning and adjusting!

4.     Centers
This section includes my Center Schedule as well as my center rotation schedule (TBD!)

5.     Curriculum
Not only will this section house all things standards and objectives for my classroom, but also the FREE Curriculum Map found in this bundle by Colleen Zehr that so wonderfully outlines my year planning at a glance!

6.     Cheat Sheets
Here is where those handy dandy IEP Cheat Sheets I created will be. I love that these are a one page reference tool, and that it eliminates me having to bring home stacks of student paperwork each night!  

7.     Parents
I had been searching for a template to use to record my contact and communication time with parents. If you check out my Classroom Miscellaneous Pinterest Board, you'll see a few examples. But I just couldn't seem to find one that was just right for me, so I created my own template! The border in my file is courtesy of Digital Swirls Creations! Click here to download!

8.     Meetings
Last, but not least, space to record and track my Meeting Notes. Check out this FREE Template I'm using from Chloe Campbell!

A special Thanks and Kudos to the teachers on TPT who offered their FREE Downloadable Teacher Binder Resources to help me start off next year in an organized and much more stylish fashion!  

Good Luck creating your own Teacher Binders!

Sometimes, It's OK to Cheat

To continue working on, Better Juggling My Many Hats of Special Education, I’ve created another organization strategy that will hopefully help myself, as well as the other professionals working with my upcoming kiddos, to manage student paperwork.

As a Special Education teacher, you know the binder-sized packet of information that accompanies each student. I’m not sure about you, but I have a very strong love-hate relationship with the countless stacks of information I’m handed every year.

On the one hand, this paperwork offers you key insight into your student’s family life, academic abilities, behaviors, and personality. I think of it as an extremely undecorated scrapbook of the student year’s past, as well as a projection into this year’s future. 

Of course this information is incredibly helpful. How you decide to differentiate your lessons, seat students in class, and assign groups may be contingent on the contents of these files. Not to mention, it makes you feel as though you already know and understand your students before you even meet them. There is no denying that this paperwork sets you ahead of the game in the planning and preparation of your Healthy Classroom Environment.

Yet, on the other hand, these student scrapbooks can be downright overwhelming. For my students in the middle years, that’s about 7 years of academic and behavioral past to sift through. And lets not forget the IEP’s of which are about 15 pages each. So many times have I skimmed files to find an important document or piece of information, only to wind up pulling up a chair, losing a half hour of my life, and still turning up empty handed. 

And I’m not the only person with mountains of paperwork to read and follow. I know particularly for paraprofessionals with large caseloads or special area teachers whom see almost the entire school in a year, they are swimming in seas of paperwork alongside me.

We need a lifesaver. Stat. 

I realized that what I wanted was to have that, "pull up a seat and lose a half hour of your life," to happen only once. And that one time would be my initial reading of all the important documents. Because from there on, I would create a simple document containing all the important student information that I, as well as other teachers, could reference throughout the year.  I like to think of it as a way to transform those lengthy scrapbooks into simple, photo snapshots.

So I’ve created Student Cheat Sheets!

A one-page summary of:

·      Student information

·      Special Alerts

·      Related Services

·      Daily Living Skills

·      Reading, Writing, Math, and Social Skill Levels

·      Modifications and Management

·      Testing Accommodations

Here is a blank document:

While this Cheat Sheet can really be designed to highlight any aspect of the student scrapbooks, these were the areas I found to be most important according to the level of my upcoming kiddos. 

I think these sheets will not only quickly and easily assist me in placing students and creating differentiated lesson plans, but I can hand a copy of this to any professional also working with my students. While they may not have time to sift through an entire scrapbook like me, they will have time to skim this quick Cheat Sheet. In a way, these sheets are a guarantee that everyone working with my students will have a base understanding of who they are.

I can also edit these sheets throughout the school year to ensure they are constantly reflecting current levels, and complete a final updated version at the end of the year to share with next year’s teachers.

And of course, copies of these sheets will so neatly tuck into next year’s Me Binders as well!

I hope you find this idea helpful!  Please feel free to share any ideas you have for managing student paperwork!  

Student Goal Tracking

As Phase 1 of achieving my goal: To Better Juggle My Many Hats of Special Education, I’ve created a new strategy for myself this year to assist in tracking and reporting on the dozens of IEP goals I’ll be required to manage!

I’ve mentioned before how important I think goals are for student encouragement, motivation, and progress.  And as I look over the paperwork for next year’s kiddos, I realize now more than ever how imperative it will be for me to make student goals a priority.

My new classroom will primarily focus on daily life skills, thus next year’s goals are crucial benchmarks to basic daily academic and communicative functioning in both the school and community. Not only are these goals important milestones, I’ve noticed they are also significantly more specific than the goals I was used to in my former life as an inclusion teacher. This change is not only due to the life skills program, but also due to the levels and abilities of the students. Let me give you a quick example:

Inclusion Goal:

Will write a paragraph of 3-5 sentences with topic sentence, details, and concluding sentence.

Tracking:

Quarterly Progress

Life Skills Goal:

Will demonstrate an improvement in the readiness skills necessary for reading.

1.1  By November, will Identify 13 of 26 lowercase letters in isolation

1.2  By January, will identify 26 of 26 lowercase letters in isolation

1.3  By April, will identify 13 of 26 uppercase letters in isolation

1.4  By June, will identify 26 of 26 uppercase letters in isolation

Tracking:

9 out of 10 trials, every 2 weeks

Yikes. Lot more detail. Lot more benchmarks. More frequent reporting. Much more frequent tracking.

So, what I‘ve decided to do is to create “Goal Tracking Sheets” to help ensure I am tracking all student goals consistently and accurately. What I did was take each student's goal and write them on a separate sheet, with the appropriate tracking schedule provided below. Goal sheets are color coded with a border (courtesy of Graphics From the Pond-Love their graphics!) according to what kind of goal they are (Reading, Writing, Speech, etc.)

Here are a few examples:

You’ll notice that there is little room to write in each box, however, this is intentional. I intend on only writing a quick note each time, as I have to so frequently comment on so many goals.

Each tracking time, students will either receive a specific assessment score or a simple:

PS: Progressing Satisfactorily

NP: Not Progressing

A: Achieved

While I think this will help to ensure I am tracking and reporting on schedule, there is still the challenge of finding the time to DO all the assessing, especially considering some of my kids have very unique goals from others. Whole group assessments to report back on goal sheets are simply not an option for me.

What I plan on doing is giving each student a “Me Binder,” that contains all of the Goal Tracking Sheets I have created for them. Behind each goal sheet, will be actual activities and assessments for the student to complete that will provide me with the data I need to report on.  I have already outlined time in next year’s schedule for “Me Binders,” where students will grab their binder and complete a task that will provide me with the necessary data.  

Now, when I have to attend a committee meeting and report progress, I can just grab the student's “Me Binder,” filled with goals, tracking, and student work to share! Easy!

I hope you find this useful! I would love to hear feedback on this idea, as this is a summer planning initiative and I have not yet tried it!