Everything Organization

I do like to organize. I like pretty folders and files. I like colourful drawers and trays. I like labelling boxes and shelves. I like to organize cupboards and rooms. Disclaimer – even though I try to be organized, it doesn’t always go to plan. I do end up with piles of messy papers, misplace things and my pen drive is a mess.

Life is very hectic as a teacher. Constantly changing from one class to the next. Being handed jotters and pieces of paper. It is very easy to lose important documents, pupil work and feel chaotic.

For me, how do I cope?

Classroom Management #1

Often there is a pair of rose-tinted glasses on my blogs about awesome lessons and amazing students. While there are great things going on in my classroom there are also periods, classes, days, weeks etc where I am faced with behaviour issues that impact on learning.

I would like to regularly share stories about difficult situations I have faced in my classroom (or corridor) to paint the realistic view of my teaching life. Some of these stories will have happened as recently as last week or as long ago as I can remember. All the names have been changed. 

First Day Plans

It’s a funny thing to think about first day plans after the summer holidays as in Scotland we start with our new classes for a few weeks in June before the holidays. So most of my first days with classes have passed. However, I will be meeting my S1 class (11-12 years old) for the first time next week. (Small lie: I did meet them briefly in June when they visited the school for a few days)

So what will be my first day plans for my new S1 class? How do I decide what to do on the very first lesson. I’ve had many first lessons over the years so I began to think back over what i had done previously and here’s what I found:

• I will start the course officially – hit the ground running – set these expectations for the year ahead
• I will set problem solving tasks to see how pupils work together and follow instructions
• I will give a numeracy task to evaluate where pupils skills are

So my thoughts are: is there something I can do to cover all of the above?

Here’s what I have come up with:

Goals for this year

I have published 76 posts since the start of 2016. Only 4 of these were published in 2017. What happened?

I’m not sure really. It could be that work became incredibly busy but more likely I didn’t feel I had a lot to share that was new. I had written so much in the first year of my blog and I had run out of things to say.

So I was so excited when I read this on Twitter:

Let's Blog Together! #SundayFunday is back! #MTBoS Just #PushSend! #MSmathChat #MathChat https://t.co/Mrpf3pumhU pic.twitter.com/UdbXSir0OW

— Julie (@jreulbach) August 1, 2017

This was exactly what I needed to get me back in my blogging ways. It might be that I don’t manage to blog every week but I am definitely going to try.