My Summer To Do List.

Ok last summer I made a To DO list.  It was actually pretty handy as I could just come back to it now and then and see how I was doing. I am going to do that again this year since A) it is 4 am and I can not sleep, and B) It helps me stay organized.  <---we all know I could use a little more organization.

So here we go.  

Summer 2014 To Do List.

• Birthday board (I made one for my grandmother, and Jake's two grandmothers last year that looks like this:

This is actually a terrible picture.  Sorry.

Then I saw the post on Pinterest:

This is perfect for my middle school classroom.  I had almost 200 birthdays that I liked to post last year.  It took up soooooo much space, and if you recall my classroom is super tiny.  This year I have been promised smaller classrooms by our district and our administration.  We hired a third 6th grade math teacher, so our numbers should be closer to 20 per class.  Putting me at 120 children. So I went to the store and got all the supplies...

Don't worry, I am posting a blog about it the second it is done! WOOP WOOP this one is done as of 8/8/14.  I am blogging about it on Monday for my very first MONDAY MADE IT!

• Hall Passes.  We have always been a gender segregated school.  Next year will mark the first year we are not.  I had one generic pass that I had laminated that students would take to the restroom and put back in a pocket.  I want to do something like that but I want to have one for boys and one for girls.  I saw this one on Etsy after I went and looked at the price of the custom birthday board:

I like the looks of this one.  Although I do not like the media or the office one.  I would probably just do three passes.  Boys, Girls, and Water. Bam!  DONE!

• My I'm Done wall needs to get updated.  I use this wall for differentiated activities that students can do when they get done with their work for the day. This worked really well for my highflyers in math workshop who would get done and needed to stay busy.
• ORGANIZE MY STATIONS BY STANDARD  Oh this is going to be hell.  This year I had 5 preps. I did a math rotation for each prep.  I have stations, task cards, and activities coming out of my ears.  I had a Student TA for the last half of the year and I had her work hard to get them all sorted and into baggies.  My summer task is to get them all complete (ie. re-print and laminate any missing pieces)and to put them into recipe card holders like this:

  I got about 700 of them from the dollar spot at Target. I also got the file size ones for larger games.  After I get them all organized into the holders I am putting them in the Sterlite shoeboxes that I love so much and organizing them by Standard.

Then, When I was at Michaels yesterday getting spraypaint for my girlfriends wedding next week I found these:

I have been trying to find something to store games in!  This is perfect!  I found 20 of them for $0.20 each!  OF course I bought all of them that the store had!

I also bought 2 of these:

because they were on sale for 5$ a piece.  I plan to use them to store ALL the games that are not in use at the time.

and four of these:

Because they were $2.50 a piece.  I plan to use these in the stations for choice/leveling. 

• Make new word wall words
• Figure out how I want to organize my ISN's next year.  I think I actually want to separate the notebooks in to 4 sections. 1)table of contents, 2)lessons, 3)vocabulary and 4) daily math review. I will be playing around with this next week.
• Make new standards posters Done and Printed!
• Make new rule sets
• Make something for displaying good work
• New bulletin board headers (grades, math workshop, current unit)
• I need to make something for my take a break station
• New Show what you know board (I will be giving away my old one!!!-it just does not match my new theme)
• Go through last years ISN and decide what to keep what to chuck and what to alter
• Data Binders.  I need to start making my kids work harder than me.  I have been reading the book "Never Work Harder Than Your Students"  They should be very aware of where they are and how they are doing.  One thing I noticed from our Great Multiplication Mastery Contest was by allowing the students to track their progress they were motivated to learn and do more. I was looking at this blog the other day about math binders from the wonder teacher Kristine Nannini at Young Teacher Love I really like the way that she has her binders set up.  I am not sure I, or my students, have the space for a binder so I will have to be creative on this one. I might use a folder or something.  Not sure yet. But something needs to happen.
• Figure out how to REALLY utilize classroom jobs in my classroom
• Decide if I am going to use 

or

for table supplies.  I used both last year.  I like the accessibility and the no spilling of drawers with the caddies, but I like the "out of site out of mind" aspect of the drawers. I have the drawers.  I would have to buy the caddies again as mine got trashed. I decided to go with the drawers.  Since I already had them it seamed stupid to spend more money than I needed to on caddies that will probably get trashed again.

• really get my math workshop strategy down this year. I have been reading Miss Nannini's blog post about Data Binders. This was something I struggled with last year and I need to figure out how to do it with the number of students I have and the size of my room. Rather than a workshop I am going to be utilizing a choice board with differentiated options. 
• Make this:

and also a movie of me and how my class works for open house.  I will not be there because of my trip to Europe.  I want to make a video of me sort of talking about me and the way I run my classes so that when kids and parents show up they have something to at least see to "meet" their math teacher.  Math is a scary subject going into middle school and I am actually really sad I will not be at open house. I think though by having the video playing and this board students and parents might not feel so overwhelmed. 

I am also going to include an area or space for parents to know that they are welcome in my room as a volunteer ANY TIME.

• Make Privacy screens
• Figure out what I am doing with these Ipads
• Make classroom blogs for homework
• I sort of want to update my blog.  Not that it is bad, but it is sort of messy and all over the place.  I need to look at more and see what I like and what I do not like. Thanks Lindsey!
• pretend that I had a summer.

Well that is it folks.

I am curious as to what your Summer To Do list is. Link up! I would love to have everyone in one spot!

Cheers,