I love my job!!

Okay, so I totally love my job! I love my kids. I love that I can behave like an 8 year old all day... I just love what I do!! If you're a teacher, you can concur with me for the most part, right?! 

Today I am finally going to start giving you some teacher ideas!

The first thing I can say about being an effective teacher is you have to be organized.  I hate searching for information all day and finally finding it when the lesson is over.  So, just like my home, I created a "Control Journal".  I call it control because that is what I am...type A, self professed control freak.  In my control journal I keep everything important.  Info about students, calendars, space for meeting notes, lesson plans, things to copy and file, etc.  I will be sharing everything contained over the next few Teacherista Tuesdays, but today I am going to start with how I plan my week.

I do everything through a two page lesson plan template.  It has MY schedule in order and with the time frames I teach.  When I am ready to plan for the next week (which I do every Monday for the NEXT week) I have the space needed. 

At my school, we are required to turn in typed plans.  On Monday I create MY personal plans.  Then on Tuesday I type them up and email them to my principal.  It's so much easier to create HER plans when mine are laid out and organized. 

I do "Workshop" style lessons in my class, so I am never teaching whole group except for Science and Social Studies.  If you are interested in what my lesson planning pages looked like before I switched to workshops, please comment or email me.  I will be happy to send the information!

Below is what the two pages look like for how I teach now.  You can see that I have the time frames mapped out, places to write out the things that change each week, the information that stays the same, and space for my objectives and stations!!

When I am teaching each day, all I have to do is open my control journal to the lesson planning tab and I have everything at my fingertips! It is a wonderful 'quick reference' to what I am planning on doing...even on those days where everything is going crazy!

I love my job, but I have to say that if I was not organized, I would not love it as much as I do!!

Enjoy all, and feel free to comment or email me with any of your questions!

Tilly!