Management Monday

Wow, what a day! Baby girl was up almost all night! Of course it would have to bee the night before hubby's off day. We also make plans for his off day. Today's plan was to finish cleaning out our office to make a playroom for Little Man. We got a lot done but it still isn't finished!

Obviously being on leave my biggest concern for school lately has been not being there. With that in mind I thought I would share my normal substitute binder. The cover and dividers I found on a blog awhile back. After searching today I can't find where they came from. If you know please let me know so I can link and give proper credit.

This is the binder cover. Nice and bright so it quickly gets noticed on my desk.

The first  section in my binder is classroom basics. This section includes a class list and a seating chart, shown above.



The next section is the daily schedule. Here I have a copy of my class schedule, as well as, my assistants schedule.



  

 

The next section is Lesson Plans. In this section I have 3 things. The first is a sub plan (middle picture). This is the overview of the day. The second is the calendar (left picture). This shows every slide in my calendar and what to click for the songs. The third is our reading powerpoint for the week (right picture). This shows how the reading should flow for each day. I change this out each week when we change stories.








The next section is the procedure section. This has a lot of information in it. It has daily classroom procedures, center procedures, school procedures. This section also has information on the playground rules. Emergency procedures are also found in this section.




The last section of information is an overview of my behavior management system. I don't expect a sub to do things exactly the way I do, but I would like for them do follow the same idea. I like for them to understand the apple colors and to give purples rather than take away greens. See a full explanation of my behavior management system here.



The final section of the binder is not informational. It is extra work. This is for those kids that always finish everything fast. If they can't just sit quietly (and what kindergartener can?), then the sub can pull from here. It has sight word activities and other review things, such as color words and counting to 10. One of my favorites in this section is a Write 100 words you find in the room! This keeps them busy for awhile, plus they get up and burn some energy. It also keeps them quite because they don't want anyone else to get their words!!

This goes in the front of the binder in a pocket labeled please complete and leave for me. This also came from the person who created the lovely cover and divider pages I use. Please let me know if this is your work or if you know who it is I would love to credit them!

Have a great week!

Freebie Friday

This is my first Freebie Friday. I am giving away an item I made for student assessment. I glue them in file folders and let the kids color their own during our conferences. This what I send home as progress reports. I make a few changes second semester (don't worry I will post that later!). Click below for your copy!

Pinterest Thursday

Before I get to what I am pinning today I want to mention a new blogger and the give away she is having. Molly over at Classroom Confetti is having a Holiday give away for a $20 Amazon card or a $10 TpT card!! Hop over and check her out!



Okay on to my Pinterest addiction. I am off on maternity leave right now and it seems all I want to do is organize, or plan ways to organize. These are some of the great organization tools I have found. They are not all school related but don't we all love to organize everywhere!!!

Source: Uploaded by user via Markeeta on Pinterest

Source: designfinch.com via Markeeta on Pinterest

Source: bhg.com via Markeeta on Pinterest

Happy Pinning!

A New Beginning

So I started this blog hoping it would make me more creative in my teaching and connect me to other teachers. Thus far I have complete neglected it. My posts have been sporadic and random. I have no focus and have not been consistent in my posting. I think it was because of several reasons: new school, new baby on the way, already having a 17 month old (when I started, he is 20 months now!). Well baby number 2 has arrived and I have been at my new school for 1/2 a year now, so no more excuses. I will blog more, create more, and share more. I will work on my TpT store and do what I set out to do in the first place, become a better teacher!

I am a complete blog stalker and have found so many I love and aspire to be like. One of my faves is Kinder Kraziness by Laura Starnes. She has preplanned a theme for each day to keep her focused and posting regularly. I am borrowing that idea! Here is my plan for posting:
Management Monday (this is a very popular thing to post about on Mondays, we teachers love alliteration!)
Reading Tuesday (I teach Scott Forsman, so most my posts will relate to that series)
Math Wednesday (We use Envision, which the jury is still out on, plus I am wanting to try my hand a Guided Math and Math Stations, so expect lots of posts and questions on that!)
Pinterest Thursday (I am so addicted to Pinterest so I will post at least one thing I find each week, I may go overboard with this one! and it may not always be school related!)
Freebie Friday (This will be a tough one for me, but it is a goal. I will create one item to give away each week.)

So that's the plan! Let's hope it works!


Saturday and Sunday belong to my family so I won't post much on those days

Teachers Pay Teachers

So I haven't posted in a while, but my life is a little crazy right now. We are waiting on baby (who could arrive any minute!) and they still haven't gotten someone to take my leave. I am screaming inside, but I will keep it in since a scream from my classroom gets about 60 people running through my door. You would think I was having a baby or something! Anyway a friend of mine convinced me I should start putting up some of my stuff on TpT. It isn't super fancy with over the top clip art (which I love to buy!), but it tends to be effective and serve its purpose. I am excited and have two items so far. I can't wait to work on some more, right now most my stuff I am working on is to supplement our math, Envision. I like the idea of Envision but it needs some support! Any way, let me know what you think and I promise I will work on getting better at posting.

Funny Moment

This past week we were learning our numbers 0-5. I was talking the kids through writing a number 5. I told them to draw a line from the top to middle, give it a belly from middle to bottom then put a hat on him. One of my little boys looked down at his 5 and back up at me several times. Then he said Mrs. Gillenwater is the 5 pregnant cause it kinda looks like you if you had on a hat! It was so funny, but after he said that and we talked about how the five looked like me all of my kids could write the number 5. I told my assistant that I would have to get one of those pregnancy pillows from the Motherhood Maternity dressing room to teach writing the number five every year!

Maternity Leave

Wow it has been forever since I have posted! Guess this year has been busier than I noticed! Today is my baby shower and I am super excited, we have my little boy a Big Bro shirt to wear and it is to cute!!! So what have I been doing this past month since I haven't posted? I have been preparing for maternity leave. This time is very different for me. With my son I was leaving at Spring Break and only coming back for 4 days at the end of the year, plus I knew we were moving and that classroom was most likely going to be my interims the next year. So I gave her complete control and let her do and change whatever she wanted! This time is different. I will only be out 23 school days, that's right I said only 23! I am due the week before our Thanksgiving Break which is only 3 1/2 weeks before Christmas Break! I am going back in January. With new evaluation system here in TN 15% of my evaluation comes from my students tested growth. So to recap a little I feel the need to be very controlling this time because 1) I am only going to be gone 23 days! 2) I plan to return to this school and classroom and hope to stay there a long time! 3) My evaluation score is partially determined by their growth!

So now the real question is how controlling did I become? Well let's see I have written the lesson plans for while I am gone. I understand that even writing my plans a week ahead is hard since things pop up, and things need to be retaught, but the skeleton is there. I have created the Power Points, activites, and centers for all the reading stories we do this first semester. I have created a detailed explanation of how center time works and how groups are determined (because I do realize my reading groups will change a little while I am gone!). Also, I have created everything for calendar time and have printed DETAILED instructions. We have worked so hard up to this point and they have got the routine down, plus they are starting to really act like Kindergarteners and are starting to read, I just don't want to lose all that. Is that wrong? Am I crazy (don't answer that!)?

That explains where this month has gone, preparing my regular days plus spending every free moment preparing for while I am gone! I have lots of things I want to post about and maybe now I will have time to now that my classroom is setup to run without me through December!

Here is a question for you now! What did you or would you do if taking a maternity leave? How controlling are you?

I just realized how much taking a leave shows your personality type. Hello my name is Type A!