2013-2014 Teacher Binder

What a week! I finally thought I was going to get to finish painting/decorating our downstairs bathroom but one phone call changed that! Over at our rental property a huge tree limb fell down and ripped the power lines to the electrical box out...needless to say me and my husband have been working hard at clearing the debris and trying to find an electrician to get it fixed.

Today was a somewhat relaxing day around the house. Since my hubby is at the fire station it was just me and the kiddos. It also gave me some time to work on my Teacher Binder that I've been wanting to put together. I love the idea of having everything I need in one organized Binder. I am a very organized person but with having 6 kids (all doing different things), my school schedule and my husbands schedule it begins to become somewhat of a challenge.

I love looking at Pinterest for ideas on what to do to my classroom and came across a few good ideas on what I would like to incorporate into my Teacher Binder. One of the Best Pins that i found was
Great Binder Ideas! I don't like to pay to get things that I can create myself so I used her ideas to create some of the documents that I have placed in my Binder.

I have really grown to like the chevron print so I created my Title pages with it. (I had my stuff printed at Office Max so I wouldn't waste all my ink...unfortunately they didn't turn out the way I had initially created them but they are still cute.)
 

This slides into the outer cover of my Binder.



 The rest of my sections look like this...

Other sections: Lesson Plans, Special Pop., Parent Contact,

Behavior/Absent Log, Grades, Tutoring, Misc.



This is my week at a glance that goes in my Planner Section. I love this because I can quickly
write down and see what is going on this week. I use my calendar on my IPAD to keep track of
everything but I like to have a written copy as well and this is PERFECT!

This goes in my Lesson Plan section:
I love this especially if you have mutliple preps. You can see
what you are going to be doing day by day on one page!

I absolutely LOVE this Parent Contact Log. I have always needed
more room to write notes and this is PERFECT!

This lovely To-Do list will be kept at the front of my Binder!
I have a serious problem of writing down things I need to do on seperate
pieces of paper and then by the end of the day I have no idea where those
papers are!


  I am very excited to use this system this year! Now that I've created this binder I guess it's time to start my 1st 9 weeks lesson planning!

until next time,

The Math Diva :)

Change is good!

 Change is good! At least that is what I keep telling myself :) I'm not one for change most of the time but because I am going through so much change with this upcoming school year I am going to embrace it!

I am new to this blogging stuff and this is my first blog post! I have found that Facebook and other social media drives me nuts because I don't want to hear how many times a day people are working out and I really don't like hearing about all the bickering I've seen on there lately...not to mention I'm sure they are tired of me always talking about school and posting pictures of my classroom...the only people who like it are my school teacher friends :) I enjoy talking about what things I create for my classroom and listening to what other teachers are doing in theirs (My husband is a good sport about listening to me but he just does it because he loves me :) ) I am hoping that starting a blog about my classroom will help me manage my excitement about my classroom so I can try to have "normal" conversations with "non-teacher" friends :)

Just to let you know a little about me...I am married to the most amazing man in the world! He is a firefighter and my hero! We have been married for almost 2 years and I have never been happier. We have a blended family of 6 kids; 3 girls and 3 boys, and yes we have been called the Brady Bunch! Our kids range from pre-school to Senior in High School. Yes, we have a busy schedule once school starts as you can imagine! So I hope that you enjoy reading about my life journey this school year!

This will be the start of my 3rd year of teaching! I teach at an inner-city school and have never been this happy :). I teach 8th grade Math (and it can be a challenge getting the kids to LOVE math!) and to add to my title I will now be the department chair (I might add this scares me a little bit but I am excited about this new adventure). 5 out of our 7 math positions are being filled with new teachers and I am excited to get to know them. I know we are going to do great things this year.

During the summer I typically do a bunch of "school" stuff but until yesterday I hadn't touched the 8 crates I brought home

My nice clean room before I brought out the school stuff

 8 crates later

and 1 big mess!

I was able to throw away a bunch of stuff that I would not be using again

and this is the final product!

Now I can start on my back to school projects! I am hoping to have time to finish my Teacher Binder sometime this week and I'll post about it when it is complete.

I am also excited about getting my keys to my classroom this week so I can post before and after pictures of it! I think that is my favorite part of the year...decorating my classroom and making it my home away from home :)

until next time,

The Math Diva :)