Middle School Advice

Have you guys seen this wonderful letter written by an exceptional mom to her daughter about staring middle school? I think the message applies for both boys and girls.

Take a minute to read it  and tell me what advice would you give a young student starting middle school?

Teacher Organizers Aren't Just For Teachers

Thanks to my friend Chandra over at C Jayne Teach I am getting organized for the new year. My new Teacher Anchor just arrived and I am thrilled. #cjayneteach #teacheranchor

Here's how I am using mine (sorry the pics are blurry my camera phone just couldn't do the Anchor justice):

Connecting our curriculum to Common Core Standards seems to be a reoccurring theme at conferences and meetings I attend. I love that all the standards for K-3 are included in this planner and you can get the standards for other grades on her website. These easy sheets allow me to write down when I taught those standards, which will be easy to fill in as I write my lesson plans and then can use as part of my evaluation at the end of the year.

This fantastic page is at the end of each Common Core section and allows me to write down what lesson I did to meet standards. For example: 5th Grade- Socratic Seminar on fear or 3rd Grade- "Invisible Boy" lesson on friendship (see standards it met here.)

Instead of subjects I broke down my sections into the different parts of my program, including; Individual, Groups, Classroom Guidance,  Program Planning, and Other. Under other I will write down meetings, IEP/ 504 planning, parent conferences, collaborations, etc. 

I love that each day I can write down students I need to see or walk in.  

My bookshelf is overflowing.

I love my friends but they are trouble! I wanted to show them McKays and somehow I left with 30 books. Guess my resolution to stop buying books for school didn't last long. On the plus side I got some of my favs like "Nighttime Ninja" and two animal photography books all for $27. I have got to stop hanging out with librarians!!

My most expensive purchase was a $5.75 hardback copy of "Dog Heaven". Totally worth it though as I feel you can't ever have too many grief books. 

I found some great character education books like "I Am A  Leader" and "I Can Be Fair" for 25 cents.

I adore "Nighttime Ninja" so when I got it for $1.25 I was thrilled. It's sneaky and fun because it's a great mystery. I love that you can guess and come up with tons of ideas of what the nighttime ninja is doing. My plan is to use this as an icebreaker this year. After I introduce the book we will brainstorm/chart our guesses as to the nighttime ninja's mission. After reading it we can re-read and see if there were any clues we missed. Then students will create their own nighttime ninja doing something they did over the summer. We will then guess what each person did.


Find more of my favorite books on Good Reads!

On another note (yep my ADHD just kicked in) I just got these business cards ready for the ASCA Conference. What do you guys think?