Stay Organized with Teacher Charts, Forms, and Checklists

I am continually creating (and recreating) charts, forms, and checklists to help me stay organized in the classroom.  I've revised most of them at least three or four times, working to make them as efficient as they can be in serving their purpose: to help me save time and energy so I can place more focus on getting my first graders to achieve.  

I've decided to compile many of these forms into a single TPT product so they can also be of use to YOU.  I will be adding to the pack as I reformat additional checklists for public use, as well as writing additional individualized blog posts on how these forms and checklists fit into my various classroom procedures and learning routines.  

FORMS THAT TRACK ASSESSMENT:

~ Dolch Sight Word Assessment Checklists ~ 
Provided in blackline only, as you will need to copy one page for every student

~ Letter Reversal Tracking Checklist ~ 

Provided in both color and blackline

Print a single master copy each trimester/term.  Keep beside you when reading your students' writing, and make notes of which letters your little firsts are still struggling with.  Use this form to inform handwriting instruction, and to aid in assigning handwriting grades at the end of the trimester/quarter.

~ Number Reversal Tracking Checklist ~ 

Provided in both color and blackline

Print a single master copy each trimester/term.  Like with the Letter Reversals form, keep on hand while reviewing students' math work, making note of which numbers need additional practice from specific students.  Every couple weeks I go through my checklist and send home worksheets with students who need more practice printing certain numbers. This also provides me with documentation to inform parents of areas their child could use more help with at home.  

~ Words Their Way Spelling: Students' Sorts Checklist ~ 

Provided in blackline only

Forms included for Letter Name Sort, as well as Emergent, Within Word, and Derivational Endings.  Since the entire first grade class is not working from the same starting point in the Words Their Way program, I created a tracking form to help me remember which students are on what sorts.  I used to have the students listed according to their group, but as I try to transition to the Daily 5/CAFE system, my initial reading group levels are a bit in flux.  Thus, I've decided to track individual student progress in spelling rather than group progress.  Students who started ahead of Sort 1 at the beginning of the year had a line drawn through the skipped sorts to show their new starting point (based on the Words Their Way Spelling Inventory I gave at the beginning of the year).  Sometimes I simply place a check mark to show that a sort has been successfully completed, sometimes I write the date the final sorting mat was turned in.  Sometimes I give the students a grade (out of 5 points) to show that the student has not entirely grasped this spelling pattern.  Honestly, I'm a bit all over the place right now in how I utilize this form while I figure out what system and procedure will work best for me.  

{Future post coming soon on how I've been navigating the Words Their Way system, and the ways I've kept myself organized with three different groups working on separate word sort patterns.}  

FORMS THAT KEEP YOU ORGANIZED:

~ Teacher Accounts Passwords ~ 
Provided in both color and blackline
I swear, I register for more teacher resource websites than I can even remember, and every single one of them seem to have different requirements for their password.  Sooooo, that means I have to make slight modifications to my usual password, but I can never remember which modifications had to be made to each site!  Did I need to include uppercase and lowercase letters in this password, or did they make me include a punctuation mark?  Did the password for this site have to be at least 8 characters long?  Or did they simply reject my usual password for being "too weak"?  I'm usually pulling my hair out by the third password attempt.  And then, when I realize that I might not even have the correct user name, and have to retry all the passwords I previously entered several minutes ago but thought were incorrect because the user name was incorrect . . . that's when I'm about ready to throw my laptop out the window.  
I've since started saving passwords to Apple's Key Chain for sites with non-sensitive data, but I highly recommend keeping a paper copy handy in addition to saving passwords on your computer.  Keep these pages in a safe place, for those instances when you're not at your own computer, (for example, I don't save passwords on my work computer, only on my personal computer, so if I accidentally left my laptop at home one day, I'd be out of luck), or in case your computer bites the dust, and takes your information along with it.  (I do have an iCloud account though.  Note to self: check to see if Key Chain access is preserved through iCloud if something happened to my computer and I needed to replace it.)

FORMS THAT MANAGE BEHAVIOR:

~ Parent Communication Log ~ 

Provided in color and blackline

Keep plenty of blank forms on hand to track and document all of your 

meetings, phone calls, and emails with parents.

~ Bathroom Log ~ 
Provided in blackline only

Print a new blank form at the beginning of each week to monitor students'  trips to the bathroom.

Use to document excessive bathroom use, or to provide documentation for a possible medical issue.

    

How to Keep Student Folders Neat

I noticed that even after giving my students folders for their morning work, their papers were simply destroyed at the end of the week when they turned them in. I realized that the main reason for this was that first graders don't know how to properly put papers into folders. While they attempt to cram each sheet into one of the two folder pockets, most students' papers will inevitably look like a paper factory explosion after being "put away" in their folder.

To solve this, I think I've come up with a quick and easy hack for teaching students how to make sure their papers stay neat in their folders:

Take a highlighter, or in this case below, a thick Crayola marker, and draw a line along the seam/fold line of each folder. 

Instruct students to make sure the entire length of the yellow line (or whatever color you choose) is visible before closing their folders.  This gives students a visual self-check when putting papers away.  

This hasn't immediately fixed the problem of messy papers for every one of my firsties, but it has definitely helped about half the class become better organized with their folders since I introduced this idea several weeks ago.  I had to remind students constantly at first, asking, "Can you see your folder's yellow line?" but their necessity for reminders has lessened each day. 

Try it!  It will take you less than 5 minutes to mark your students' folders, and even if it helps half your class, that's a huge battle won against the paper monster right there. 

Creative to the Core: Tracing & Drawing with Carbon Paper

I learned some wonderful art techniques this summer at the Getty Center's Creative to the Core professional development workshop for educators. Here's one of many incredible ideas I took away from the class, on using carbon paper to recreate famous works of art. 

Directions:

Bottom Layer: Blank drawing paper (This will be the paper your final image is drawn on.)

Middle Layer: Carbon paper (Make sure the dark side of the paper facing down.)

Top Layer: The photograph or image you are transferring (Note that students will be tracing over this image with a ball point pen or pencil, so don't use originals that you want to keep perfect.)

You may want to consider stapling the three sheets together with several staples at the top, allowing students to flip the top two sheets as they monitor their progress, while preventing the papers from slipping or shifting (which would distort the final image).  

I practiced this myself using a color copy of a Franco de Sarto sketch (which is currently on exhibit at the Getty Center in Los Angeles).  I noticed that this brand of carbon paper is sensitive enough to distinguish varying levels of pencil pressure as I traced, allowing me to shade lightly in some areas, and darker in others as I followed the original artist's contours. 

The image on the left is a color copy of de Sarto's sketch that I used.  You can see where I drew over it with a black colored pencil. The image on the right is the result of the carbon paper imprints.

Students can then either sign their drawings and let them stand alone as their final product, or they can color their drawings with crayon, colored pencil, or watercolors to finish. 

I'm looking forward to trying this with my current class. (Just as soon as Amazon brings me the carbon paper I've ordered!)  And while I'm normally a fan of having students use color for everything, from art projects to math journals, in this case I'm planning on having students stop when they've finished drawing and shading with their pencils. Sometimes less really is more. 

Phonics Writing Bulletin Board: -ow/-ou Houses

I'm proud of me today!  I changed the students' work on my primary bulletin board this afternoon!  (It had been about 6 weeks since I'd put new work up. I know, it's quite embarrassing.)  As I've written about before, it's very easy for my perfectionist tendencies to keep me from accomplishing tasks, because I always want to wait to do things until I have time to "do it perfectly."  Well, the problem with that kind of thinking is that those times never come.  So I can get behind on a lot of things.  Like changing my bulletin boards.  

But I'm trying reeeeallly hard to let things just be good enough. For example, it has to be okay that the spacing between the first and second rows is larger than the spacing between the second and third rows.  (Don't act like you didn't notice!)  And I'm not going to let myself freak out about the fact that the bottom row is curving upwards slightly towards the middle. With 35 kids this year, I need to let myself just be proud that 1.) they all understood the assignment, 2.) they all (with a few exceptions) completed it, and 3.) for the most part they all did a really good job!  After all, isn't that what teaching is supposed to be about?  I mean, instead of beautiful bulletin boards that look like the Paper Source windows?  (Not that I don't still dream of creating beautiful bulletin boards that look like the Paper Source windows . . .)

Check out some of my students' writing!  I am so proud of this student!  Listen to that incredibly interesting writer's voice!  And this is a student who is in one of my lowest reading groups!  Granted, he misspelled his sight word said, reversed his b in boy, and forgot to capitalize the first letter of most of his sentences, but those are just mechanics! I can EASILY teach him to fix those simple errors. It is  much more difficult teaching students how to choose interesting subjects, and to then create something that people want to read more of. 

And what about this little gem?  Reading things like this makes my heart smile.  

This happy little student not only wrote a wonderful little narrative, complete with characters, setting, and sequence of events, BUT, he capitalized his proper nouns!  (I just need to teach him that the word king in King Cowder is part of the name, and therefore needs to be capitalized as well.)  And, he made up a word (Cowder) using his new spelling pattern!  (Unless he meant to use his spelling word chowder, which is definitely a possibility.  I'll have to ask him to read it to me tomorrow to know for sure.)  And I love that he didn't just write "Once upon a time," he wrote "Once upon a long long time"!  Yay!  This is so exciting!  My firsties are becoming writers!

Things I Realized About Me (During SCKC)

Southern California Kindergarten Conference 2015

I have just returned from two very long (but very productive and inspiring) days at the Southern California Kindergarten Conference in Pasadena, and I find myself reflecting on a few things that I've realized/newly remembered about myself over these past few days:

My chair during the last session,
with all my bags spread out
around me on the floor.

1. I like to spread out.  Like, literally.  I use up a lot of physical space.  Well, I'd like to think I'm not that huge, but all the junk I carry around with me certainly is.  From the two bags around my feet (my purse aka Mary Poppins' carpet bag, along with my bright red conference freebie tote) and my Staedtler 20 pack of marker pens, laptop, & Starbucks cup taking up the seat next to me, and my notebook filled with notes splayed across my lap as I wrote, my fellow conference-goers were tripping all over me and my stuff before and after every session!  It was a tinnnyy bit embarrassing.  
2. I heart handouts.  I just love, love, love them.  Even though I'm taking copious notes anyway, I want to see all the major points outlined in a clear way, and in an adorable font.  Handouts help me follow along with the presentation better, even if they're just bullet points on what's being discussed.  And if there's a teaching idea being shared that can be copied and put in the packet, I want that as well so I can remember it later.  Which brings me to my next point:
3. I have always been, and am still very much, a visual learner.  I must see it to learn it and to remember it.  If I just sat and listened to each session's presentation without taking any notes this weekend, I'm not sure how much I would retain by the time I got home.  I just don't remember things that I hear as well as things that I see or read.  (Which is probably one of the reasons I love handouts.  See how everything just fits together?)  I have to take notes so I can review them later and remind myself what I learned.  Which segues perfectly into point # four: 

   
   

   This photograph really covers bullet
   points 2, 3, and 4, doesn't it?

4. I am a fantastic note-taker.  Taking notes is my jam.  I love using all different colors, lines,  and boxes to separate ideas and outline my thoughts.  I really enjoy making each page look pretty, while still being useful.  {You could probably say I seek that in all areas of my life: to make things around me simultaneously beautiful and functional.}  
5. I'm really good at what I do.  Now, I'm most certainly not the best teacher I know, nor the most experienced.  I've learned from some incredible master teachers who still leave me in awe of their talent.  But I am certainly not the worst teacher I know either!  Hearing from some of the most renowned teacher-bloggers, and realizing that I'm already implementing a lot of the ideas they shared, was very encouraging for me and definitely gave me a self-esteem boost.  I don't mean this in a boastful way, but simply as a reminder that as teachers, we all need to remind ourselves of the things we're good at.  I had been feeling like I was in a bit of a teaching slump since returning from Christmas break, discouraged about how far along in the curriculum I've gotten with my current class (as compared to last year's class). But sometimes a day away from school, with other teachers who also love to teach, is all it takes for me to become newly inspired and excited about my profession.  It's easy to forget that this is what I was put on earth to do.  

So on that positive note, it's time for me to begin writing 35 (yes, thirty-five!) report card comments.  Which are due on Tuesday.  And I haven't even started.  Not even a little.  And I have an enormous stack of assessments that also need to be graded and entered into the grade book.  What was I saying before about being excited and inspired???

Where's my blog design????

Ahhh!  What happened to my beautiful blog design?  To all my new friends from the Southern California Kindergarten Conference, this is not what my blog is supposed to look like!  This blog feels just like my first graders sometimes - I can't turn my back on you for more than seven seconds without something going awry!  Time to call in the big guns at the Cutest Blog on the Block to see if they can fix it . . .

UPDATE: The Cutest Blog on the Block website seems to be having the same problem as mine!  That can't be a coincidence.  (Unfortunately I know nothing about writing code for blog designs, so I have no idea how the two events could be connected.)  Hopefully when they fix theirs, however, it will (positively) affect mine as well.  

53 Ways to Check for Understanding

Here is a link to an amazing list of strategies for checking for understanding from Edutopia.  Before today I had only been reading Edutopia articles as they popped up in my Twitter feed, but just now I finally registered to go onto the site and explore all of their resources/articles.  (I don't know why websites like this make you "register" just to read their articles.  Especially when all I did was enter my name and email, check the box that says "teacher," and create a password.  Imagine me making my annoyed face here.)  Petty annoyances aside, there are a lot of great resources on Edutopia that I look forward to reading - if I can just remember which of my passwords I chose when I registered.

Telling Time Printables: Now Updated!

Hi, friends!  I've updated my Telling Time Printables!  I've added 25 more pages, which includes several math journal prompts, and additional practice pages for each skill: telling time to the hour, to the half-hour, to the quarter-hour, and to five-minute intervals.  Go to Teachers Pay Teachers here to download my preview freebie!  Each page includes the Common Core standard(s) it addresses in the top right corner.  

(Any of these pages can be used in your students' math journals.  If you're using composition books, just print the page you want to use at 75% before copying, and it should fit perfectly!)