Now Teach: Organizing for Instruction

Day Three of Blog Hoppin' Teacher Appreciation Week.  I'm pretty proud of myself for doing it three days in a row!  Today's theme is "Organizing for Instruction."  Difficult to think of, since I have almost another month before I have to teach.  Of course, I've already written my lesson plan for the first week and the unit plan for the first month, but that's just me.  (Yes, really.  I have the entire week planned out, activities and handouts and everything.)

I'm not really good at the organization thing. I have good intentions, but I lack follow through. You know how they say middle school teachers are like middle school students, right? There are a few things I do that are productive and save me time. I'm not organized, but I strive on structure. (If I could get away with having the same order of activities every day,mor even one consistent activity every week like Lectura Lunes, Translation Tuesday, Juego Jueves, I'd be really happy. Yes, I've given it that much thought.)
Among my "best" organization strategies are:

1. Daily agenda posts. On one side of my board I have the day, date, and weather in Spanish. On the other side I have the essential question, list of activities, homework assignment, and upcoming tests or deadlines. I'm not foolish enough to think its for the kids, it's mostly for ME, but I like having it there to point to when students ask the same questions.
2. Daily record sheet - I keep all the information about each class day on a separate sheet of paper, and most of those papers eventually make it into a binder. I've adapted the template as district expectations changed (most recently added the essential question), but it's always included a record of which students were absent, who was at the nurse or music lessons, who didn't hand in homework and who made up a missed assignment. That way I have a written record that I can complete in seconds while teaching, to accompany the online grade and attendance system. I can't tell you how many times a <strike>parent</strike> student will tell me I made a mistake with homework, but I have a written record. The most popular excuse always revolves around absenteeism, which led me to...
3. The absent files. I have a black stacky thing (paper sorter? See the next post for a picture) that I labeled with each class period, and I put all handouts with the absent students' names right on them. I also write out homework assignments (or on the handout I'll state the handout is the HW) and upcoming test / quiz / project reminders.
4. I recently got a 6-drawer file cabinet to store all of ,y manipulatives by chapter. I had them in sandwich bags in binders, but it got too overwhelming. This year I'll go through each drawer (everything is sorted by chapter already) and see what things can be grouped together, do some better labeling, and hopefully dispose of the not-so-good things.
5. I keep all of ,y computer files (word, power point, smart board, etc) in a file called Spanish, in the current year, divided by chapter. I do have the same things in multiple years, but I only go back about three years so I'll start to delete by the year on a rotation. This system makes it VERy easy to find things. I also try to write a number before each file to help determine the order of topics in each chapter.

I wish I had one of those gorgeous rooms like I see on Pinterest, but it's just. It gonna happen for me.The new file cabinet (a lucite one) will probably never have pretty paper taped to the inside of every front drawer, the old file cabinets (metal) will probably never be painted with rust oleum or mod-posted with pretty paper, and the Teacher Toolbox that I bought today (at Home Depot) probably won't get spray painted, color coded, and labeled with much more than a post it.  A girl can dream, though.