Sunday, December 30, 2012

Documentation, Documentation, Documentation!

As a beginning teacher, I had no idea how much documentations teachers really needed to have!  We need documentation that we are contacting parents, tutoring students, documentation of whereabouts of our students, etc!  It's enough that we have to grade tons of paper, put the grades into the grading system as well as into our grade book (always best to have a hard copy!)  and develop lesson plans!  We need to document everything else we do?! Documenting can really push a teacher over the edge and overwhelm a new teacher.  Fortunately, documenting can be very simple, as long as we do it right when it occurs.  For some of the documentation, students can do it themselves!

My cure to being stress-free (or well, at least reducing some of the stress that comes with documenting) is that I have created several templates for documentation.  I have a parent contact log, tutoring log-in sheet (students sign themselves in), hall pass that is kept in the room (students fill this out as well - students also have a bathroom pass they fill out on their own and only come to me to sign off on it - more about this later!), and Late to class sign in (students without a pass must sign in themselves and document why they are late).  The only thing I fill out is the parent contact log and I do that right away when I call the parents, everything else is done by the student!  It's great!

If you want to purchase these templates, please visit my store 

Seating Charts

During this semester, I have come to realize that seating  charts can be one of the most handiest things a teacher can have.  I love rearranging my desks according to the lesson of the day.

Therefore, I have 7 different seating charts!  Please visit my store, http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Colleen-Bergin  to purchase my seating charts for your class!

The seating charts are designed with thirty desks in mind.

Seating charts include:

Drama (Large circle)

Group work

Pair seating

Traditional row and column

Few unique classroom set up!