Teaching Teens in the 21st

Hi All! I skipped my regular post this week in favor of this Flipagram of my ISN that I posted on my Facebook on Monday or so! I also had plans derailed because I *of course* came down with a massive chest cold within the first three days of school! Today I'm going to talk about ISN's, yes, again. Are you doing them yet? Why not? Why are you? Here are the top five reasons why I do the ISN with my middle schoolers: 1. Students are organized 2. Students are organized 3. Students are organized 4. Students are organized 5. Students are organized Obviously there are many other reasons, such as ease of grading, less time spent looking for papers, clear expectations and routines, etc... but my biggest takeaway is that students know where to find stuff. We spend a great deal of time getting this ready to go at the beginning of the school year. More so this year because I really want to be prepared when my maternity sub comes in, and I want students to clearly see

Here we go! So I am finally feeling at peace with the fact that my room is not finished, and it's ok! One of my awesome colleagues suggested we have students help us on Friday during our PBIS day, and it was like the heavens opened up and angels started singing. Genius!! We had two hours today for work time on our own, and guess how much of that time was productive? If you guessed ummm....none of it, that would be correct. So I left, went home, greeted my forlorn puppy, made some quick handouts that I needed to copy, and headed back to school. I was SO much more productive when I got back! I was in and out in a little over an hour, and I'm feeling at least ready to have students enter my room! I've been stalking The Literary Maven for a few weeks now, in fact, this particular blog post has been open in my tabs forever! She had the awesome idea to do stations for her first day back, and I just think it's an amazing idea. I get really nervous for no good reason, and

This year, I realized that I will need to tone it down a bit with my classroom, as I was exhausted just unpacking boxes! My husband and dad were so awesome, because they helped empty out the storage unit we had unnecessarily rented for the summer, and were able to load in my room in just a few hours! I was left behind on their second trip to start unpacking, and the value in completely purging and emptying your classroom is that there isn't that much to move back in, and it's really organized if you take the time to do it when you're packing! To compare and contrast, feel free to check out my classroom reveal from last year, featuring all of my classrooms through the years here ! Here's the view into the pod. I'm going to be covering up the garage door with Astrobrights paper and binder clips to hang student work. The bookshelf will house all of my classroom dictionaries, along with other books and resources we are using. Next to the bookcase is my pocke

Has anyone seen it? I've been looking everywhere for my motivation to get prepped for back to school, to blog, to create some new resources to use in my classroom, and I just can't seem to find it. I'll have random bursts of energy where I'll decide to redo my teacher toolbox, After! Befor which I'm SO glad I decided to do this! The sun had completely bleached out the scrapbook paper, and the colors I had originally picked did not go at all with my blue and green color scheme! To see more info on how to make this box, check out here and here ! or I'll make a new anchor chart , try Pioneer Woman's iced coffee recipe, which was delicious and easy... or clean my office (which I've been doing for two weeks!) I hate this mess! or go into school and get a bunch of printing done... but then I come home, see this adorable baby below, and crawl into bed. Have I ever mentioned I suffer from some pre