Does this sound familiar? “Hey (insert student name here), could you come by after school so we can discuss your grade/behavior/missing work etc?” Three o’clock comes around, 3:05 then 3:15 and eventually 3:30 and you are still all alone. You see that same student the next day and ask them what happened and they respond: “Oh! I totally forgot, sorry!” This is the (short) story of how I fixed the problem.
Classroom Organization
Updates: Check out the changes I have made to my classroom!
Over the summer I had time to really think about my classroom and reflect on the things I wanted to (or needed to) change, as well as the things I wanted to keep the same. Below, you will find the updated tour of my classroom.
Share this:
Speed up the grading process for tests!
I don’t give too many tests in my class. They are generally at the end of each main unit: Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy etc. Since they are few and far between, I want to make sure that they are strong summitive assessments that cover a wide range of material while also going in-depth with the content. In order to do this, my tests are generally long and fairly difficult. I typically include multiple choice questions, matching, fill-in-the-blank, some type of graphing and two essay questions. The students would write on the actual test that I would hand out to them. As I am sure you have already realized– they take forever to grade. I usually spend between 6-10 hours grading them. After more than five years, I finally decided to try and come up with a solution to this. This is my solution…
Share this:
Dealing With Student Absences
I have already talked about how to lessen the amount of prep work you have to do when absent (check out that post here), but what about when your students are gone? I used to think it was much more work dealing with students being absent than when I took a day off (whether it be a sick day or professional development); that was before I came up with these ways to avoid the frustration. Here are some tips and tricks for making your classroom more self sufficient for absent students as well as making your life easier.
Share this:
Stop Taking my Pencils!
I don’t know about you, but no matter what I have tried in the past, my pencils always seem to disappear! I have a special holder on my desk for ‘student pencils.’ I have previously asked them to leave a shoe in exchange for a pencil. I thought that if my students would hobble around my classroom with only one shoe, they would surely remember to give me my pencil back. But, sure enough, my pencils would slowly disappear! So, I recently came up with a new idea for keeping my pencils from getting “kidnapped” (napped by kids) and thought I would share it with you!
Share this:
Prepping for Subs: It shouldn’t be MORE work!
Most teachers are well aware that we are one of the few professions (if not the only) where you have to do more work if you call in sick then if you were to just go to work and struggle through it. It doesn’t seem right that when we are feeling terrible we need to try and create or write up a coherent lesson plan that anyone could implement while taking our place in the classroom. Even if we want to just take a day off, we need to prepare ahead of time and come up with a plan-of-attack for our substitute. It’s unfair, but it is also the way things are. This is what I do to make my life easier when I am out of the classroom.
Share this:
Keeping my Sanity by Staying Organized
I don’t know how many students you have, but each year I have around 150. To some, that might seem like a lot. To others, it might seem low. To me, it seems normal. With 150 students coming in and out of my classroom everyday, it is imperative that I stay organized. My main necessity for remaining as organized as possible is the amount of papers I need to keep track of. On average, I collect about 2 items from each student per day (usually their homework and then whatever worksheet/lab they used during class). If I don’t stay on top of my grading, I can easily have 600-900 papers on my desk. Without being hyper-organized, I could easily feel overwhelmed. Or worse: I could lose papers! Every teacher’s nightmare!! Students always think we lose their papers- but we know that more often then not they still have it in their binder or forgot to put their name on it.
Here are my various ways of staying organized:
The Ardent Teacher 